Ed Suter writes: Greenmarket Square, the second oldest public square in the country, has different associations for everyone in this city. For Cape Town’s famous Egg man Gregory da Silva, Greenmarket Square is the perfect platform to practice his skill at walking around in public while balancing 15kg of eggshells and curios on his head, all the while maintaining an imaginary conversation with Nelson Mandela on a broken telephone. Gregory, who originates from Benin, spotted the gap in the market for towering headpieces seven years ago and has not looked back since (looking back being somewhat tricky with his current World Cup themed headdress). With his broad grin and slightly hysterical giggle, Gregory has created a niche for himself amongst the traders in the square, all with an eye on the cash of foreign visitors.

Today Greenmarket Square is a stop on an essential, albeit well-trodden tourist path through the city, its curios from all over Africa and art from townships nearby stuffed into suitcases for return voyages to countries all over the world.

In March 2010 Greenmarket Square will celebrate its 300-year anniversary. The square was created in 1710 and known then to the locals by the long-winded name of “the place on which the Burger Watch House now stands.” It went through various name changes until 1790 when it was christened ‘Groente Markt’ for the simple reason that by then, the square served as the colony’s vegetable market. The Burger Watch House became the Old Town House and today it still stands on the square, housing the Michaelis collection of Dutch paintings. The Burger Watch House, built in 1716, was the headquarters of the colony’s citizen patrols from where all male citizens aged between 16 and 60 were required to go out on patrol, maintaining law and order and keeping an eye out for fires.

Since then Greenmarket Square has been through a number of transformations but has always been central to Cape Town as both a market place and a meeting place. The recent re-vamp of the square in which new cobbles have been laid and raised to the level of the surrounding pavements, traffic prevented from driving around the square and mast lighting installed, is an attempt to again bring the square back into the lives of the city’s citizens. A new performance stage is being constructed above the existing public toilets and outdoor tables from surrounding cafes have spread out across the pavements around the square.

The stage and upgrade to the ablution block began construction at the end of January 2010 and will be completed by the end of March at a cost of R1.5 million. The historical floor, fittings and wooden room-dividers are all being retained and new lights around the ablution block installed. A statue of a swaaipomp (traditional hand-pump) to be erected in front of the Old Town House was recently rejected by Heritage Western Cape for being too large and obstructive. Plans for the statue have had to be revised on a smaller scale.

Part of the square’s appeal has always been as a result of the architecture that surrounds it, both residential and commercial. The art-deco buildings, Market House and Namaqua House, both recently restored, have lured a new wave of inner-city settlers into one and two-bedroom apartments in the heart of the city. With 24-hour patrols and constant activity around the city centre, Greenmarket Square is probably one of the safest city centres in the country.

Abe Bravo has spent the last thirteen years on Greenmarket Square running Sturk’s Tobacconists, only the fourth family to have owned the shop since it opened in 1793. Abe remembers the buzz of the area around Greenmarket Square in the 1950’s and 60’s when the Waldorf restaurant was located off the square, on Burg Street. “A huge restaurant with hundreds of people sitting there, bands playing and everyone going there for tea. It was THE place,” is how he remembers the landmark building that is now a shopping mall. He recalls the days when families would come into town on a Friday night to window-shop at Garlicks and Stuttafords department stores. “Cape Town was vibrant; window-shopping was a big thing. They had special window-dressers who changed the windows every week,” he remembers.

On the square Jurayda Geyer has run her stall for the past 17 years, selling T-shirts, men’s shirts and caps. While she praises the recent re-design of the trading area that has improved the layout of the stalls and allowed for wider aisles between them, she is still wistful for the market as it was in the early 1990’s. Then, she says, “there was more clothing, more variety and the sales were much better.” In those days Greenmarket Square acted as a support for the local CMT (cut, make and trim) suppliers as well as being the launching pad for clothing labels that today, twenty years later, are familiar names.

Anne Eales sold her children’s clothing range, Naartjie, from a stall on Greenmarket Square in 1989 before opening her first store at the V and A Waterfront. She remembers the square as, “the cool place to go. It was always the place where everyone went on a Saturday morning because young, talented people were putting their stuff on the market there.” Anne remembers her time as a trader and a regular Saturday shopper there as “the good old days because it was very Cape Town and very original. People weren’t selling rip-offs from Europe, it was very local stuff.” In those days Greenmarket Square was a place where young people could start a business easily and cheaply, when it wasn’t necessarily a big step to move from there into the more formal economy.

Today the square still provides traders with the means to start a business without the expensive overheads of a shop. Come rain or shine, traders are on the square every day selling beadwork from Kwa-Zulu Natal, wooden curios from East Africa and colonial figures from the Ivory Coast. Ali Majokoro from Zimbabwe has had a stall selling Shona art on the square for ten years. He is there seven days a week. Arriving at 7am each day, it takes him two hours to set up his stall and display his artworks. He then packs up at 4pm to break everything down, wrap up each statue in newspaper before packing them in crates which are then pushed on trolleys to a nearby store-room. His income is irregular; some days there are no sales at all. He blames this on tour operators who, he says, encourage their clients to barter down to ridiculously low prices. As a fellow artist at a stall next door says of the visitors, “They don’t understand, they are buying memories of Africa, straight from the artist.”

Along with everyone else, the traders are hoping to see rejuvenation during the World Cup, when football fans will pass through the square on the official 2.6km fan walk from the CBD to the stadium.

When football fans walk across three hundred years of history, they will also be crossing a square that aims to play a significant part in the city’s future as it has done so in its past.

Related posts:

1. Greenmarket Square – Turning 300 years in 2010
2. Jazz Concert helps celebrate the past and future of Greenmarket Square
3. Greenmarket Square to become iconic eventing space
4. Free Wi-Fi internet set to further enhance bustling Greenmarket Square precinct
5. More than 7500 at Free Community Jazz Concert on Greenmarket Square