District Six Museum

By the time we’d had lunch, it had stopped raining. We made our way across the road to visit the District Six Museum. This museum came into being in 1994. It is housed in a former Methodist church and serves as a remembrance of the once vibrant multi-racial area that existed here before the citizens were forcibly removed from their homes during apartheid in the 1960s and 1970s. On 11 February 1966, it was declared a white area under the Group Areas Act of 1950, and by 1982, the life of the community was over. More than 60,000 people were forcibly removed to barren outlying areas aptly known as the Cape Flats, and their houses in District Six were flattened by bulldozers.

It is called District Six because in 1867 the area became the sixth municipal district of Cape Town.

The museum tells the stories of the individuals and families who lived and worked in District Six. Their lives are remembered through photos, recordings, and tableaux. For me, a highlight of the exhibition was a collection of family recipes embroidered on to cloth so as to be handed down through the generations. We listened to one lady whose family was evicted when she was just sixteen years old. Like thousands of others, she is still fighting to have the land her family home was built on returned to her.

After our museum visit, we walked back to the hotel, getting there just before it rained again. I spent the rest of the afternoon writing my notes and editing photos. We had a similar dinner to yesterday, and then spent the evening watching the rest of After Life.Read more