CoronationPark

Coronation Park was a municipal park and caravan site in Krugersdorp that became home to a largely Afrikaans speaking community living in caravans, Wendy houses, tents and structures they built themselves.

During two weeks in the park, I was confronted by names that felt familiar to me. Coetzee, Dorant, Van Niekerk, Botha. These were, in a sense, my people. I moved between feeling deeply sorry for them and feeling angry at what I saw: dependence on handouts, a sense of waiting, and a language of victimhood that could become a way of life.

The work asks what happens when the resilience and pride often associated with Afrikaner identity meet loss, unemployment and the collapse of a familiar social order. I recognised something of myself in the camp, an inheritance I could neither fully claim nor comfortably reject.