District Six Museum and Camps Bay

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On Friday, our class took a field trip to the District Six Museum in downtown Cape Town. District Six was a neighborhood in Cape Town during the 1940s-60s that was comprised mostly of immigrants, blacks and coloreds. In 1966, the Nationalist government (who was responsible for apartheid policies) passed the Group Areas Act, which allowed them to relocate blacks and coloreds so that whites could have prime real estate in the country. By the end of the act, blacks and coloreds (90% of the population), were only permitted to live in 13% of the geographical area of the country. District Six was one of the areas that everybody was ousted from, with bulldozers and forced relocations to a place called Cape Flats, about 15 miles away from the center of town, and all the shanties and shacks that are out there, called “townships” are really remnants of the actions of the governments from this time.

The Museum was pretty interesting, definitely set up as more of a shrine of living memory to the residents of District Six than as any sort of educational experience. Everything that I just typed about the relocation and razing of District Six I learned from my class here or from Wikipedia. The main focus of the exhibits at the museum was to preserve the memory of the people that lived there. Since many of them are still alive, a lot of exhibits have actually been written on by former residents, and all the tour guides were also residents. The museum is also housed in a building that used to be a church, so the architecture lends itself to worship and memory. I really enjoyed the Museum, but I felt as though it was not the appropriate place for our program to go if they were simply trying to educate us about what occurred there.

After the Museum, Courtney, Yasmin, Maura and I decided to go to the beach out at Camps Bay. We took a taxi over there, and once again, I was floored by how beautiful this city is. But mostly, I was taken aback by how different the landscape and architecture is over on that side of the mountain. In the city here, where we live, there are a lot of Dutch colonial and older buildings that look more European. However, in Camps Bay, I felt like I was almost on South Beach or on Duvall Street in Key West…very Spanish style buildings, a main drag that follows the ocean, and the beach with huge expanses of a lot of white sand. The sand is REALLY white here, but not as fine as it would be in the Caribbean. The mountains, called the Twelve Apostles, basically drop off right into the sea. The water was VERY cold (obviously, as it’s the winter), but I have a feeling that it’s usually cold since we’re relatively closer to Antarctica than most other places. There were a few surfers, but mostly the beach was deserted. We lay out on the beach for a while, and were bothered by only a few people trying to sell souvenirs, get money for charity, and a bum fight that we witnessed a few yards away. It was just this huge gang of bums, all beating each other senseless, using bricks, stones, and belts, and the police never came. Finally they all got tired of beating each other up, and a few of them went over to the public showers to hose the blood off. I’m sure that that happens in Miami all the time.

We stayed around Camps Bay until sunset, which was really amazing, had a “sundowner”, which is what South Africans call a cocktail that you drink at sunset, and then headed on home. All in all, a great day.

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Photos

District Six Museum
These are all the street signs and a pile of earth left over from District Six.

Camps Bay
Alright so I'm never leaving Africa...

Old Man and his Dog...
with the beach and the cliffs in the background.

Crashing waves
If anybody needs a postcard, just go ahead and print this.

Requisite Indie Pic
This could be my album cover. If I ever had an album.

Sunset over Camps Bay
Perfect ending to a perfect day

Comments

[laura]

i dont think i can say this enough, i LOVE your pictures, and if i did need a postcard, i'd def print that one off. I think the museum sounds neat, esp since people have heard a lot about apartheid... well maybe moreso in the past than now, but whatever. =)

[Matt]

"Blacks" and "coloreds" aren't the preferred nomenclature. They now like to be called "African-Americans."

[mommy]

supreme court ruling
The case you wrote about for law review was decided in favor of the school and not the kid with the banner. Thought you'd like to know, and Matt, AfricanAmericans doesn't apply to south africans, only to the ones in America. They were called blacks and colored in S Africa

[Ada]

bum fight?
Ew. You saw a bum fight? In S. Africa? Strange. Gross too.