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11 - Remaking Cape Town

Memory Politics, Land Restitution, and Social Cohesion in District Six

from Part II - Policies and Institutions for Social Cohesion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2019

By
Ciraj Rassool
Edited by
Hiroyuki Hino ,
Arnim Langer ,
John Lonsdale  and
Frances Stewart
Hiroyuki Hino
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina and the University of Cape Town
Arnim Langer
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
John Lonsdale
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Frances Stewart
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

District Six has been the site for imprinting new South African imaginaries onto real estate development, through new forms of compromise and accommodation. As attachments to inner city land have been asserted through land restitution or declarations of its historic significance, these claims have been contained through planning agendas that have prioritised mixed-use development, speculation and gentrification. As the state tries to imprint a development framework fragmented between themed environments of land restitution, commerce and the business of property, the District Six Museum has contested the field of memory, with new approaches to redefining citizenship in the post-apartheid city. Alongside civic forums, the museum has challenged the projects of urban regeneration, renewal and orderly citizenship that the state has inaugurated, demonstrating that social cohesion and urban reconstruction need to be based upon memory work, especially about the social experience of those whose material traces apartheid sought to destroy.

Keywords

South AfricaDistrict Six MuseumMemory politicsUrban planningPost-apartheid
Type
Chapter
Information
From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures
Reflections on Africa
 , pp. 346 - 374
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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