When the Cato Manor Writers trail was originally conceived, we thought it would be similar in structure and scope to the previously published Grey Street Writers trail. In some ways, it was. Both trails deal with a number of writers linked to a specific area. Both trails also provide a historical context of their respective areas, which serves to illustrate why writers living there produced a certain type of literature.
While both areas were hotly contested sites of political struggle and ‘thorns’ in the side of white, Apartheid Durban, it was Cato Manor that fell victim to the Group Areas Act and was razed to the ground. What this means for the development of a literary trail (or for that matter any historical or cultural trail) is that many of the buildings that the writers lived in or wrote about no longer exist. The Grey Street Writers trail had very specific stops on the trail, such as the Juma Mosque, which exist as recognisable cultural landmarks and feature as part of the literary landscape of Aziz Hassim’s novel The Lotus People, as well as in other literary works on the trail.
Cato Manor, currently undergoing massive re-development driven by the Area-based Management project, was more difficult to 'map'. Hardly any buildings remained to cross-reference with the literature. The natural features of the area, in particular the Umkumbaan river that runs through the centre of the settlement, still exist and provide some points of reference for the trail. For the most part, however, this is a trail based on association and a constructed, imagined geography of Cato Manor. There are no direct connections between place and literature, unlike in the Grey Street Writers trail, and the tourist will need to rely heavily on the guide (and their own imagination) to picture the places and culture that influenced the writers to sit down and record their experiences.
Writers on the trial include Ronnie Govender, Lewis Nkosi, Gladman Ngubo, Kessie Govender, Mi S'dumo Hlatshwayo and Kenneth Bhengu.
