ABSTRACT
District Six, Cape Town, is South Africa’s foremost site of forced removals. Set on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, District Six commands imposing views of the sea and Table Mountain and covers a substantial area (approximately 150 ha) of prime inner-city real estate (Fig. 22.1). In February 1966, the then Minister of Community Development, P.W. Botha, declared District Six a ‘white’ group area. Over 60 000 people of colour were evacuated and much of the District was physically destroyed. Soon after the evacuation the state set about reinscribing District Six as
a ‘white’ group area. An old-age home and a police barracks, both for whites only, were built. In 1979 architects were appointed to design a consolidated campus for the segregated Cape Technikon, which, by the early 1980s, came to dominate the District Six skyline. By the early 1980s, when the last residents were removed, almost two-thirds of the area had been appropriated and reused by the apartheid state. Significantly, however, the remaining third was still not developed by the end of 2000 because of popular protest and other reasons. It is estimated that of the approximately 50 ha that remain undeveloped, 38 ha are considered developable; 28 ha of this land belong to the government and 10 to the Municipality of Cape Town (District Six Redevelopment Project 1997: 6).
