Mike Kantey – local historian, researcher, book editor and producer of limited edition works in the Watermark Press series, will tell us about the Griqua people.
Emily Moon, set on the banks of the Bitou River in Plettenberg Bay, is a luxury hotel plus restaurant & pizzeria with a quirky attitude and a distinctly African air.
Simon’s Bar, located above Emily’s Restaurant, is beautifully designed with vintage boat engines decorating the walls and in the centre a wood–fired pizza oven that produces the best artisan pizzas in the Garden Route.
Please join us in the adjacent James Room; a multi-purpose venue set in a tranquil garden, as we learn more about the Griqua people and then sample a selection of Emily Moon’s legendary pizzas.
Bookings can be made online via QUICKET or in person at Barneys Kiosk, Market Square.
For most commentators attached to the resort town of Plettenberg Bay, the Griqua community amounts to only one particular group based in the village of Kranshoek, just off the Airport Road to Knysna.
The true history of those known by that name for over 150 years, however, is far more complicated and — like the Scottish clans — involve different patriarchs at different times in different places.
The prominent clans are those of the original Adam Kok, and the later Waterboers and Le Fleurs. The places where they found temporary refuge included Piketberg, Hopetown, Phillipolis, Kokstad, and only arriving in Kranshoek as late as the 20th century.
This talk will make a rough sketch of these personalities, events, and locations in order to give the audience a rare glimpse of how history is not confined to one man or one category of race, class, and religion, but is always the result of a dynamic flow in fortunes and favours.
The Trek illustrated (Photo supplied)
From a painting by Cobus van Bosch