Strandfontein is a seaside resort 8 km east of

Muizenberg Muizenberg ( , Dutch for "mice mountain") is a beach-side town in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is situated where the shore of the Cape Peninsula curves round to the east on the False Bay coast. It is considered to be the main surfing spo ...

and just west of Michells Plain, on the northern shore of

False Bay False Bay (Afrikaans ''Valsbaai'') is a body of water in the Atlantic Ocean between the mountainous Cape Peninsula and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the extreme south-west of South Africa. The mouth of the bay faces south and is demarcat ...

in the

City of Cape Town The City of Cape Town ( af, Stad Kaapstad; xh, IsiXeko saseKapa) is the metropolitan municipality which governs the city of Cape Town, South Africa and its suburbs and exurbs. As of the 2011 census, it had a population of 3,740,026. The remot ...

municipality in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. It was laid out in 1962. The name is Afrikaans for ‘beach fountain’.

9 miles Surfing Club

During the

Apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

, only white surfers were allowed to use

beach, the colored surfers were chased off the beach. They then had to walk nine miles from there to Strandfontein Pavilion where they could enjoy surfing and where they started the 9 Miles Surfing Club Project.

Homeless camp during COVID-19 Lockdown

The beach town is best known as the location of the camp where the

interned homeless people for over a month during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

lockdown. It has been controversial because of claims that the City forced people into these camps and because of the lack of physical distancing and the failure of the camp to address the basic needs of people held at the camp. Its existence has also been heavily criticised by independent monitors linked to the South African Human Rights Commission.

References

{{Cape Town, communities Suburbs of Cape Town