Rebecca Jackman
TODAY’S District Six Museum walk of remembrance will highlight the impact of the construction of new Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) residences on what is regarded as a memorial site for former District Six residents.
“If it means that people will not be able to do what is an essential part of the ritual, that’s what it is and we need to experience what difference that makes. We can’t do the ritual of the cairn of stones on a building site,” said museum director Bonita Bennett.
For at least 15 years, the museum has led former District Six residents in annual remembrance walks up Hanover Street – now known as Keizersgracht. During the walks, they collect stones which they place on a cairn – in remembrance of the forced removals that took place under apartheid.
This year they will not be able to reach the cairn as CPUT is building student residences on the site.
Bennett said the museum would host a storytelling session, accompanied by the traditional walk to former Hanover Street, from 11am today. It would also serve as an informal public meeting for residents, stakeholders and observers – part of a public process for the museum to plan ahead.
CPUT vice-chancellor Prins Nevhutalu has said they have met the museum’s chief executive and chairman of the board, inviting the museum to “join in” on the institution’s own “project of memorialisation of District Six”.
“For now the project is ongoing and has already started with a Digital Story Telling where previous District Six residents are sharing their story for digitisation,” said Nevhutalu.
“The university is also embarking as part of a first-year orientation programme, to offer a course on the history of District Six for all its Cape Town campus students as from next year so that they know and understand the significance and importance of their campus.”
Bennett said she assumed Nevhutalu was referring to her as the director, and not chief executive, but she knew of no such meeting.
She said the only meeting held to date was to discuss the impact “of their poorly conceived construction of residences”, during which they “kept wanting to bring the discussion back to what great work” both parties could do together.
Bennett agrees with that, but believes it is a side issue to the point of the meeting.
She felt the university, with little expertise in memorialisation, was arrogant to invite the museum, with its advanced expertise, to join in the university’s plans.
“I don’t understand why these issues are being conflated: this shopping list of things that CPUT is doing and planning to do has very little to do with the matter at hand,” said Bennett.
“There is no quarrel about working together in future, but we have to resolve this issue first.”
Nevhutalu said the museum had asked the university permission to hold the annual walk, and it had been granted.
Bennett said she did not apply for permission and even if they had access to the cairn, it could not “take place in the same way as it has done in the past”.
“The building is in the way, not the permission to walk there or not,” she said.
CPUT Cape Town campus student representative council president Mbongiseni Mbatha said they had a meeting with Nevhutalu, asking him to communicate with the District Six community.
Mbatha said the issue of student accommodation was a problem across all institutes of higher learning.
“It’s proven that those in residences perform (better) academically than those who are staying at home,” he said.