The Mendi Memorial, located at the southeast corner of the University of Cape Town’s
soccer fields, is a symbolic reminder of the South African lives lost on the steamship Mendi
in 1917 and of the long-ignored and forgotten history of the South African Native Labour
Corps. It is a reminder of the role played by black South Africans in World War I and of the
links these events have to the Liberation Struggle in South Africa. The University of Cape
Town soccer fields were formerly the Rosebank Showgrounds which were used during
World War I as the national assembly camp and depot for the South African Native Labour
Corps. It was at this camp that all the men enlisted in the corps from all over South Africa
and Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho assembled, were kitted out and received their basic
training, and from which they departed to Cape Town harbour to take ship to France. For
many of the men on the Mendi, this was where they spent their last night on South African
soil.
