ABSTRACT
I witnessed this pain first hand through conversations I had with a particular group of ex-residents of Roger Street, all of whom were forcibly removed. I had asked my father to track down his neighbours, invite them to afternoon tea and encourage them to bring any photographs that they had of their time in District Six. This and other similar conversations were always very noisy affairs in a mixture of languages, and almost always took place around a meal. Through a series of conversations that initially hinged on the photographs, they, and I, struggled to find the words to name what exactly apartheid had done to them; it seemed that, connected to this particular violence was a pain that paradoxically could not be shared or named, even though they all lived in District Six at a particular time. Of the few questions that I managed to ask, some related to the issue of restitution. I asked whether they were involved with the land claims processes and, while there were various responses, the point was fairly universal that “they wanted their house back.”
