Streets, skollies and coons in district six : on narratives and identity related to an area of forced removal in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

In post-apartheid South Africa there has been an ongoing process of renegotiating history since the abolishment of the white minority rule. South Africans are coming to terms with who they were, are and are becoming. As a part of the nation-building project the Truth and Reconciliation Commission facilitated the narration of the gross violations of apartheid. Hence, former silenced voices could present their versions of the past. Critics, however, have called for a more positive shared history for the rainbow nation to build on. In this thesis I focus on another set of memories - the memories of District Six. The multicultural urban area of inner city Cape Town was destroyed during apartheid and the residents were forcibly removed as a result of the Group Areas Act of 1966. Today the residents have the possibility to return following the land restitution process, and District Six has come to national fame as a symbol of hope. I look into the narratives of the former residents as they are presented on various arenas. In narrating their lives people are positioning themselves in history and in the same time negotiating identity. My focal point of study has been the District Six Museum, where the different representations of the past, as told by the former residents, have been organized to make up a pattern of “district sixness”. In scrutinizing these narratives I show that the stories are not merely nostalgic accounts of the past, but in them are also aspects of diaspora thinking, contestation of history, identity making, a critique of society today, and finally a vision for the future. Treating the human mind as having common underlying properties (Lévi- Strauss 1966) makes it possible to say that these narratives can have resonance with other South Africans that were victims of apartheid.