Khayamnandi: 34. Remembering Cape Town's Forgotten Past: District 6, Slaves and Jews

Very early on Friday, we set out for Cape Town. It’s only about a 40-minute drive, but Jacob had decided to put us up in a hostel for the weekend so that we could spend the whole weekend there without worrying about transport to and from Stellenbosch each morning and evening.

Our first stop was the District 6 Museum. District 6 is an area in Cape Town that was home to the majority of immigrants to the city, from other parts of South Africa as well as other parts of the world. It was one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the whole city, housing many blacks, coloreds, Malaysians, eastern Europeans (especially Jewish people feeling persecution in the interwar years). During Apartheid, city planning and segregation policies designated District 6 a “Net Blankes” (whites only) area. So everyone had to be forcibly removed from the area. People had been living here for generations and had made their families, their lives, their homes here. All of a sudden, they were supposed to pack up and move to a township on the edge of the city. Imagine telling someone who lives in a nice place in Manhattan that they have to be out of their house by 6pm and that they are moving to a crappy neighborhood in Jersey. Now multiply the difference between the two worlds by 1000. I wonder if that comes even close to what these people experienced during the forced removals. The homes were bulldozed ruthlessly because the government feared people would go back to their homes if they were still standing.

Street signs from bulldozed streets of District 6

South Africa: Land of Signs

A poem written by someone who was forcibly removed by the Group Areas Act.

Artwork inside the museum

The District 6 museum, built in an old church, one of the few
remaining structures in the whole area after the demolitions took place.

Signs, signs, signs. They were everywhere. I cannot imagine this place 20 years ago.

The museum was very well done – there was lots of artwork by people who had been displaced. There was a piece of a big canvas, that is in total over a kilometer in length, of people’s signatures and notes, people who were displaced from their homes. All the street signs of the bulldozed streets were hanging on a three-story string. It was a very moving experience.

What remained of District 6 after the removals was just a few churches and mosques; one of the churches had been converted into the museum. Now District 6 is a huge and uncomfortable area of green grass and little rock piles on a hillside in the heart of Cape Town. It’s quiet and empty, a ghostly reminder of a bulldozed neighborhood, homes and lives and families plowed to the ground, shattered and scattered to the townships on the edges of their city.

We walked over to the Slave Lodge, a reminder of yet another gruesome piece of Cape Town’s past. The VOC (Dutch East India Trading Company) had immediately decided when they arrived at the Cape that they would not be able to survive without slaves. So they began importing massive numbers of slaves from Madagascar and Mozambique and Malaysia. The VOC kept all their slaves in one building known as the Slave Lodge. They were literally packed in there each night, chained up in rooms, with no light. The life expectancy of a slave during that time was less than 30 years because of the horrific and inhumane living conditions. The Slave Lodge was a sobering experience. I hear so much about apartheid and the mistreatment and racism of non-whites during those years, and obviously the earlier years too. But one thing that is not talked about that much is slavery. I feel like it's too often forgotten in the history of the Cape. But slavery is what built Cape Town, it's what enabled the Western Cape to thrive. But it's also the ugliest scar on the Cape's history. I just felt myself so frustrated with people and how horrible they can be sometimes as I walked through this dark old building, reading displays of information about the slave trade, transportation, and treatment.

The Slave Lodge

After our tour of the Slave Lodge concluded, we walked over to the South African Jewish Museum. To be perfectly, honest, when I saw it on our schedule for the day, I was confused because it seemed so random. We're in South Africa. Why are we going to a Jewish Museum. However, I soon learned that South Africa, the Western Cape in particular, had become home to many Jewish people. Many Jews, especially during the early decades of the twentieth century had migrated to South Africa, inspired by the gold rush, following the allure and promise of a new and better land, one where they would not be corralled in ghettos, fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe and
Russia.

The Museum itself was housed in an old temple; it was truly beautiful. Jews in South Africa were not really that persecuted for their ethnicity or culture. They mostly moved to District 6 when they first arrived in South Africa and then as they gradually climbed the socioeconomic ladder, moved to other, more affluent neighborhoods of Cape Town. From the earliest days, Jews were allowed in the colony, some came over on the original boats with Jan van Riebeeck in 1652. They were however required to convert to become members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Around 1930, the flow of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe was cut off by the South African government; however, German Jews were still permitted to flee Hitler's tyranny and enter South Africa. During the Apartheid struggle, many Jewish people proved to be friends of the black struggle. All the white people tried during the Rivonia trial were Jewish. The lawyers for Mandela et al. were Jewish. A group that probably is not very often thought of when considering the complex history of this rainbow nation had contributed in a surprisingly great way to the history, development, and character of Cape Town. South Africa is full of hidden surprises.