Campus name change draws the ire of District Six residents ‘CPUT did not consult us’
CAPE Peninsula University of Technology’s (CPUT) renaming of its Cape Town campus after District Six has unleashed the ire of the District Six Museum along with the District Six Working Committee. They have accused the university of not consulting with them about the renaming taking place today.
“There was no dialogue and for us that is an insult to our dignity,” District Six Working Committee chairperson, Shahied Ajam, said. He questioned how former District Six residents would benefit from the renaming of the campus.
CPUT is expected to officially rename the campus in front of invited guests and officials at a ceremony at its administration building this evening.
Ajam said: “The university has gone ahead without any consultation and we are going to ask these questions.”
It was exactly 52 years ago this year when the apartheid government declared District Six as a “whites only” area under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Under the act over 60 000 residents were forcibly removed during the 1960s and early 1970s to the sandy plains of the Cape Flats.
Last September chaos broke out after a section of the St Mark’s Anglican Church was damaged in a fire that was allegedly set by protesting students. Last year four students were suspended from the institution.
“On a very basic level, the acknowledgement of its geographical location is correct. This is a campus located in District Six. However, naming is not a neutral process. Names are accompanied by contexts, and the tacit implication of this renaming is that CPUT has entered into a process of committing the institution to acknowledging its past as a beneficiary of District Six’s destruction,” District Six Museum director Bonita Bennett said.
She said she would have preferred to see the renaming emerging out of that process of deep dialogue, which should have included listening to various voices in the community. “As a museum we have not seen an institutional investment in preserving the legacies of District Six which earns an institution the right to use the name. Transparency, in terms of its future plans for usage of land to which CPUT has title deeds, is not evident and, in the context of restitution, this is an important variable,” she said
CPUT spokesperson Lauren Kansley said: “CPUT has acknowledged that the institution unfairly benefited from the injustices of the past and the renaming of the Cape Town campus is just one step towards a more inclusive working relationship with the displaced District Six community and current residents that have strengthened since 2015.”
Kansley said that, appreciating that memorialisation without the support of District Six stakeholders would be short-sighted, CPUT established a District Six task team that has been working to ensure that the reconciliatory gestures by the university are more than just symbolic.