The impossible return

Siona O’Connell’s Impossible Return, Cape Town’s Forced Removals brings to light the real stories of people who were forced to move from their homes in Harfield Village in the early 1970s. In this extract, we are introduced to Shannon Edwards who lived with her family in 1st Avenue, Harfield.

‘I never got the chance to say goodbye’ were the words that struck me when I met with Shannon Edwards in her Claremont home. Soft-spoken, with a polite yet determined demeanour, Shannon – or Shani as she is known – was the first person I interviewed for this book. On a cold and wet Cape Town day, in a house that is a stone’s throw away from her 1st Avenue, Harfield childhood home, I was to hear her story of loss, of an inability to settle, her constant and relentless quest to return to Harfield, and a future that she was not given the chance to fulfil.

Her recollections on that morning were a mixture of fierce struggles to adapt to unfamiliar and hostile surroundings in Mitchells Plain, contrasting with acute memories of joy from her childhood in Harfield. What gave additional insight into her story was the observation of her composure, her gestures and glances, these giving clues as to what Harfield meant to her, the schism that ensued after her family was evicted and the effect on her body which unknowingly exposed memories and pervasive effects of the forced removal. These gestures revealed memories and afterlives that are inscribed on bodies as visible and invisible shadows that perform in a million different ways, often illuminated in hurt, sadness, anger and regret. They are the intangibles that are nascent in David’s photographs.

THE PHOTOGRAPH