The Company's Garden

Something started when those first Dutch ships swung about and pushed themselves through the heaving swells to dock right here. They started a story in which the past keeps colliding with the present. Well, that’s my take on it. On this tour I’ll take you through the Company’s Garden and tell you about the extraordinary things that happened here. I’ll tell about why a garden was what those first Dutch colonisers wanted, and how the British reshaped it, to suit Victorian sensibilities. I’ll tell you about characters who left their mark on Cape Town, like Cecil John Rhodes, and about the day Apartheid ended. This tour is also my story. How can it not be? I’ve lived through big changes in a society that is strange, odd, endearing and awful. I’m a history buff working in the present tense. Like most people I’m a bunch of contradictions, and somewhere along the way I became an enemy of the state – without really meaning to! Cape Town’s just one of those places.