Constantia Valley

About 220 slaves worked over a period of 150 years on the land planted with vineyards, fruit and olive trees at the time of Van der Stel.[8] A labour shortage after emancipation indicates that slaves moved away from the farms where they worked, but possibly stayed in the area.[9] From the mid-1800s to the 1960s, Constantia remained a rural area of wine estates in which African and coloured residents constituted the majority. They were farmers, farm workers, domestics and fruit and flower sellers and lived in the areas of Strawberry Lane, Sillery Road, Spaanschemat River Road and Ladies Mile Road.[8] In 1961 Constantia was zoned as a White Group Area under the Group Areas Act.[10] In the late 1960s inhabitants classified as coloured or African were forcibly removed to areas in the Cape Flats like Mitchell's Plain, Manenberg and Lotus River. On Heritage Day 2009, a plaque remembering the Strawberry Lane community was unveiled by Cape Town's mayor Dan Plato.[11]