COMMONWEALTH WAR MEMORIAL FOR THE CAPE TOWN LABOUR CORPS – ‘THE LAST POST’
This new memorial located in the Company’s Gardens, Cape Town adds to the commemorative heritage of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The Company’s Garden was established in the 1600’s as a food garden to replenish ships passing around the Cape during the first Dutch settlement in the 1600’s.
A site adjacent to the Delville Wood Memorial garden in the Company’s Garden was selected as it presented an opportunity to add another layer of observance to the existing first World War memorials located on the cross axis of the National Art and Cultural History museums.
The space commemorates the Cape Town Labour Corps which formed part of a large multi-national force that was involved in the fighting around the British and German colonial territories across the African continent during the first World War. Many African personnel served and died on the continent, providing racially divided logistic support to the Imperial forces. They were not treated fairly or equally, or properly commemorated by name.
This memorial redresses this historical omission and pays tribute to the lives and experiences of more than 1700 men who carried the load of war but received no named recognition in return and seeks to unite all peoples together in common remembrance of the war dead.
The design was the outcome of a design competition, awarded to Dean Jay architects (Durban) with landscape design by OvP Associates.
The project constructed in 2024 commemorates by individually naming the 1700 men of colour in a respectful manner consistent with similar Commonwealth War Memorials around the world, while also reflecting the heritage and culture of South Africa.
The memorial itself is constructed using local materials and techniques. Each serviceman is represented by an individually named African Iroko hardwood post set into South African Rustenburg granite – a material that is commonly used in similar sites around the world.
Each post represents a lost life, manifesting the scale of contribution made by the Labour Corps. The layout of the site allows visitors to move through and between the lines of posts, as if standing between the ranks of the men commemorated here.
This is a reflective landscape space, emotionally charged by the sculptural presence of the multi-dimensional rows of post which come alive and transform into dynamic movement when passing along the lines.
The space is framed by the existing molded plaster boundary walls, existing monuments and fish ponds of the formal garden on the cross axis of the museum avenues. Mature trees on the upper terrace were retained and protected during construction, the existing lawn parterre fully restored with selected infill planting carefully designed to complement the new pathways between the posts at the upper level.
A feature of the installation was the design effort put into the informative and interpretive design of the hoarding around the site. The opening ceremony took place in Jan 2025 and the project, which is both a memorial and iconic sculpture now adds to the interpretation and layering of our shared collective experience and memory of the contribution of the less fortunate in the shaping of freedom in the modern world.