Thread by @StephenLangtry

Tohira Kerrike (also spelt Kherekar) has been selling flowers at Silwood Centre in #Rondebosch for the past 45 years. She talks about her childhood in "Untold Stories: Memories of growing up in a different era," a book by @CTchildhood. (1/14)

Her family owned a small farm in #Constantia at the top of Ladies Mile Road. On the farm, they grew vegetables and #flowers. Her mother sold the flowers that were grown on the farm. Tohira started helping her mother with the selling of flowers. (2/14)

#CapeTown has a long history of flower selling. @meboehi writes in “The flower sellers of Cape Town – a history”, that the cut flower trade began as an activity of #slaves in early colonial Cape Town and that flower selling began in the mid-1880s. (3/14)

“Being largely excluded from careers in botany and horticulture during #apartheid, flower farming and selling were occupations in which black people successfully made a living by working with flowers,” @meboehi writes. (4/14)

The sight of flower sellers in the central business district of #CapeTown became a popular tourist attraction. It was not always so. In 1905, the introduction of a permit for the sale of flowers was discussed in #Parliament. (5/14)

There was opposition to permitting flower sellers in the CBD because as one parliamentarian stated, “‘able-bodied coloured’ men and women should not be flower sellers but employed as farm labourers or domestic workers.” (6/14)

By the early 1900s, #flowersellers became a feature on postcards, tourist guidebooks and in local newspapers and magazines. They were presented as exotic characters, with little understanding of their real lives. (7/14)

@meboehi: “Photographs on postcards were altered in ways that emphasised not only the colours of the flowers but also of the flower sellers’ dresses, especially the ‘Malay’ attributes such as women’s headscarves and men’s fezzes. (8/14)

Painters, like #IrmaStern and Vladimir #Tretchikoff frequently produced images of flower sellers.” (9/14)

The #GroupAreasAct of 1950, placed the economic activity of black people in city centres throughout South Africa in a precarious position. In 1965, central #CapeTown was proclaimed a white area and the coloured #flowersellers would eventually have to move. (10/14)

After protest, they were allowed to stay at the flower market in Adderley Street. However, the #flowersellers experienced the wrath of the Group Areas Act in other ways. In 1968, Tohira’s family were evicted from their farm in #Constantia and forced to move. (11/14)

#Constantia, which today is one of #CapeTown’s wealthiest residential areas, was declared a white area: black residents were evicted and their houses and gardens destroyed. (12/14)

@meboehi: “Few traces remind us that until the 1960s Constantia was a farming area with a predominantly black working class population." Forcibly removed from their farms and relocated to much smaller area meant that their subsistence farming activities were destroyed. (13/14)

A Mosque and Muslim cemetery remains in #Constantia. In 1998, Tohira’s family lodged a claim for the #restoration of the rights to the land that they owned. “If we ever do get it back, I’ll just thank God that we can go forward,” she says. (14/14)