Day 11 – District Six: A Survivor’s Account & Museum

The eleventh day of our tour was perhaps our busiest (as you will see from the length and number of entries that follow).  Each of the day’s three events provided different, but powerful experiences and gave me even more to think about as I tried to make sense of all that I experienced on this unbelievable tour. 

We began our morning with a ten minute drive toward the Cape Town harbor.  It looked like we were heading straight for the business district, but Ben, our all-knowing driver, pulled to the side of the main road, where a long street curved off into the distance.  It wasn’t a street that took any kind of traffic, as a large cement barrier was placed across the opening of the road:

Ben stopped the van, got out and waited for us to follow him.  There wasn’t much talking as we walked with Ben to the barrier.  He turned and said “If you look off to the right, about the point of perhaps the fourth light pole - that used to be my home.”  

Ben Jattiem explaining the history of District Six

With that, Ben began a very detailed history of this area.  We were standing in what use to be called the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town, or District Six.  Originally a mixed community of working class families, the Apartheid government declared it a Whites-Only area and, in 1966, began ‘relocating’ families to location far away from this developed area. Looking just behind this road, the view was stunning, with a large rock formation only a few hundred yards away.  It’s not hard to understand why whites were so desirous of this location: 

Ben’s family was part of more than 60,000 people who were ultimately forced out of District Six.  As Ben explained, in the beginning of the relocation, families were offered money for their homes or a home in the relocation area.  The new homes were sub-standard and the money offered was so little that you could not get a decent place to live anywhere in the vicinity.  In Ben’s case, his family was relocated about twenty miles away – and in the middle of the school year.  Rather than enroll in a new school for half a year, Ben traveled the twenty miles each way every day to finish out the year in his current school.  

Ben went on to tell us how there were different phases of this relocation effort.  In the early days, families were given a lot of advanced notice that their homes were designated for relocation.  They had time to pack their belongings and prepare themselves for the ‘move’.  As time went on, whites became frustrated with the slow rate of relocation.  The ‘advanced notice’ became shorter and shorter.  In some instances, families were given only days notice before a bulldozer would appear and begin tearing down their home.  More construction crews were hired to speed up this process, but it was still not fast enough for the government.  Ben related a story of one man who went to work in the morning and came home at the end of the day to see his house being torn down.  Orders were given to ‘get rid of these homes’ and little was done to respect the rights of the homeowners.   As homes were being destroyed at a faster and faster rate, a new problem arose:  disposing of the growing mass of rubble.  Ben told us that some work crews were given orders to just ‘dump the stuff in the sea’, so they did.  To this day, he told us quietly, there are long-time residents from this area who have never been to the beautiful Cape Town harbor – and refuse to go - because they feel like it was built on top of their homes.

There wasn’t much we said (how could you?) after Ben finished such a personal story.   We got back in the van and made our way to the District Six Museum.  I made a comment that it was going to be very interesting to see how the ‘relocation’ was portrayed in the museum and wondered out loud how things were going to be ‘spun’.  I was told that this museum wasn’t created by the government to lessen the severity of their acts, but to memorialize the families and culture of the former District Six residents.  In fact, the mission statement on the Museum website begins by stating how it “seeks to serve the interests of the victims of the various forms of forced removals that occurred in District Six, the larger city of Cape Town and in other parts of South Africa.”  When we arrived at the Museum, it only took a second to see this was not a typical ‘museum’.  First, the central space was filled with artifacts that brought the original feel of the District Six community back to life.   A large display featured over seventy of the original street signs from the areas that were destroyed: 

At the base of this towering exhibit was a large mound of earth that was somehow preserved from the bulldozed area: 

The second purpose of this Museum (again, from its mission statement) says “The Museum seeks to place itself at the heart of the process of reconstruction of District Six and Cape Town through working with the memories and experiences of dispossessed people. It offers itself as a center for former residents of District Six and others to recover, explore and critically engage with the memories and understandings of their District Six and apartheid pasts, for the purpose of remaking the city of Cape Town.”  Therefore, the Museum isn’t just a place for residents to vent their pain and anger, it seeks to be a part of a healing process.  This intent is clearly evident in the main display room as well. Just to the left of the street sign display was an immense tapestry, called the Memory Cloth, created as a place for District Six survivors to record their thoughts and feelings.  My composite photo is not that clear (sorry!), but I include it here so you can understand the sheer size of this powerful object: 

According to the Museum website, this cloth is almost 1000 feet long.   A sign close by the Memory Cloth explains that, as time went on, some of the writing started to fade.  The Museum got volunteers to use thread and stitch over all the messages, thereby preserving the words for years to come.  

Just one of perhaps thousands of messages!  

As I stood there, taking this all in, I did not notice Ben had come into the Museum with us.  Before he left, he pointed out a large photo mounted on a rotating post.  On one side was a picture of District Six before the relocation effort.  When you pushed the photo, it rotated around, showing a picture of the same area after the relocation.  Ben quietly told me that this photo included the area where we had just been and that his home was visible in the ‘Before’ image: 

District Six before relocation

(… and after)

As I walked around and observed other areas of the Museum, I could see how the majority of the displays and exhibits were about the residents and their memories.  Whole rooms were recreated from residents’ memories, and the small, but memorable parts of everyday life, like a hopscotch square, were included:  

There were also testimonials by former residents.  I found the one below was particularly moving.  It was from Roderick Sauls, now a well-known artist: 

This reads:

A Personal Memory 1999 Roderick K. Sauls 

I was born in District Six in 1954 and my family was forcibly removed to the township, Bonteheuwel, when I was about seven years old.  I have many memories of the place itself, some vague though tantalizing, others more vivid.  I have a lasting legacy:  the objects, artefacts [sic] and oral histories of relatives, ex-residents and friends at home.

This exhibit explores what memory means to me and also to those who experienced nostalgia and loss within our country.  In my determination to remember I am constantly reminded of Milan Kundera’s famous dictum from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

The objective of this exhibit is to restore my lost identity.  My desire is to assert my pride in my own identity, my African heritage, my culture and memories.

The collection of exhibits, images and art was really so well done.  It made you realize just how much was ripped away from these people – and for no logical reasons.  These residents weren’t criminals, they weren’t terrorists – they were simply ‘not white’. 

If you want to learn more about the Museum and the various exhibits, I would suggest their outstanding website.  Among the many pages, there is also a very detailed timeline of events that will help to put things into perspective.