District Six Museum

Photo courtesy Damien du Toit

District Six Museum revives the history of a vibrant community that was removed to the city’s periphery under racial laws.

The District Six Museum recalls the history of a community that was forcibly removed in the apartheid era. In 1966 the National Party government declared District Six a “white group area” and moved thousands of residents (mostly coloured and black people) to the Cape Flats, where they had few facilities or means of making a living. All buildings except religious ones were demolished.

Nowadays, former residents and their descendants are rebuilding their memories and cultural heritage.

According to the museum, District Six, close to the city and port, was originally “a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants”. Black people were moved out in 1901. In the mid-1980s there were government plans to house coloured Cabinet ministers in the area. A group called Hands Off District Six formed to oppose attempts to redevelop the area without their involvement and, soon after that, political developments in the country as a whole changed the course of urban history.

The 170-year-old museum building in Buitenkant Street was formerly the Methodist Mission Church. It contains a permanent multimedia exhibition called Digging Deeper, which includes narrated life histories of District Six residents.

Flickr Images

An automatic feed of all Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr using the text “ District Six Museum ”.