Time and Tide: remembering visually
Grant Parker
It was the perfect escape: near in kilometers, but so distant in character. To grow up in the nearby suburb of Wynberg in the 1970s was to need a place, far from cluttered backyards enclosed by vibracrete walls, that held the promise of nourishing the soul. Hout Bay was that. Hout Bay was at home to welcome us whenever our car would wind its way across Constantia Nek past all the milkwood trees. Sunday afternoons, perhaps once every four to six weeks. This became the preferred outing of my aunt and uncle once they retired to the Cape from even more exotic Zululand, and from that point onward they became enthusiastic upholders of our family custom. Perhaps it reminded them of greener landscapes. Uncle George would drive us in one of his succession of well-tended Toyotas, initially in a convoy of two and later as sole vehicle. The brown one with the white vinyl top was more comfortable and better ventilated than its predecessors. (Rumour had it he would even polish the engine, but I never witnessed this.) The female members of my family always wore large dark glasses as if marking an other-worldly ritual. Later in the afternoon, marking the end of each visit, the return journey would bring a melancholic sense of foreboding by the time we reached the Orangekloof bend: homework yet to be completed for the school week ahead. On the other side of the hill daily tedium awaited me.
It was only some five decades later that Hout Bay became for me a place of stories, stories seeking public curation as well as preservation for future generations. And then almost by accident. In one sense it goes against the grain to turn such experiences of everyday life into objects of curation. After all, modern museums were invented to celebrate the extraordinary and to feed a sense of wonder, of marvel, of the miraculous. But here we are in Hout Bay, curating ordinary life via images. It is a different sense of museum, one that is rooted in place but also seeks to collect stories for the tellers and for those, near and far, who might find them interesting, those for whom the collected stories might elicit their own stories. This collection of images exemplifies the title of the overall initiative under which our curation began: Archive to Narrative. In this case, the archive in question is the Hout Bay Museum collection, including a group of some 2100 photographic slides that had been in storage, out of sight and out of mind, or so it seemed. At the suggestion of the museum curator, Mr. Jonathan (Jonty) Dreyer, our team digitized the slides for archival purposes. Out of this, we selected some twenty as a representative sample, and that selection was used to conduct oral history interviews with a small selection of community members. Excerpts from the interviews are reproduced here as commentary on the images, sometimes direct and sometimes less so.
It is worth pointing out the chance composition of this photographic archive, as is the case with so many, and likewise the happenstance by which it came to our team’s attention. During initial conversations at the museum, we discussed photographing its rooms and objects as the obvious way to digitize a museum and its contents. It seems a fluke that, as we gathered in the main entry hall on the way out, Jonty would mention in passing the existence of the images in storage. Our interest piqued, we quickly considered the possibility that these photographs, preserved as slides, could become the basis of a digital curation, a stimulus for Hout Bay residents’ storytelling. This is exactly what they have become.A fuller history of Hout Bay would require a different medium and a larger canvas. Its elements are already visible in the museum itself. What we offer here is a selection from the photographs collected by the museum over the years, without additions, but rather an attempt to select examples that are characteristic of the whole, that perhaps have the greatest power to evoke memories on the part of interviewees, each of whom has a long-term connection with Hout Bay. The interviews were open-ended, aimed at collecting any associations that might come to mind. In this way we have sought to turn (visual) archive into (personal) narrative.
My favourite image from the collection is an unlikely beauty. The slide is itself decayed by some kind of water or mould damage. Yet the evolved image retains some distinctive features of the original, centring, as it does, a few delicate stems of Cape May, botanically known as Coleonema alba. The frame attacks the core content, which with further time seems certain to succumb. Whereas the historian G. M. Trevelyan once claimed that those interested in the past ‘should see through the windowpane, not the pane itself’ (1913), an image like this quietly disagrees: the frame, the pane itself demands attention. The chemical dissolution of the colours has somehow brought delicate drops of purple, like berries, to the centre of the image. If the original photographer intended to remind themselves, or others, of the tiny white flowers, they have succeeded in making us now consider the perils facing attempts to preserve an image, idea or sensation. What we can see today is such an attempt, what we now perceive as a process that has created something other than what was intended, turns out to possess a charm all its own, even or especially in its state of decay.
It is all too easy to describe Hout Bay as a microcosm of South Africa, highlighting themes such as climate change, fishing, forced removals, inequality, migration and xenophobia. None of this is untrue. Yet it would be a missed opportunity if that description obscured that which makes Hout Bay unique, if it concealed that which has been lived anew everyday by ordinary persons. Such are the hopes, fears and loves that we urge you to sense for yourself in the photographs. Here are lives lived, here is a sense of place which individuals have made by adding their own meaning.
October 2025
Time and Tide: Stories Told at the Hout Bay Museum
Introduction
Introduction
Over the course of a month we interviewed six members of the Hout Bay community at the museum. Our interviewees were each shown the same sample of images and asked questions about their lives in Hout Bay to prompt storytelling. We chose some of their most impactful stories to share in this exhibition.
