South Africa’s cities, towns, and landscapes are filled with stories — some proudly displayed, others quietly buried beneath centuries of change.
Greenmarket Square, Cape Town / Ossewa / Wikimedia Commons
Many of the places we pass every day like gardens, markets, train stations, and old buildings carry the traces of forgotten lives and overlooked histories. When we slow down and look closer, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Here’s a journey through the hidden histories of some of South Africa’s most familiar places.
The Company Gardens, Cape Town
In the heart of Cape Town lies the Company’s Garden, a serene green escape surrounded by museums and cafés. It’s easy to see it as just another park but in 1652, it was the first colonial settlement established by the Dutch East India Company to feed passing ships. The garden’s vegetables and fruit were grown by enslaved people brought from Africa and Asia, whose stories often remain untold.
The garden also represents early environmental manipulation, an imported European model of cultivation in African soil. Today, while families feed squirrels and students lounge under the oaks, the garden remains a quiet witness to the beginnings of colonial occupation and the enslaved labour that sustained it.
The Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town
Just a few blocks away, the Castle of Good Hope stands as one of Cape Town’s most misunderstood landmarks. Built between 1666 and 1679 by enslaved and indigenous labourers, the Castle was both a fortress and a prison. It once housed Dutch officials and later became a military headquarters, but it also detained resistance leaders such as Xhosa chiefs Maqoma and Langalibalele.
Today, it hosts heritage exhibitions, yet its thick walls still echo the darker chapters of South African history — colonisation, forced labour, and suppression. The Castle’s transformation from a stronghold of power to a museum of memory mirrors the country’s broader journey toward reckoning and restoration.
Constitution Hill, Johannesburg
Sitting high above Johannesburg’s skyline, Constitution Hill is a living palimpsest, a place where the past and present constantly speak to one another. Once a colonial fort and notorious prison complex, it confined everyone from Mahatma Gandhi to Nelson Mandela.
Today, it houses South Africa’s Constitutional Court, symbolically built from the bricks of the demolished prison. Visitors walking through its corridors move from cold, oppressive cells into the light-filled court, tracing the country’s journey from oppression to democracy.
Greenmarket Square, Cape Town
Thousands of Capetonians and tourists cross Greenmarket Square every week, shopping for crafts or sipping coffee. Few realise that this bustling space once hosted slave auctions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Enslaved people were bought and sold here as part of Cape Town’s early economy.
In later years, the square became a site of anti-apartheid protest, with activists gathering to demand justice. Its layered history, from exploitation to expression, makes it one of the city’s most symbolically charged public spaces.
Bo-Kaap, Cape Town
The bright, candy-coloured houses of Bo-Kaap are instantly recognisable, but behind the Instagram fame lies a history of cultural resilience. This neighbourhood, once known as the Malay Quarter, was home to freed slaves and artisans from Southeast Asia and East Africa. Under apartheid, Bo-Kaap’s residents faced eviction through the Group Areas Act but resisted fiercely.
Each colourful façade is more than aesthetic, it’s a declaration of survival and identity in a city that once tried to erase both.
Johannesburg Park Station, Johannesburg
Park Station is a hub of daily movement, but beneath its platforms lies a buried history. During apartheid, the station was strictly segregated, with separate entrances, ticket counters, and waiting areas for Black and White passengers.
When the Gautrain was built, excavations uncovered the remains of a 19th-century burial ground that had been built over without recognition. Today, parts of that cemetery have been memorialised nearby, reminding commuters that even in places of constant transit, the past never truly disappears.
Vilakazi Street, Soweto (Johannesburg)
Few streets in the world have hosted two Nobel Peace Prize winners — Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu — yet Vilakazi Street in Soweto has achieved just that. Once an ordinary residential street under apartheid, it became the heartbeat of political resistance and community pride.
Walking its length today, lined with cafés and museums, visitors can still feel the pulse of a people who turned everyday neighbourhood life into a site of revolution.
Durban City Hall, Durban
Durban’s grand City Hall, completed in 1910, was modelled directly on Belfast City Hall, an architectural declaration of British imperial identity. Yet over the decades, the building’s meaning has evolved. Once a symbol of colonial power, it’s now home to the Durban Art Gallery and Natural Science Museum, public spaces that democratise access to art and knowledge.
Durban’s City Hall stands as a reminder that even architecture can be repurposed — transformed from exclusion to inclusion.
The Old Biscuit Mill, Cape Town
Today, the Old Biscuit Mill is one of Cape Town’s trendiest markets, buzzing with artisanal food stalls and boutique shops. But few visitors realise it began as a 19th-century industrial mill, surrounded by workers’ housing and apartheid-era factories.
Its transformation into a creative hub has sparked debates about gentrification and displacement in Woodstock, one of Cape Town’s oldest mixed-race neighbourhoods. The mill’s history of labour, inequality, and renewal mirrors broader questions about urban change in post-apartheid South Africa.
The Donkin Reserve, Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth)
Overlooking Gqeberha’s harbour, the Donkin Reserve features a pyramid-shaped memorial built by Sir Rufane Donkin in memory of his wife, Elizabeth — the city’s namesake. While the monument is often seen as a romantic gesture, it also marks colonial expansion and settlement in the Eastern Cape, a region deeply scarred by frontier wars between British settlers and the Xhosa people.
Today, the area around the Donkin Reserve has been revitalised with public art celebrating African identity, challenging the colonial narrative once centred here.
Freedom Park, Pretoria
Freedom Park, perched on Salvokop Hill, is one of the most intentional acts of remembrance in modern South Africa. Opened in 2004, it honours those who sacrificed their lives across centuries of struggle, from precolonial conflicts to the liberation movements of the 20th century.
The Wall of Names and Isivivane memorials serve as reminders that remembrance is an active process, one that requires ongoing care and reflection.
St. George’s Cathedral, Cape Town
Known as the spiritual home of the anti-apartheid movement, St. George’s Cathedral was led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the 1980s. Dubbed “the people’s cathedral,” it hosted countless protest services, vigils, and funerals for activists.
While many pass it without a second glance, its stone steps once echoed with the chants of thousands marching for justice. Today, the cathedral remains a sanctuary for reflection, a space where faith and activism meet.
Why It Matters
These gardens, forts, train stations, cathedrals, and markets are not just tourist stops. They’re living records of South Africa’s complex past. To walk through them with awareness is to participate in an act of remembrance.
By uncovering the hidden histories of everyday spaces, we learn that memory is not confined to museums. It’s embedded in the streets we cross, the benches we rest on, and the buildings we take for granted. The act of seeing differently, of pausing to ask what came before, turns the ordinary into something sacred.
