esd – Occupational Therapy Life

District 6 Museum: Memorial to a Neighborhood Destroyed by Apartheid

By Anyssa Sepulveda

The fresco wall of the museum, entitled "Where ever we go here we are" was dedicated on Human Rights Day, March 21, 2006. The mural is dedicated to all those individuals who have made and continue to make the District Six Museum a living project.

The OT Abroad group spent some time on May 6 at the District 6 Museum in Cape Town, South Africa. The museum takes its name from the neighborhood it commemorates, a once multiracial community whose residents were forcibly removed in the 1960s and 70s by the apartheid government.

After slavery was abolished in South Africa in 1833, District Six was settled by formerly enslaved people and became home to a diverse community that included artisans, merchants, immigrants, and Malay people brought to the area by the Dutch East India Company. At its peak, the neighborhood made up one-tenth of Cape Town’s population and was home to almost 2,000 families.

A map of the neighborhood before its destruction.

In 1966, the apartheid government declared District 6 a “whites only” area, though at this time whites made up only 1% of the community’s residents. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been removed from the district. Many of their homes were destroyed to make way for new development, and most former residents were relocated to the Cape Flats area, around 25 km away.

The museum takes approximately 1 hour to walk through and contains written notes, large hanging “memory cloths” with embroidered messages from former residents, traffic signs and maps from the vanished neighborhood, and pictures of its people and their daily lives.

Click here to learn more about the museum and District 6.

A Day at Robben Island

Former prison buildings on Robben Island, now a World Heritage Site and a symbol of a 500-year struggle for freedom and justice.

“A triumph of the human spirit over adversity, suffering and injustice.” ~Robben Island Museum website.

The OT Abroad group spent the morning of May 6 touring Robben Island, a desolate, rocky outcropping that lies in Table Bay about 5 miles offshore of Cape Town. The island was used to isolate people–from lepers to prisoners–for more than 500 years. Most people banished to or imprisoned on Robben Island from the 1400s till its closure as penal facility in 1991 were sent there as punishment for their resistance to the oppression and domination that lay at the heart of colonial and apartheid rule in South Africa, according to the Robben Island Museum website.

From 1961 until 1991, the island was South Africa’s maximum security prison and held many apartheid leaders and activists, including Nelson Mandela, the legendary anti-apartheid leader and former president of South Africa. Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island for 18 of the 27 years of his incarceration by the apartheid government. There, he labored daily in a lime quarry, eventually developing “snow blindness” from the glare and dust.

South Africa’s Department of Arts and Culture established the Robben Island Museum in 1997. Today, it’s a multilayered venue that represents conservation of the island’s natural and cultural resources and provides education and a platform for visitors to engage in critical debate and learning.

The OT Abroad group and other visitors learn about the island’s long, brutal history.

Nelson Mandela was held in a 7-by-9-foot cell lit 24 hours a day by a bare bulb.

Political prisoners in the 1960s used hunger strikes to bring global attention to the prison’s brutal conditions, which included beatings, starvation diets, and solitary confinement.

A prison no longer, Robben Island serves as a stark reminder of South African’s difficult and costly–but ultimately successful–fight to end apartheid.

Table Mountain and Cape Town seen from Robben Island

Nobel Square, Cape Town

Statues of South Africa’s four Nobel Peace Prize Laureates with Table Mountain in the background. Photo by Gavin Jenkins

May 3

These four larger-than-life bronze statues at the V&A Waterfront’s Nobel Square pay tribute to South Africa’s four Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and stand tall as symbols of the country’s ongoing struggle for equality and justice. Seen from left to right are:

Albert Luthuli, a teacher, anti-apartheid activist, and African National Congress president–general who spent many years under house arrest in an effort by the government to stifle his political leadership. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 for his non-violent struggle against apartheid.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a South African Anglican cleric who in the 1980s brought international awareness—and economic pressure—to speed the end of apartheid. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role as a unifying symbol for all South African freedom fighters and for his emphasis on a nonviolent path to liberation.

Former South African President F.W. de Klerk, who released Nelson Mandela and other political activists from prison soon after taking office and worked to help dismantle apartheid.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela, who served 27 years in prison for his fight against apartheid before becoming the nation’s first Black president.

Mandela and de Klerk, who laboriously negotiated terms for the peaceful termination of apartheid, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for that work and for “laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”

Morning at the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town

May 3

The V&A Waterfront lies between towering Table Mountain (3,563 feet) and the Atlantic on Table Bay, South Africa’s oldest working harbor. The Dutch occupied the land here in 1652, and in 1665 built the first wooden jetty, which they used to supply passing ships with fresh food and water.

The harbor is still home to commercial fishing vessels and pleasure craft, but is now a dynamic tourist destination that has preserved its industrial past by transforming many historic buildings into shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues.

The Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island Museum is here, and the OT Abroad group will depart from it on May 6 for a 30-minute ferry ride to the island. This World Heritage site, which was from the 17th to the 20th centuries a place of “banishment, isolation, and imprisonment,” is now a symbol of “the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, suffering and injustice.”