District Six Cultural Landscape: a national heritage site

The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) has sent a letter to affected property owners informing them of SAHRA’s intention to declare District Six Cultural landscape a national heritage site.

According to the letter, “the identified District Six Cultural Landscape constitutes the area bounded by De Waal Drive, Buitenkant Street- the West precinct, cutting into Darling Street, past the Castle of Good Hope, towards Sir Lowry Road along the railway lines including Trafalgar Park, Zonnebloem Nest and the government housing complexes to the East.”

The Statement of Significance reads, “ District Six, the once vibrant multi-cultural residential heart of Cape Town, ripped out by forcing more than 60 000 people from the economic centre and relocating a whole community on the Cape Flats, an area devoid of opportunity located at the periphery of the city. In the same fashion, many communities across South Africa were disenfranchised, dis-empowered and dehumanised. Urban dwellers of colour were relegated to the least favourable areas and their economic ability, social opportunity and lifestyle was considerably reduced. The act of forced removals at the same time caused a dramatic erosion of community as well as altering the city form. Today the physically scarred landscape of District Six serves as a legacy of apartheid and a system of mass destruction. The vacant blotch remains as a result of the phenomenal resistance that equalled the tenacity of the forced removals. District Six, a disfigurement which holds a living heritage in the form of an inherited culture that survived in the townships of Cape Town; an extraordinary memory that was jealously guarded, kept alive and passed on through the arts; and a history of injustices, forced removals, dislocations and a destructive regime.”

The letter continues, “ The significance of District Six, however, is threefold as it tells the story of how people became the victims of their circumstances but, through years of passive resistance and a fervent struggle, became victorious.

1. Firstly, “land was stolen from people who were defenceless, voiceless and disenfranchised in the land of their birth ”1

2. Secondly the resistance and struggle of the people prevented the area of District Six from being redeveloped into a middle-class white area as was envisioned and planned by the apartheid planners. The pen and the word were used as arms in the struggle and resistance of this community to return and get back that which was taken from them.

3. Restoration, redevelopment and reconstitution, the final step in the reconciliation of a community. Currently, this is taking the form of recalling the community of District Six to transplant the cultural heart back into the city.”

The implications of this declaration are as noted as follows, “In terms of section 27(18) of the Act, ‘No person may destroy, damage, deface, excavate, alter, remove from its original position, subdivide or change the planning status of any heritage site without a permitissued by the heritage resources authority’ once it forms part of a place protected as a national heritage site.”

Landowners are given 60 (sixty) calendar days, until 5 December 2010, to make written submissions regarding the proposed declaration and to propose conditions under which the declaration will be acceptable to them.

For more information email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)t or call Sonja at 021 465 2198

1.Nagia A cited in Rasool C, memory and politics of history in the District Six Museum, University of Western Cape

See letter to landowners, attached.

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