The Cape Flats (Afrikaans: Die Kaapse Vlakte) is an expansive, low-lying, flat area situated to the southeast of the central business district of Cape Town. To many people in Cape Town, the area is known simply as 'The Flats'.
Described by some as 'apartheid's dumping ground', from the 1950s the area became home to people the apartheid government designated as non-White. Race-based legislation such as the Group Areas Act and pass laws either forced non-white people out of more central urban areas designated for white people and into government-built townships in the Flats, or made living in the area illegal, forcing many people designated as Black and Coloured into informal settlements elsewhere in the Flats. The Flats have since then been home to much of the population of Greater Cape Town.
Read more about Cape Flats: Geology and Geography, History, Modern History, Politics and Culture, Areas On The Cape Flats
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... Titus was born in Bonteheuwel, Cape Flats, South Africa ... In the 1990s he rapped for Cape Flats-based hip hop group Brasse vannie Kaap, who won an audience that crossed both musical and racial boundaries, attracting hip hop and rock ... strong community involvement, musical focus on Cape Flats issues, and attempts to reach out to youth imprisoned in local jails ...
Famous quotes containing the words flats and/or cape:
“I have a Vision of the Future, chum.
The workers’ flats in fields of soya beans
Tower up like silver pencils, score on score.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)
“Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a few miles inland may never see any trace, more than of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod.... But having come so fresh to the sea, I have got but little salted.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)