Stellenbosch University’s Students, Staff Stimulate Ideas For Memorialising Hardekraaltjie Cemetery
Students and staff at Stellenbosch University’s (SU) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) participated in conversations about the future of the historic Hardekraaltjie cemetery, which is located on the grounds on SU’s Tygerberg Campus.
The Hardekraaltjie Cemetery restitution project is an ongoing process which follows a human-centred community participation approach that includes engagement with relevant stakeholders. The event for SU students and staff followed several engagements with members of the former Tiervlei (now Ravensmead) community over the past two years.
According to official records, the Hardekraaltjie cemetery was in use from 1909 until its closure in 1946. SU became the owner of the land in 1971 when the then Parow municipality transferred it to the University. The cemetery had a central place in the then Tiervlei community, which was subjected to forced removals under the Group Areas Act (1950) of the apartheid regime. Today the site where the cemetery used to be, extends across sections of land owned or controlled by SU, Tygerberg Hospital (the Western Cape Government Health Department through the Department of Public Works), and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA).
The discussions with SU staff and students were hosted by Dr Therese Fish, FMHS vice dean of Clinical Service and Social Impact, Dr Leslie van Rooi, SU senior director of Social Impact and Transformation, and Prof Aslam Fataar from SU’s Department of Education Policy Studies who is also linked to the University’s transformation portfolio.
“This initiative is aimed at restitution,” Van Rooi said at the event held at SU’s Tygerberg Campus. “We are committed to a restitution process for Hardekraaltjie which is underscored by research and community participation to remind us of a past when the dignity of the people in this area was tragically violated.”
There are several aspects to the heritage restitution process for Hardekraaltjie cemetery, including stakeholder consultation, research, and the collection of stories of descendants of people who were buried in the cemetery. All the information collected through this multipronged process will be captured in a book, and will also be placed in an online digital repository where all documents, artifacts, audio clips, articles, etc., can be accessed by anyone interested in the project. Open access to the project’s information is a key aspect of the project and will later form a crucial part of educational and community conversations that will form part of the cemetery’s memorialisation.
The next step is to determine how the site will be memorialised. A contextualisation board explaining the historical importance of the site and the process SU has embarked on has been erected on the site. The discussion with SU staff and students formed part of the ongoing consultations with stakeholders to garner input and ideas on how the site can be suitably memorialised to pay tribute to the members of the Tiervlei community buried there.
Students at the engagement shared that when they started their journey at the FMHS, they were told about a cemetery on campus but thought that it was fabricated. “We thought the story of a cemetery on our campus was simply made up. This engagement is so important to us as students because we are also part of the history of this place,” said Tygerberg Student Representative Council (TSRC) member Andre Pillay.
Ideas about how to memorialise the Hardekraaltjie site was to turn it into an interactive space with digital screens for young people to come and view the cemetery where their ancestors are buried. Other ideas included erecting a large glass window depicting what the cemetery used to look like as an overlay next to the site with a plaque containing all the known family names of the people who were laid to rest at Hardekraaltjie.