Cape Town to hold remembrance walk for forced removals — Daily Maverick
In Cape Town, South Africa, on 24 September 2026, the Newlands/Claremont Heritage, Environmental Justice and Restitution Society (NCHERS) plans to hold the fifth annual Walk of Remembrance — a commemorative walk for the forced removals of Newlands and Claremont residents during apartheid. The event programme is described in a Daily Maverick column written by Rashied Omar, imam of the Claremont Main Road Masjid.
Walk route
Participants are due to set off at 9:30 from Newlands Cricket Stadium. The route includes three stops at locations connected with the history of the neighbourhoods from which people were forcibly relocated in the 1960s.
At Draper Square, near Main Road, former residents plan to remember the families and institutions that once stood in the area, including Talfalah Primary School and the Orpheum Bioscope cinema. Another stop will take place near the mosque on Stegman Road, where participants will honour Imam Abdullah Haron. The column’s author notes that Haron opposed forced removals and the apartheid system and died in detention on 27 September 1969.
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The walk will be attended by the imam’s youngest daughter, Fatima Haron-Masoet, who is deputy chairperson of NCHERS. The third point on the route will be the Cape Town Athenaeum in Mariendal Lane, a place described in the column as a hub of the Teachers’ League of South Africa and the broader Non-European Unity Movement.
Meeting at the museum
NCHERS is chaired by Russell Dudley, the son of educator R. O. Dudley, whom the author describes as one of the leading figures of the Teachers’ League. After the walk, journalist and author Dougie Oakes is due to speak at the Newlands Cricket Experience museum about the anti-apartheid sports movement, the South African Council on Sport and its founder, Hassan Howa.
The NCHERS annual general meeting will begin at 9:00 at the Newlands Cricket Experience Museum, while Oakes’ talk is scheduled for 11:00. Organisers also announced exhibitions and refreshments for participants.
