Rebecca Jackman
FOR the first time in close to 20 years, the District Six Museum will not be able to lead its annual Heritage Day “walk of remembrance” to a memorial cairn located in historic Hanover Street.
Museum director Bonita Bennett said it had conducted the walks on Heritage Day and on February 11 – the day District Six was declared a white group area in 1966 – for at least 15 years.
The practice was inherited and had been practised by the area’s displaced community before the museum had formalised the walk.
But participants would no longer be able to walk to the cairn, where former District Six residents placed small stones to remember “both the injustice of forced removals, but also the hope of return”, Bennett said yesterday.
It is no longer possible to reach the cairn as a new Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) residence building is in mid-construction on the site.
Bennett said she felt sad and “angry to some extent” that an annual practice she deemed empowering to former residents had “been sidelined in such a cavalier fashion”.
The District Six Museum had hoped to meet CPUT representatives on Wednesday and establish if the university was willing to negotiate, but there was no clarity about whether the meeting would be held.
“It is a pity that CPUT has not take up the museum’s offer of assisting them with undertaking a public process, albeit belatedly,” said Bennett.
CPUT and the museum’s council have been at odds after the university built on the land without consulting the museum and former residents, with Bennett calling on Heritage Western Cape to conduct a formal investigation into the matter.
“A methodology of performative memorialisation has
been interrupted, and it is particularly disturbing when taking into account CPUT’s stated commitment to integrating into the community,” Bennett said.
Heritage Western Cape chief executive Andrew Hall said it had already given the museum a full report on what happened and the ways in which the application to build the residences was made. He said the institution had complied with the law.
“It only triggered an archaeological application and they did that,” he said.
Former CPUT council chairman and senior judge of the Western Cape High Court, Judge Siraj Desai said it was unfortunate that the heritage walk would take place without access to the cairn.
“It’s a pity that there isn’t room for the parties to meet on the issue of the cairn and the whole question of the sensitive nature of the land,” he said.
Desai had said previously that he felt building on the site of a memorial cairn was insensitive and that CPUT failed to understand the “savagery which underpinned its demolition”. The District Six museum has asked for a “more grounded consultative process” with CPUT.
CPUT spokesman Thami Nkwanyana said he was not able to get comment from its vice-chancellor Prins Nevhutalu yesterday. Nkwanyana had previously commented that before construction began, the institution had worked closely with the District Six community.
He had told the Cape Times that the new building on CPUT-owned land had been planned since 2010 and was approved by the Department of Higher Education and Training and the City of Cape Town .
He had also said that “all reasonable attempts” would be made to preserve the heritage of the area and of the memorial cairn.
CPUT chancellorTrevor Manuel was approached for comment yesterday but had not responded by deadline.