District Six is often described as a scar in the heart of the Mother City. A once-vibrant community where 60,000 people lived is still mostly empty, underdeveloped land. The vast emptiness is noticeable as you travel into Cape Town’s city centre.
For people like Dianne Voges, who was forcibly removed from the suburb when she was 20, it is simply home. “My heart yearns to go back,” she tells the FM. “But I doubt we are ever going to go back.”
Voges and her family were among the thousands of people removed after the apartheid government declared District Six a white area in 1966. By the late 1970s, most residents had been forcibly moved to different parts of the Cape Flats, their homes razed.
Now 65, she remembers the day her family left. “It was the saddest day of my life. We moved to Belhar [a northern suburb]. There was no transport. We had to walk through the bush in the rain,” she says. “[In District Six], when I looked to one side, I could see the docks; when I looked to the other, I could see Table Mountain. When we moved to Belhar, it was terrible.”
It was, she says, “a dark period in all of our lives”.
The dawn of democracy offered a glimmer of hope. Under the Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, those dispossessed during apartheid were given the opportunity to lodge claims either for the return of their land or for financial compensation. The initial deadline was December 31 1998 (it was reopened between 2014 and 2016). In that initial round, more than 2,600 District Six families lodged claims, with nearly 1,500 opting for financial compensation.
To cater for the more than 1,000 seeking return, the government launched a 42ha District Six redevelopment project, building homes for claimants. However, only 247 homes have been handed over so far; 954 still have to be built.
Voges’s mother lodged the family’s claim before the 1998 deadline. After she died, Voges took over the claim; she is doubtful she will return in her lifetime.
In 2022, the department of land reform & rural development handed over 108 homes as part of phase 3 of the project, a court-mandated progress report showed last month. Back then David Mabuza, who was deputy president at the time, said another 954 homes would be finished by 2025. But construction of phase 4 (174 units), phase 5 (184 units) and phase 6 (153 units) has yet to begin.
The department has provided the budget commitment to proceed with the next phase, says spokesperson Linda Page. It is also in the advanced stage of completing a memorandum of agreement with the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to act as an implementation agent. The intention is for the DBSA to pursue an accelerated construction programme for the next two phases, according to the court report.
The next three phases should be completed by December 2028, according to the department. More phases are planned, though Page raises doubts that the entire redevelopment will be completed by the 2028 deadline.
Restitution for ‘the next generation’
Zahrah Nordien’s family count themselves among the lucky ones. Her mother was thrilled to finally move back to District Six — one of the 247 families to return to the historic suburb. Nordien now lives in the house alone after her mother died.
Nordien is not happy with the delays to the project. She tells the FM of a 100-year-old woman who had said she would “be happy and die peacefully” if she could move back to District Six. She died without ever returning.
“If it’s going to be like this, a slow process, it [restitution] will only be for the next generation,” she says.
Aside from being a land claimant, Nordien also chairs the District Six Working Committee. In November 2018, her organisation won an order in the land claims court that ruled the government had failed to comply with its constitutional duty of restitution in District Six.
The court ordered the minister to come up with a plan to finish the project, with progress reports to be submitted every three months. But with phase 4 still languishing, it’s questionable whether implementation has sped up.
Because development is taking so long, communities are doing their best to keep the memories and culture of the area alive. The working committee, along with four other groups, recently hosted a Heritage Day celebration featuring traditional music and the Kaapse Klopse (minstrel carnival). Families were encouraged to come and share their memories.
Among them was Kiemie Behardien, whose family were given a choice of Mitchells Plain or Grassy Park when they were evicted from District Six. His immediate family opted for Grassy Park, but other relatives ended up in Mitchells Plain.
His brother-in-law, Yazeed Bohardien, is one of those who have moved back to District Six, but Behardien himself remains in Grassy Park. Two of his siblings have died while waiting to return.
‘Dignity eroded’
It’s not that District Six has completely disappeared off the screen. In his state of the nation address in February, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that R500m would be made available for the next phase of redevelopment.
And, in response to a question in parliament in July, rural development & land reform minister Mzwanele Nyhontso said the court plan requires about R2.4bn for construction. “The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights has allocated R684m for District Six … The additional funding must be sourced from the state, including other sector departments, the province and the city,” he said.
The department is engaging with the National Treasury for additional funding, he added. So “the administrative processes to release the funding are under way”.
But, he pointed out, planning for development includes heritage, environmental impact and water assessments, land use management, building plans, roads and stormwater approvals and electrical approvals. “These approvals require resources and time to obtain.”
Which is all well and good, but the government has been slow to explain these sorts of complexities to the claimants, says Chrischené Julius, director of the District Six Museum, which has supported claimants through the restitution process.
“We understand it’s a particular kind of discipline that requires a particular kind of language, but there’s almost no attempt to have people engage with that kind of planning framework in a useful way,” she tells the FM.
“There’s a deep issue around transparency … It’s unjust that people have been waiting for such a long period to come back to District Six. People are almost told: ‘Wait in line and we’ll get to you when we get to you.’ There’s no explanation of the different urban planning processes that need to happen.”
Voges agrees. “We don’t know anything,” she says. “They are keeping us in the dark. It’s a sad situation.”
As far as Julius is concerned, for true restitution there needs to be a deeper conversation.
“What does land restitution mean? It can’t just mean a return to the land. There’s a broader sense of people’s dignity having been taken,” she says. “The thing that is heartbreaking about the District Six land restitution process is that it’s almost watching people’s dignity being eroded all over again. You can see they don’t feel the impact of this justice that they’ve been told they’re receiving.”
