District Six Museum

A church

The floor of an old church is a map of a lost district

The museum is housed in an old Methodist church. Its floor is covered by a big map of the district, with handwritten notes by former inhabitants to show where their houses stood. One former resident was the jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim, also known as Dollar Brand. Other exhibits include old street signs and displays about the families of the area and about the demolition.

1994

The museum opened in 1994 as a memorial

The District Six Foundation was founded in 1989 and the museum in 1994, as a memorial to the forced removal of 60,000 inhabitants of the district in the 1970s. In 2003 it was honored with a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands. Its goal is to bring people together in a community with respect for dignity and identity.

60,000inhabitants forced to move, whom the museum remembers

A lively place

Freed slaves, craftsmen, Malay families and Jewish shopkeepers lived here

The area began to grow after the freeing of the enslaved in 1833. By the turn of the century it was a lively community of former slaves, artisans, merchants and other immigrants, and many Malay people. It was home to almost a tenth of the city's population. Thousands of Jewish residents lived there from the 1880s, kept Yiddish theater and opened their own schools and shops.

The name

The old name came back in 2019

In 1970 the area was renamed Zonnebloem, a name that refers to an 18th-century colonial farm. On 17 December 2019 the Arts and Culture minister gazetted the renaming of Zonnebloem back to District Six, after the museum launched a campaign earlier that year to bring the old name back.

1966

District Six was declared whites-only in 1966, and demolition began

In 1966 District Six was declared a whites-only area, the year the demolition began. Over the course of a decade, over 60,000 of its inhabitants were forcibly removed. The government gave official reasons, such as that mixing the races bred conflict and that the district was a slum. Most residents believed that the government wanted the land for its closeness to the city center, Table Mountain and the harbour.