THE-WINERY-STORY The siting of The Township Winery in Philippi, on the crossroads of Lansdowne and New Eisleben Roads, plus the market positioning of its products and the design and structure of its buildings are all part of a plan (a spark) to regenerate the area that we call the Cape Flats. Philippi (the original name of the whole Cape Flats) was once the market garden of the Cape Colony and remained a thriving agricultural community until it was wiped away by a stroke of an official’s pen, under the infamous 1963 Group Areas Act, when it became the dumping ground for surplus populations and, as a result, millions of Rands of real estate value and annual household income from the gardens, orchards and vineyards disappeared under bulldozers. Today, there is a new population living on the Cape Flats. Most of these newer township residents have an outlook on their future very similar to those who first settled on the Flats; “Now we are here, what can we do with this? We have nothing, we are far from anywhere, and we have poor transport. We have no income, no resources, no help”.