Last weekend our team, joined by our sister companies, celebrated our yearly office outing. This years theme was “Local is Lekker; slave to the music!”. To kick off the theme our team on Friday morning departed the city centre and headed for Athlone, a suburb of the Cape Flats.

The Cape Flats 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.

This is where our office outing started and where we, after being welcomed with coffee, tea and traditional koesisters, visited some of the memorial sites and learned more about the history of the Cape Flats. After that it was time to learn more about the local culture and that is when we went to visit the Dance for All initiative. the inspiring non profit Dance for All initiative. Dance for All’s Mission is to provide children in historically disadvantaged communities with the opportunity for enjoyment, empowerment and promotion of self esteem through the medium of dance, as well as training professional dancers and developing a unique, indigenous dance company.At the ‘Dance for All’ studios, situated in the heart of Athlone, our team joined a masterclass ‘Dancing with the Staff’ . This was a fun filled and inspiring way of spending the morning together. After this our local guide took us to a local home to enjoy a real Cape Flats treat; a gatsby! This is where we could relax and learn more about local life before we headed up to the West Coast for the second part of our office outing.Would you also like to learn more about the Cape Flats? Experience the living history of South Africa? That is possible!

Have a look at this Koesister Route excursion and contact one of our travel specialists for more information.

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