Benches honour Fish Hoek Tourism founder
Angela Botha, the woman who founded Fish Hoek Tourism, will be remembered with not one but two memorial benches - one on Lion’s Head and the other in Zandvlei.
Both benches were put up by Taahir Osman, the founder of Take Back Our Mountains, a non-profit organisation that focuses on protecting biodiversity in Table Mountain National Park and promoting safe community hikes.
Ms Botha, of Kommetjie, was a great supporter of Take Back Our Mountains.
Mr Osman said she was actively involved in promoting safety and security in the valley and became good friends with him through her initiative.
She died in December 2020 at the age of 70 from complications after a short illness (“Fish Hoek Tourism founder dies,” Echo, December 17, 2020).
She was an avid walker and loved nature. At the time of her death, her husband, Paul Botha, said she had developed edema – swelling caused by excess fluid trapped in the body’s tissues – in her feet and legs due to a lack of exercise during lockdown.
Mr Osman said he got to know Ms Botha in 2018 when she “took a liking” to Take Back Our Mountains and what it represented.
“She was very passionate about safety and security in her community and in Table Mountain National Park,” he said.
He said they had started chatting on Facebook and she and her husband had invited him to their home in Kommetjie for lunch as well as to several safety and security meetings in their area afterwards.
“I wanted to do something nice for her and thought a memorial bench was a good idea,” he said.
Mr Osman said he had initially commissioned a plastic bench for Ms Botha at Kloof Corner on Lion’s Head. However, by the time the bench was completed, SANParks had changed the criteria for memorial benches and plastic benches were no longer allowed.
So a wooden bench was set up there and it shares a memorial plaque with Beulah Charles, the former area manager for Orange Kloof (a restricted area between Constantia Nek and Hout Bay), who died in November last year.
Meanwhile, Zandvlei Nature Reserve, which is managed by the City of Cape Town, accepted Mr Osman’s application to place the plastic bench there. It was installed on Wednesday March 22 and the plaque will be fitted soon.
SANParks spokeswoman Lauren Howard Clayton said SANParks seldom approved new benches in the park but instead advised applicants to adopt an existing neglected bench.
However, she said, some of the requirements for a memorial bench are that they may only be placed in predetermined sites and must be in keeping with the standard that has been adopted for the park, and the cost of manufacturing, construction, installation, and maintenance must be borne by the applicant.
She said the park perceives the bench as a “donation” and it, therefore, becomes the property of the park.
She said religious symbolism is to be kept to a minimum and must not be offensive to other religious groups, and SANParks reserves the right, for valid operational reasons, to remove any commemorative structure with no expectation of reimbursement or re-assembly at another site.
