Old District Six sees the light again at last

Work on the final phases of the District Six restitution project has begun.

The national department of agriculture, land reform and rural development is having ground cleared and rubble removed, as mandated by the courts.

The remains of long-buried houses and streets have been uncovered by the site preparations. Mandy Sanger, education manager at the District Six Museum, said it was a shock to see them.

District Six was the site of some of the first racially motivated forced removals in the Cape, when there was an outbreak of plague at the turn of the 20th century.

According to Public Health and Society in Cape Town, 1880-1910, Elizabeth Boudina van Heyningen’s 1989 doctoral thesis, blacks were scapegoated by the local press and politicians as spreaders of disease.

The plague most likely entered South Africa via British warships, which were ferrying troops and supplies to the South African War. District Six, near the docks, was particularly affected.

Local authorities used the plague as an opportunity to reshape the city. They began by removing black residents from Horstley Street in District Six to Uitvlugt, where plague hospitals had been set up. Uitvlugt would later expand to become the “location” of Ndabeni.

During the next century, the city would be reshaped, often by racial diktat. Under the Group Areas Act, in 1966, District Six was declared a whites-only area.

Horstley Street, buried by apartheid bulldozers almost half a century ago, is now exposed to daylight once more. And the boiler room of the old Tafelberg Hotel, off what used to be called Constitution Street, can be entered again – if only through a narrow gap in the earth.

The department of agriculture, land reform and rural development plans to restore District Six within three years. – GroundUp