CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: AROUND TOWN AND DISTRICT SIX

On our second day in Cape Town, we were picked up by a great guide, Ryan with Samsara travel. He drove to the historical downtown area, where we got out to walk around. I really enjoyed the architecture, which looks a bit French and a bit Dutch to me:

The Metropolitan Methodist Church was built in 1880 in the Victorian Gothic style and was a key site for many anti-apartheid events:

The architecture of the Old Town House is "Cape Rococo." This used to be the main city hall but now serves as an art museum for 17th century Dutch masters:

Close up of the birds from the picture above. Wow, I'm glad I don't have to keep that building clean:

That's a lot of pigeons:

The Cape Town City Hall was built in 1905 to replace the Old Town Hall:

The first building where we actually went inside was the District Six Museum. District Six was a low-income, inner-city neighborhood that is famous today because 60,000 of its mostly colored (a term used in Africa to refer to mixed-race individuals) and Cape Malay colored Muslim residents were forcibly removed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s and early 1980s. Everything but the churches was bulldozed. However, vociferous opposition from the evicted residents held back private investments in this prime real estate located so close to the city center and, sadly, most of the area was left empty. It was a useless destruction of not just property, but the lives of thousands.

The floor of the museum's main room is a map of the old neighborhood, and street signs form an obelisk at the back of the room:

A sign inside the lid of this suitcase reads, "Apartheid forcibly evicted 60,000 people from District Six. Most left with little more than a suitcase."

A large sheet is filled with hand-embroidered messages from District Six residents:

A mural at the top of the stairs depicts the happy, energetic life that was demolished with the houses:

A recreation of various rooms in typical homes pulls the visitor right into the lives of former residents:

Recipes embroidered on dish towels tell how to make popular South African dishes:

District Six also had a large population of Cape Malay Muslims, and their life is depicted on this fabric "painting":

Of course, even before the eviction notices began to be posted, apartheid was governing the lives of those living in District Six and everywhere else in South AFrica:

Having been given a view into the lives of the residents, pictures like this were hard to look at:

Between 1990 and 1991, apartheid was gradually dismantled. In the first election with universal suffrage, held in 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa. That same year, the District Six Museum was created, the government started to recognize the claims of the former residents, and plans to rebuild were initiated.

However, it wasn't until ten years later that Mandela, now the former president, handed house keys to the first of the returning residents, 87-year-old and 82-year-old former District Six inhabitants. The plan was to begin with those who were most elderly, and then to work through 1,600 former residents in the next three years.

The area around the museum seems to be a normal, bustling downtown area.  It's hard to know if it was part of the destruction. I would have liked to have walked the streets of the new District Six to see the people and their lives for myself.