ABSTRACT
This chapter offers sets of insights into popular politics in Hout Bay. First, the importance of environmental issues to the vision for Hout Bay held by many residents of the Valley. Second, the struggle over the Toll Road foregrounded divergent and racialised conceptions of belonging in Hout Bay. The chapter affirms the importance of green issues to the conceptions of being and belonging of white and wealthy residents of Hout Bay. The dramatic and somewhat surreal events were the climax of protest against the tolling of Chapman's Peak Road in Hout Bay between 2001 and 2012. Built by press-ganged convicts from 1915 to 1922, long before the era of environmental impact assessments, Chapman's Peak Drive is famous for its beauty and infamous for rockslides and wild fires, many of which have resulted in the loss of human life. Chapman's Peak Drive was formally declared a toll road on 30 September 2002.