By way of a brief introduction:
Susan Ball has lived in Hout Bay since 1972. She sits on the board for the Hout Bay Museum and is a retired school teacher.
Penny Brown has lived in Hout Bay since 1982. She is a retired marine biologist and prominent member of the Friends of the River.
Jonathan Dreyer describes himself as born, bred, fed and forcibly removed from Hout Bay. He is a pastor and the curator of the Hout Bay Museum.
Emil Gertz moved to Hout Bay in 1963. He is an advocate for the natural environment of Hout Bay.
Johan October was born in Hangberg, Hout Bay. He is a mountain guide and indigenous plant expert.
Kenny Tokwe came to Hout Bay in 1985. He is an activist and advocate for people in Imizamo Yethu where he was one of the first residents.
We invite you to browse through the sample images for our interviews below. Not all have a memory or story attached to them. Consider any memories they evoke, especially with those images that are still waiting for a memory to catalyse.
“My uncle took us to the mountain quite a lot as boys and he used to point out plants and flowers, some of medicinal value, which were beautiful and interesting to him. As boys of ten or eleven we thought, “Who’s interested in that?” We just wanted to be in the mountain climbing on rocks. Little did I know that my uncle was actually trying to plant the seed of fynbos in our heads. I took it for granted, but now that I am a mountain guide, all these things are relevant to me. After becoming a guide I learnt more about plants and it made sense to me why my uncle had gone on about the plants… I kind of feel like I am him now. He passed away a year and a half ago, but I’m very happy that I said thank you to him for inspiring me.”—Jonathan Dreyer
“The river was a source of life. I mean, of course you could drink the river water, but also there were fish that spawned there and then grew in the river and some other river fish that didn’t go out to sea again. We would have the privilege of making our own lines, fishing lines, and fishing bait and we would catch them and on the side here we were allowed to make a little fire in one of those old Koffiehuis cans, you know? We used to either braai or cook it [the fish] in there, but the cooking was the best. One [boy] would bring an onion from home, the other one would bring a potato, one would bring tomato, one would bring salt and we would cook it in this Koffiehuis can. Bless god for Koffiehuis cans, because they were a means of survival, not just the coffee inside them, but they were a means of survival for us, because we didn’t have much food at that time. So you would find us a lot on the beach.”—Jonathan Dreyer
“This is the Disa River, we called it Die Mond, as in “the mouth” as you can see there’s a lot of kids swimming here. As kids we were not allowed to swim in the river, but we were defiant. The beach is right there and the water in the river is a little bit warmer than the ocean water. So after a dip in the ocean we would go into the river. We used to picnic over here. I do remember though that once you go inside this water and you stay there for a couple of minutes or so, you yourself will come out orange, because of the tannins in this brown water that comes from the mountain.”—Johan October
“My husband really enjoyed working in Hout Bay, he had wonderful people working with him. In those days we had all kinds of rules and regulations about who you were allowed to employ and he was given a license to be able to employ six Africans who were in the Sea Products hostel. They had to have a pass, they couldn’t bring their families with them which I think was very cruel. I think one of the reasons why our country is so badly off today is because family units were broken down by apartheid regulations.
These men came from the Eastern Cape, very often from the same village. But one of them was a Shoshangane from Mozambique, very far north of South Africa. He was a very tall warrior-looking like guy and he had managed somehow or other to have himself registered as coloured person. And he had actually voted – because coloured people could, if they had a certain amount of education. They were allowed to vote until about 1951. So he was one of the few people [of colour] I knew who had voted, but the government took that right away. His name was Jackson.”—Susan Ball
“This reminds me of when the snoek boats come in. They would offload the snoek and you would have the fish mongers, we called them langaaners, they bargain on it, bidding for the whole catch on the boat. Once the deal is done we would take the fish onto their bakkies and we would earn R2 or R4 and take half and bring the other half home. Then you could buy breakd with that money. We would also take the livers and the heads home with us because other people wouldn’t want them, we would make a fish soup, a langsous, with them. That was a survival meal. When you look at a picture like this, those memories come back.”—Jonathan Dreyer
“This is where I was taught how to swim. I had my first swimming lesson over here. There used to be these big fifty litre drums, stacked over here. And we would walk into the water, waist deep, and get onto the drums, and somebody pushed the drum, and I had no choice but to swim. That was my first lesson. I remember families would put up blankets with two sticks or two poles and that would be their shade for the day. In the summer times this was packed with people from Hangberg.”—Johan October
“The local people used to say “Vis ruik, mens ryk”. When fish smells, people are rich.”—Susan Ball
“Our natural biodiversity is our most important heritage in South Africa.The biodiversity is what makes our part of the world special.”—Penny Brown
“The white people kept saying there was no work for us [when black people began to settle on unoccupied land in Hout Bay that would later become Imizamo Yethu]. We said, “We understand.” Some of us weren’t there looking for jobs. We were there to explore what God has created for us. We said, “Leave us alone. We know what we want.” These beautiful mountains were created for all of us, regardless of the pigmentation of our skin.”—Kenny Tokwe
“Hout Bay is out of control, it’s all about development and this infrastructure that should not be compromising the environment, but it is.”—Emil Gertz
Penny Brown recounted the story of the fire of 1992. Her son was only a few months old and when she got up to feed him during the night, she smelt smoke. Initially the fire was high up on the mountain, but it came down and hit the gum trees. Gum trees are invasive alien trees that the law states should be cleared, but people often ignore this because they think cutting down a tree is bad. They burn like nobody’s business and these were no different, creating great fire balls that came flying down the mountain, landing in the Baviaan’s River corridor. Little fires started to spring up. Penny woke her husband and neighbours and together they fought the fire from both sides of the river. Had they not acted as they did, the whole valley would have burnt. Later they cleared all the gums from their part of the mountain.
