The "
garden cityThe garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" , containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and...
" suburb of
Pinelands is located on the edge of the southern suburbs of
Cape TownCape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
in
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and is known for its large thatched houses. The suburb is primarily residential and is often praised for its peacefulness and abundance of
treeA tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
s. Pinelands is one of the few areas in Cape Town in which sale of
alcoholIn chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
to the public is prohibited, but some clubs have private liquor licenses. It is a popular place for
senior citizenSenior citizen is a common polite designation for an elderly person in both UK and US English, and it implies or means that the person is retired. This in turn implies or in fact means that the person is over the retirement age, which varies according to country. Synonyms include pensioner in UK...
s to retire to. While there are several
retirement homeA retirement home is a multi-residence housing facility intended for senior citizens. Typically each person or couple in the home has an apartment-style room or suite of rooms. Additional facilities are provided within the building, including facilities for meals, gathering, recreation, and some...
s in the suburb, younger people are increasingly moving in.
The main road is called Forest Drive and the suburb contains two small shopping centres, namely Howard Centre (named after
Ebenezer HowardSir Ebenezer Howard is known for his publication Garden Cities of To-morrow , the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in the founding of the garden city movement, that realized several Garden Cities in Great Britain at the...
who led the garden city movement) and Central Square. Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches are located near to Central Square, while
BaptistBaptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
,
Church of England in South AfricaThe Church of England in South Africa was constituted in 1938 as a federation of churches. It is an Anglican church but it is not a member of the Anglican Communion. However, it relates closely to the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia, to which it is similar in that it sees itself...
and
CatholicThe word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
churches are located elsewhere in the suburb. Pinelands is served by two Metrorail railway stations: Pinelands station on the western edge of the suburb and
Mutual stationMutual railway station is a Metrorail commuter rail station located between the suburbs of Maitland and Pinelands in Cape Town, South Africa. It is situated next to the South African headquarters of the Old Mutual, from which it takes its name...
on the northern edge. The suburb is bisected from the north east to the south west by the
Elsieskraal RiverThe Elsieskraal River is a small river that flows through the Cape Town metropolitan area, in South Africa. It rises in the Tygerberg Hills and flows in a generally south westerly direction to its confluence with the Black River just south of Pinelands. Much of the course of the Elsieskraal River...
, which has flowed through a large concrete drainage canal since the 1960s.
The postcodes for Pinelands are 7405 for street addresses and 7430 for
post office boxA post-office box or Post Office box is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office station....
es. The telephone exchange codes for Pinelands are predominantly 531 and 532 (within the 021 dialling code for Cape Town).
History
The layout of Pinelands is based on the revolutionary town planning ideas of Sir Ebenezer Howard, and was the first attempt at a town-planned area in South Africa. Pinelands was originally a
Victorian eraThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
farm named Uitvlugt that had thousands of
pine treesPines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...
planted in it, and was later deemed an economic failure by the Department of Forestry. The land was then granted to "The Garden Cities Trust" and the founding
DeedA deed is any legal instrument in writing which passes, or affirms or confirms something which passes, an interest, right, or property and that is signed, attested, delivered, and in some jurisdictions sealed...
of Trust was signed in 1919. One of the first members of the trust, Richard Stuttaford (head of the department store
Stuttafords), made a
£In 1825, an imperial order-in-council made sterling coinage legal tender in all the British colonies. At that time, the only British colony in Southern Africa was the Cape of Good Hope Colony. As time went on, the British pound sterling and its associated subsidiary coinage became the currency of...
10,000 gift donation to serve as capital, and a loan of £15,000 from the government was invested in Pinelands. The trust brought in an overseas expert, Albert John Thompson, in 1920 to design the area.
The first (thatched) house in Pinelands to be occupied is 3 Mead Way and was built in February 1922. The house and entire street, including The Mead were declared a
national monumentNational heritage sites in South Africa are structures or defined areas of land declared to be of historic or cultural importance and granted certain legal protections...
in 1983. The original township area is currently a proposed heritage area. Pinelands converted to a
municipalityA municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
in 1948 and in 1996 merged into the
City of Cape TownThe City of Cape Town is the metropolitan municipality which governs the city of Cape Town, South Africa and its suburbs and exurbs. As of 2007, it had a population of 3,497,097....
metropolitan municipalityA metropolitan municipality is a type of municipality established in some countries to serve a metropolitan area.-Canada:In generic terms, and in practical application within Canada, a metropolitan municipality is an urban local government; or at least a suburban government flanked by urban and/or...
. The old Pinelands Town Council offices now accommodate the Pinelands Subcouncil.
Demographics
According to the
2001 CensusThe South African National Census of 2001 is the most recent national census of South Africa.The census was undertaken by Statistics South Africa and undertook to enumerate every person present in South Africa on the census night, 9–10 October 2001. The enumeration primarily took place from 10 to...
, the population of Pinelands was 10,618. The following tables show various demographic data about Pinelands from that census.
Gender
| Gender |
Population |
% |
| Female |
5 848 |
55.08% |
| Male |
4 770 |
44.92% |
Ethnic Group
| Group |
Population |
% |
Black AfricanThe term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
|
659 |
6.21% |
ColouredIn the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured refers to an heterogenous ethnic group who possess ancestry from Europe, various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa, West Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaya, India, Mozambique,...
|
827 |
7.79% |
| Indian Indian South Africans are people of Indian descent living in South Africa and mostly live in and around the city of Durban, making it 'the largest 'Indian' city outside India'. Most Indians in South Africa are descendents of migrants from colonial India during late 19th-century through early...
