October 13, 2023
Esje du Toit grew up on a farm just outside during the war years and from an early age she wanted to know more about the ‘olden days’. She wondered what the places she knew had looked like before, and who the people were who once lived there. As she […]
October 12, 2022
HERMANUS HISTORY SOCIETY: Site visit on 22 August 2022 A year ago Dr Pieter Boon gave the society a very interesting talk via Zoom on the history 0f the Leprosy Institute in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley outside Hermanus. During question time at the end of his talk he was asked if […]
July 17, 2020
Hi Everyone, We hope that you are all well. We are sorry that we are unable to meet and we have thought about zoom meetings. However, we feel there are already many organisations doing this. Certainly, U3A includes some history presentations too: Robin Lee has done Tretchikoff in Hermanus, and […]
June 23, 2020
Following on last week’s article which presented a picture of how the Group Areas Act led to the segregation of residential areas and amenities in Hermanus during the apartheid era, DR ROBIN LEE of the Hermanus History Society shares his latest research into the high-profile issue of ‘beach apartheid’ during […]
June 18, 2020
Like all South African human settlements, Hermanus has been shaped in many ways by apartheid. Through his research into how the Group Areas Act led to the segregation of residential areas and amenities, DR ROBIN LEE presents a picture of what was happening in Hermanus during the 1950s and 1960s. […]
June 9, 2020
As we saw in the previous article, Hermanus society and the founding of NGOs, our town has an abundance of voluntary organisations that work towards the benefit of the community and the environment. Focusing on the conservation of our floral kingdom, the Hermanus Botanical Society took root only after several […]
June 9, 2020
In this comprehensive new series on the history of Hermanus, DR ROBIN LEE turns his attention to the proliferation of non-government organisations over the past 100 years. Focusing on the issue of conservation of fynbos and other indigenous vegetation, he takes a look at the rather complicated history of early […]
May 22, 2020
Writer Dr Robin Lee A review of holiday homes in Hermanus covers two categories of accommodation. The rst category refers to fairly simple, relatively inexpensive holiday homes built in the early days of the development of Voëlklip. The second category is the larger houses that were built by wealthy […]