Description

Essentials about the District Six Museum in brief

Most tourists turn their back on the District Six Museum when visiting Cape Town. However, if you are interested in the personal fates of Cape Town’s non-white population during the apartheid era, a visit to this small but impressive museum is highly recommended.

The history of District Six

The District Six Museum tells the story of the disenfranchisement, robbery and displacement of an entire district. In 1867, the sixth district of Cape Town, District Six, located at the foot of Devil’s Peak, was founded as a residential area for freed slaves, workers and immigrants. It was a colorfully mixed neighborhood in which a wide variety of races and population groups such as Xhosa, Coloured, Cape Malay, Indian and Afrikaans lived next door to each other. As part of the increasing racial segregation based on the apartheid laws, the government declared the District Six area as a “White Group Area” in 1966. From that point on, the land was reserved exclusively for the white population.

In the two decades following the enactment of the law, horrific scenes played out. Some 60,000 District Six residents were forced to leave their neighborhood and relocate to the Cape Flats outside Cape Town. Bulldozers rolled in and leveled the expropriated houses. Only the churches were spared by the apartheid regime. Many residents lost all their belongings during the forced relocations.

The exhibition at the District Six Museum

In order to give these people a voice and to remember the injustices that occurred, the District Six Museum was opened after the end of apartheid in 1994. It is an irony of history that the museum is located in the former Buitenkant Street Church, which was spared when the district was demolished. The museum displays old photographs of District Six residents, old street signs are hung on a column, and rooms from former homes have been recreated in detail. On litt barrel columns one reads the harrowing newspaper accounts. The pictures of the piles of rubble, the removed belongings and the desperate residents make the whole horror of the events of that time visible.

In the center of the museum there is also a very special map, measuring about four by six meters: all the former streets and houses of District Six are marked on it, and those people who decided to return after the end of the apartheid regime have their old homes marked. Incidentally, the museum staff are mostly former residents of District Six. Their stories bring this dark part of South African history back to life.

Website

districtsix.co.za

Opening hours

Admission fees

Adults: R40 (R55 with guided tour)

Students: R15 (R5 for South African citizens)

Address

Getting there

By public transport:

Bus line 103: Stop Lower Buitenkant

By car:

The nearest car park is the 90 Darling St Parking.