District Six Museum

In front of you is a former Methodist church. From outside it looks modest, but inside it holds the memory of a neighbourhood that no longer exists. Behind you, rising up the hill, lay District Six.

1An open-door neighbourhood

The name comes from its number as a municipal district. After slavery was abolished in the 1830s, freed slaves settled here, along with artisans, fishermen, traders, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Cape Muslim families and Xhosa workers. By the mid-20th century it was poor, noisy and mixed, crammed with jazz, mosques, churches, cinemas and corner shops.

211 February 1966

On that day the apartheid government declared the area ‘white’ under the Group Areas Act. Removals began in 1968 and by the early 1980s more than 60,000 people had been moved out to the Cape Flats, some 25 kilometres away. The houses were bulldozed. Only the places of worship were left standing.

“In remembering we do not want to recreate District Six but to work with its memory.” The museum's guiding words.

The museum opened on 10 December 1994, a few months after the first democratic elections. Inside, the floor is covered by a huge map of the district on which former residents have written by hand where their homes once stood. The original street signs hang there too: according to one of the versions told, a council worker ordered to dump them in the sea hid them at home for years.

3What to look for

• The facade of the old church, one of the few buildings to survive.
• The posters in the windows, often announcing events with former residents.
• The empty slope you will see as you climb east: that is the old neighbourhood.