“One of these men is Uncle Charles, he has now gone to higher fishing grounds, he was my neighbour. Then there’s Uncle Clooney, still sings beautiful serenades on a Sunday. They used to go out on a Sunday to lay the crayfish traps and on a Monday morning they would go out to draw the traps.”—Jonathan Dreyer
“My husband’s fishing friends used to give him crayfish and my husband couldn’t bear it to see these poor crayfish in our sink, trying to eat the dishcloth. We’d sneak down to Flora Bay at midnight with the crayfish in the bucket to put them back into the sea. If we had been caught we’d have had to do some very difficult explaining.”—Susan Ball
“My parents were in fishing and I grew up with that, so much so that we studied the schedules and cycles of the industry. We knew the boats and when they came in and out. All the vessels going out would line up next to this ice plant here and be loaded with ice as they went out to sea.”—Jonathan Dreyer
“I hope that we are not imprisoned in our minds anymore, that we are free and we must use that freedom to be able to make each other’s lives better. Then we will be happy. We will have our challenges, we aren’t denying that, but if we are reaching out to one another we can overcome those challenges together.”—Jonathan Dreyer
“In the future I don’t want to see “Imizamo Yethu”, I don’t want to see “Hangberg”, I don’t want to see “Hout Bay Valley”. I want all of us to have one name that unifies all of us. So that we can speak with one voice.”—Kenny Tokwe
Closing thoughts
The Hout Bay Museum was founded in 1979 for the purpose of preserving knowledge about the area’s natural history and fishing industry. Over many years, its purpose has shifted. Whilst the original priorities remain, they now sit alongside a deep commitment to representing all three main areas of Hout Bay:Hangberg, Imizamo Yethu and Hout Bay Valley. This small museum manages to do so because of the attention it pays to unique aspects of Hout Bay’s history and because it is staffed by community members who are dedicated to their role as custodians of heritage.
I undertook the scanning of the Hout Bay Museum’s slides from April to July 2025, assisted by Tagin Stephanou. While engaged in this work, we would discuss options for turning the slides into a digital exhibition. We worried that the slides didn’t often offer us pictures of people, instead showing us the beauty of the natural environment around Hout Bay. We saw tidal pools filled with starfish, mountain views, indigenous flowers and the occasional fisherman. I realise now that these themes reflected the original priority of the museum which was less people-centred. As we fretted over how we were going to use the slides to tell a story about the people of Hout Bay when they featured little in the images, we began to realise that in fact, the images were the perfect means to do so. On reflection, we decided to use the absence of human figures as an invitation for viewers to picture themselves in the photographs. They provided an opportunity to look at Hout Bay without being prescribed a person whose eyes we were looking through. In fact, we don’t even know who took these photographs.
In our interviews, the idea of using the photographs to capture the spirit of Hout Bay worked. The stories shared created a flow of memories that stretched from the mountains, down into the sea, and then back up again. We could see these tides pull individual memories in and out. For many years, the tide went out on these images as they lay forgotten in a storeroom. We trust that our work in combining images with personal memories, in keeping with the museum’s goals, signal a new moment in which the tide comes back in.
Alice Parkington
October 2025
Time and Tide: Stories Told at the Hout Bay Museum
Ebook
Ebook
Acknowledgements
This exhibit was curated by Alice Parkington in collaboration with Grant Parker as part of the Archive to Narrative initiative. We would like to thank:
Jonathan Dreyer and the staff and board of the Hout Bay Museum for facilitating this project and contributing their memories to it.
Susan Ball, Penny Brown, Jonathan Dreyer, Emil Gertz, Johan October and Kenny Tokwe for agreeing to share their stories with us and the public.
Tagin Stephanou for providing essential technical support in the scanning process.
Seth Kriger for his curatorial contribution.
Kai Parker for technical assistance.
Stephen Symons for developing and designing our digital curation.
Western Cape Museum Services for helping set up the collaboration.
This collection of images exemplifies the title of the overall initiative under which our curation began: Archive to Narrative.
Grant Parker
