District Six legend Sharifah Khan celebrates 100 years
DISTRICT Six’s oldest living land claimant, Shariefa Khan, turned 100 yesterday.
Her daughter Nadiema Khan said the family had a photo session yesterday in Wynberg where relatives could have their pictures taken with her mother to treasure as memories.
The family had iftar (breaking of the fast meal) on Saturday followed by a small birthday party, Nadiema Khan said.
“She was so very happy. She laughed and talked. She told the young children stories even we had not heard before,” she said.
Also known as "Mama" or "Aunty Riefa", Shariefa Khan was born in 1921 in Vryburg in North West. Her family came to Cape Town in 1928, and lived in Muizenberg and later Kensington where her father had the first halaal butchery in the area, before she married her husband, Dawood Khan, an Indian migrant living in District Six.
Khan’s parents, Ahmad Khan Deshmukh and Gadija Mallak, were also Indian migrants.
Aunty Riefa has fond memories of living in the Bailey Flats in Hanover Street, close to the Avalon Bioscope. The couple had six children.
She has 17 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren.
She and her husband had the famous Bombay Café, also known as Dout’s Café, at 238 Hanover Street, next door to doctor Shafeeda's surgery.
Her chef husband, nicknamed Dout, made excellent mutton curry, rooti and dhaljies, while former residents still remember her famous samoosas and the falooda which she made in Ramadaan. Until the age of 99, she could still fold more than 1 000 samoosas in a week.
Khan feels pride in the fact that many famous District Six residents were regulars at their café, including the late Taliep Petersen and his father Mogamat Ladien Petersen, a taxi driver in Hanover Street; ballet legend Johaar Mosaval, who practised on the Seven Steps and during his lunchtimes came to buy his teacher’s rooti; the late Judge Esa Moosa; the late District Six Working Committee chairperson Shahied Ajam; and former premier Ebrahim Rasool.
In the spirit of Kanala, or Ubuntu as people say today, the Khans put out five or six tables stacked with treats for the community each Ramadaan. During the 1940s, District Six was a place of religious tolerance and diversity, and all the neighbourhood’s children would observe the breaking of the fast together in the evenings, regardless of their cultural beliefs. The Khan family endured their fair share of tragedy. They lost two daughters – one was killed by a drunk driver in 1959 and another died of leukaemia in 1965. A year later, on the Muslims’ holiest day of the week, a Friday, February 11, 1966, the apartheid regime declared District Six white. Shortly thereafter the family received a letter telling them that they had to move – and packed for Rylands. From 1968 onwards, 74 000 residents were forcibly removed to the Cape Flats. Aunty Riefa said they did not want to move but had no choice. Only the mosques, churches and schools were spared. The rest of District Six was destroyed.
“We cannot forget the pain, anguish, dehumanisation, deprivation and degeneration which the forced removals brought upon us.
“Now in my old age, I still remember the pain of seeing how our homes were bulldozed and the day my husband had to display a sign in the shop window saying it would be closing down,” she said.
“No one will ever understand how painful it is to stand on a patch of waste ground where your house once was. I want to die in District Six – it’s my last wish.“
Khan is waiting to hear if she has made it on to the government’s shortlist for an apartment in Hanover Street as part of Phase Three of the restitution process. Although the process has been slow, she has never given up hope of returning to District Six in her lifetime.
“I always say we were poor but happy in District Six. I don't understand why they had to move us like criminals. The only thing we did wrong was not being white," she said.