/AsianThe majority of the Asian South African population is Indian in origin, most of them descended from indentured workers transported to work in the 19th century on the sugar plantations of the eastern coastal area, then known as Natal. They are largely English speaking, although many also retain the...
|
264 |
2.49% |
| White White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
|
8 868 |
83.52% |
Home Language
| Language |
Population |
% |
| English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
|
9 305 |
87.63% |
| Afrikaans |
669 |
6.30% |
XhosaXhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...
|
346 |
3.26% |
| Other African languages |
156 |
1.47% |
| Other languages |
142 |
1.34% |
Age
| Range |
Population |
% |
| 0–5 |
567 |
5.34% |
| 6–12 |
923 |
8.69% |
| 13–17 |
849 |
8.00% |
| 18–34 |
2 196 |
20.68% |
| 35–54 |
2 993 |
28.19% |
| 55–64 |
1 019 |
9.60% |
| 65+ |
2 071 |
19.50% |
Politics
Pinelands is part of ward 53 of the
City of Cape TownThe City of Cape Town is the metropolitan municipality which governs the city of Cape Town, South Africa and its suburbs and exurbs. As of 2007, it had a population of 3,497,097....
. The ward also includes Maitland Garden Village, Thornton, Epping Industria, Ndabeni and parts of
LangaLanga is a suburb found in Cape Town, South Africa. It was established in 1927 interms of the 1923 Urban Areas Act. Similar to Nyanga, Langa is one of the many areas in South Africa that were designated for Black Africans before the apartheid era. It is the oldest of such suburbs in Cape Town and...
, Mowbray and Observatory; the current ward councillor is Brian Watkyns of the
Democratic Alliance. He has represented the area for 28 years and is also the Chairperson of the Pinelands Subcouncil. Of the six voting districts in this ward, three of them cover Pinelands: the voting stations are at the Pinelands Town Hall, Pinelands High School, and Pinehurst Primary School. Generally, the majority of voters (over 90%) in the Pinelands area of the Ward, vote for the Democratic Alliance.
The following tables show the sum of the votes cast in the three Pinelands voting districts at the most recent national, provincial and local elections.
National Election (2009)South Africa held national and provincial elections to elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each province on 22 April 2009....
|
Provincial Election (2009)South Africa held national and provincial elections to elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each province on 22 April 2009....
|
Local Election (2006)Municipal elections were held in South Africa on 1 March 2006, to elect members to the local governing councils in the municipalities of South Africa...
Proportional Representation vote
|
Local Election (2006)
Ward vote
| Candidate |
Votes |
% |
|
4200 |
85.1% |
|
317 |
6.4% |
|
197 |
4.0% |
|
187 |
3.8% |
| Other candidates |
37 |
0.7% |
| Total |
4938 |
100% |
|
Road names
Many of the road names in Pinelands have originated from local history or from places in England. One such road is named Uitvlugt (original Dutch) after the historical farm of the same name that covered what is now Pinelands. There are also roads are named
LetchworthLetchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The town's name is taken from one of the three villages it surrounded - all of which featured in the Domesday Book. The land used was first purchased by Quakers who had intended to farm the...
and
WelwynWelwyn is a village and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The parish also includes the villages of Digswell and Oaklands. It is sometimes called Old Welwyn to distinguish it from the newer settlement of Welwyn Garden City, about a mile to the south.-History:Situated in the valley of the...
after the first two garden cities in England. Other roads in Pinelands are named after places in the
Lake DistrictThe Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
in England, the Royal Family and well known farms as well as the names of
birdBirds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s,
treeA tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
s and
flowerA flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...
s.
Schools
In Pinelands there are three public primary schools, each of which is commonly known in the community by a colour: Pinelands Primary School ("The Blue School"), Pinelands North Primary School ("The Red School") and Pinehurst Primary School ("The Green School"). Pinelands High School is a public high school, centrally located in the suburb.
Cannons Creek Independent SchoolCannons Creek Independent School, situated in Pinelands, Cape Town, South Africa was founded in January 1997 by Ms Carol Barhouch together with four teachers, Mrs Hazelmay Duncan, Kevin Wroth, Nicola du Plooy and Lesley Jacobson as a Primary co-educational English speaking Christian School...
is a private combined primary and high school. There are three private pre-primaries in Pinelands: Meerendal Pre-Primary, La Gratitude Pre-Primary and Old Mutual for their employees. The high school campus of Vista Nova (a school for children with cerebral palsy and other special needs) is located in the suburb. The Pinelands Campus of the College of Cape Town while located in Maitland is on the northern edge of Pinelands and draws students from all over Cape Town.
Sports
Pinelands has sporting facilities including
tennisTennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
and lawn bowling clubs. Other sports include the cricket and
hockeyField Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...
clubs situated at The Oval sports grounds situated on St. Stephens Road just off Forest Drive. Pinelands hockey club was founded in 1937 and is currently one of the largest clubs in the country fielding 12 men’s teams and 7 ladies teams in the Western Province Hockey Union league. Both the men’s and ladies first teams play in the Grand Challenge league with the mens team having won the title for the first time in 2006. In 2008 Pinelands Hockey Club produced three Olympians - Marvin Bam, Paul Blake and Austin Smith. Austin Smith was made the South African Men's Captain, having first played hockey for the Red School and the Pinelands High School.
External links