District Six

This article deals with the suburb called District Six; for an album by Amphibious Assault see District Six (album)

District Six is the name of a former neighborhood of Cape Town, South Africa, best known for the forced removal of its inhabitants during the 1970s. It was named in 1867 as the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town, but by the turn of the century it was already a lively community made up of freed slaves, artisans, merchants and other immigrants, as well as many Malay people brought to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company during its administration of the Cape Colony. It was home to almost a 10th of the city of Cape Town's population.

During the earlier part of the apartheid era, District Six was a remarkably multicultural district, with a heavy concentration of the people known in South Africa as coloured, including a substantial Cape Malay community, as well as other black, white and Asian people of various backgrounds. Many former District Six residents see this cosmopolitanism as one of the main reasons that it became a target for destruction. The removals were also doubtlessly motivated by the district's beautiful views of the ocean and of Cape Town, and, as the city grew larger, its proximity to the Cape Town city center; all of these factors made it attractive for real estate development aimed at white residents.

On 11 February 1966, the apartheid-era government declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act, with removals starting in 1968. By 1982, more than 60 000 people had been relocated to the comparatively bleak Cape Flats some 25 kilometers away, and the old houses bulldozed. The only buildings left standing were places of worship. International and local pressure made redevelopment difficult for the government, however. The Cape Technikon (a technical college) was built on part of the former District Six and the area was renamed Zonnebloem, but apart from this the area was left as a wasteland until relatively recently.

Return

By 2003 work had started on the first new buildings — 24 houses that will belong to residents over 80 years old. On 11 February 2004, exactly 38 years after being rezoned by the government, former president Nelson Mandela handed the keys to the first returning residents, Ebrahim Murat (87) and Dan Ndzabela (82). About 4 000 families are scheduled to return over the next three years.

Museum

In 1989 the District Six Museum Foundation was established, and in 1994 the District Six Museum came into being. It serves as a remembrance to the events of the apartheid era as well as the culture and history of the area before the removals. The ground floor is covered by a large street map of District Six, with handwritten notes from former residents indicating where their homes had been; other features of the museum include street signs from the old district, displays of the histories and lives of District Six families, and historical explanations of the life of the District and its destruction. In addition to its function as a museum it also serves as a memorial to a decimated community, and a meeting place and community center for Cape Town residents who identify with its history.

Arts

With his short novel "A Walk in the Night" (1962) the well-known Capetonian journalist and writer Alex La Guma [1] gave District Six a place in literature. Richard Rive wrote a highly-acclaimed novel called Buckingham Palace, District Six, which chronicles the lives of a community before and during the removals. This book has also been adapted into a successful theatre production which toured South Africa.

District Six also contributed mightily to the distinguished history of South African jazz: Basil Coetzee, known for his song "District Six", was born there and lived there until its destruction; Abdullah Ibrahim lived nearby and was a frequent visitor to the area, as were many other jazz musicians. Ibrahim described it to the UK's Guardian newspaper as a "fantastic city within a city...", explaining, "[W]here you felt the fist of apartheid it was the valve to release some of that pressure. In the late 50s and 60s, when the regime clamped down, it was still a place where people could mix freely. It attracted musicians, writers, politicians at the forefront of the struggle. We played and everybody would be there." [2]

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