Remembering Our Heritage

🎧 The Daniels Family Story ➡ Watch here

Our Social Fabric team, in association with the District Six oral history documentary team, Simon’s Town Museum, and Fish Hoek Museum, held a Heritage Day Picnic and Commemoration at the end of September where the community remembered and shared stories of their past.

🌞 With great excitement we celebrated Kommetjie’s very first Heritage Day — a day of community, stories, and remembrance.

🌻 A highlight was the unveiling of the Wag ’n Bietjie Memorial Benches at Bird Island. These benches are part of the project started by the Phoenix Committee comprising of people who were forcibly removed from Simon’s Town.

🎨 The mosaic artist is Reagan Rubain, from Ocean View, who also made the mosaics of many of the Simon’s Town Wag ’n Bietjie benches (which can be seen in Jubilee Square). Chip Snaddon, a Kommetjie artist, created the inset pictures for our benches.

✨ Wag ’n Bietjie means stop and wait for a little while — inviting us to pause and reflect on the past, and remember the families who were forcibly removed from Kommetjie and Witsands.

🧺 The day continued with a shared community picnic and games led by Tazneem Wentzel and her interns from Simon’s Town Museum. ✨ Special thanks also to the District Six Oral History Project who did short interviews with many members of Daniels and Allen families. 

👉 If you’d like to hear more about the Kommetjie of old, listen to the moving interview above with sisters Johanna Williams and Louisa Layters, who grew up here before being forcibly moved to Ocean View in 1972.

🖼 Thanks to the Simon's Town and District Six museums for their involvement in the project.

📸 Thank you to Adam Welz for the photographs.

❤️ Thank you to the KRRA Social Fabric Group ❤️