A Cape Town community initiative, known as the Know Their Names project, has recorded the names of thousands of Palestinian children killed in Gaza on a 20-metre shroud. The project began over the weekend of 19 and 20 September at Claremont Main Road Mosque, where community members started writing the names of Palestinian children on the cloth. The initiative was organised by Mothers4Gaza and has since expanded to other venues across Cape Town.
Organisers said about 10,778 names had been written on the shroud, covering children up to the age of nine. The first section recorded the names of children under five. The project was intended to remind people that Palestinian children had families, personalities and futures before their deaths. Ayesha Bagus, one of the organisers, said Palestinian mothers love their children in exactly the same way that other mothers love theirs.
The project was inspired in part by writer James Baldwin's words: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.” The organisers said the size of the numbers made it difficult to comprehend the individual losses. According to the Killed in Gaza dataset maintained by Tech for Palestine, 72,835 people known to have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 were included in its named dataset, including 21,637 children.
Gonda Perez, another organiser, said every name represents a child who was known and loved by someone. The shroud cannot hold every name, and it cannot contain the grief of every mother who has lost a child. But it can hold some names, and those names can remind us that behind every number is a human being. The organisers link the campaign to South Africa's apartheid history.
Irene Govender said South Africans understood the consequences of reducing people to categories rather than recognising their humanity. “We saw it during apartheid, when an entire people could be reduced to categories and denied their full humanity,” Govender said. “We will not allow Palestinians to be dehumanised in the same way. Every one of these children had a name, a family and a life that mattered, and writing their names is one small way of refusing to let that humanity be erased.”
The initiative takes place amid continuing international scrutiny of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The organisers also referred to the International Court of Justice's July 2024 advisory opinion concerning Israel's presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its findings regarding Israel's obligations under international law. The organisers said the shroud would be carried through Cape Town on 7 October as an act of remembrance.
The organisers said the shroud would be carried through Cape Town on 7 October as an act of remembrance. Megan Chortiz said the procession was intended to ensure the children were not forgotten. “We will carry this shroud because we refuse to allow these children to disappear into a statistic,” Chortiz said. “We want their families to know that their children have not been forgotten that people here have taken the time to learn their names, and that we mourn the loss of each child whose name we carry.”
Key points
- The Know Their Names project aims to remember Palestinian children killed in Gaza as individuals rather than statistics.
- The project has recorded over 10,778 names of Palestinian children killed in Gaza.
- The shroud will be carried through Cape Town on 7 October as an act of remembrance.
