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Preserving the Rich History of Curries Fountain and Warwick Junction

Preserving the Rich History of Curries Fountain and Warwick Junction

Durban University of Technology will host a book launch and exhibition titled, Dirty Linen. Durban’s inner city forced removals at the DUT Art Gallery, DUT Steve Biko Campus.

The exhibition – which opens on Tuesday, 04 March 2014 and ends on Wednesday, 12 March 2014 – is part of the launch of two books written by the University’s ROCS research project (Research Of Curries and Surrounds) about the Warwick Junction Precinct.

The two books: The Making of Place. The Warwick Junction Precinct,1870s-1980s and the Curries Fountain. Sports, Politics and Identity seek to preserve Curries Fountain and the precinct’s rich history through the documentation of its history of people, places and events.

The expression ‘Dirty Linen’ refers to the secrets and silences of the old government and the Durban City Council (of the National Government) around the question of forced removals, an ‘open secret’ that it prefers to be best forgotten. This exhibition focuses on the City Council’s shameful policy of forced removals in the 1960s and 70s which hounded established communities out of areas designated for ‘Whites’ and relocated them to racially designated townships on the outskirts of the city.

The area to the west of Warwick (Julius Nyerere) Avenue was first declared a “White” Group Area in 1963, in terms of the Group Areas legislation and part of it was subsequently zoned for educational purposes, thereby ceding the task of ‘forced removals’ on to an educational institution. This was a much more subtle approach than the brute forced employed at Cato Manor in the 1960s.

The photographs taken in the late 1970s at what is now known as the Steve Biko Campus of DUT depict the destruction of a once vibrant community. The images are a reminder of the urban decay that set in after more than a decade of neglect by the Durban City Council (DCC) because of the area’s ‘frozen’ status once it was declared a “White” Group Area in 1963.

As a result of collusion between of the City Council, National Government, the National Education Department and the Department of Community Development with the then Technikon Natal, the land was finally cleared of all residents and business by 1985, thirteen (13) years after the start of the first demolitions in 1973. The only traces of the community that once lived here are the few remaining houses and blocks of flats that are currently used by DUT for different purposes.

In contrast, the photographs of the Wills Road and Warwick Avenue area was taken in a different period by different people and does give a glimpse into what the area would have ‘felt’ like. This Wills Road area, which is part of what is referred to as the Warwick Avenue Triangle (WAT) and the forced removals in this area, was of a very different nature and was still not fully cleared by the late 1980s.

It is hoped that by airing and exposing this ‘dirty linen’, we can acknowledge what happened in this area and help bring closure to the lives of ex-residents. We also hope that together, we can write the stories of their rich lives in this once vibrant community so that photographs of urban decay and squalor on display at the exhibition and elsewhere are not the only memories and records that we have of the ‘Duchene’.

The Making of Place. The Warwick Junction Precinct, 1870s-1980s, by Leonard Rosenberg, Goolam Vahed, Aziz Hassim, Sam Moodley and Kogi Singh focuses on the Warwick Junction precinct and present a part of the city shaped by colonial and apartheid policies. Focused on the micro level of the spatial development of the precinct, spawned in the aftermath of indenture, it identifies the facilities, institutions, places and events that collectively comprised and symbolised “non-European” Durban. The book traces the establishment and growth of this other “invisible” precinct from the time of the earliest settlement of Indians in Durban in the 1870s through to the 1980s when the apartheid ideology and its structures started to implode.

Curries Fountain. Sports, Politics and Identity, by Leonard Rosenberg, Sam Moodley and Goolam Vahed, is solely dedicated to the history of this iconic sports ground, lavishly illustrated by hundreds of photographs. The history of soccer, cricket, athletics, golf, boxing, cultural events and political activities at this site is located within the political context of the country as a whole, the precinct within which it is located and the changing sporting formations at the time.

– Sinegugu Ndlovu

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