Adam Haupt On show in Cape Town
There are many truths out there which still have to be told. Some of these truths never make it through official channels and are lost forever. But District Six Museum’s organic connection with Cape Town is seeing to it that the tyranny of the master- narratives of history is lessened. The museum offers ordinary community members the opportunity to contribute to the collection of narratives, photographs and music so that the rich history of District Six can be documented.
It therefore seems appropriate that Buckingham Palace, District Six, the retrospective on the life of writer and academic Richard Rive, should be located at District Six Museum. Rive was born in District Six, trained at the now-defunct Hewatt College as a teacher and later obtained a doctorate from Oxford University. The exhibition takes its name from Rive’s 1986 novel, which in turn took its name from the nickname given to a block of flats, Eaton Place. The block of flats was largely occupied by Jewish immigrants early in the century and later became occupied by a “typical District Six mixture of religions and classes”.
Buckingham Palace, District Six contains photographs, media snippets and samples of Rive’s writing. Rive seems to have had little time for meaningless feel-good nostalgia for District Six and, instead, held that it “is inevitable that the story of District Six, both fact and fiction, will go down in South African history as a classic example of racial arrogance and greed, and that it will forever remain a symbol of needless pain and suffering inflicted by those who had too much”.
Rive’s view also contains a conception of the importance of both “fact and fiction” in the construction of subaltern histories. At the time of Rive’s murder in 1989, Fred Abrahamse was directing a theatre adaptation of Buckingham Palace, District Six which starred Basil Appolis and was later staged at the Baxter Theatre. Some of his contemporaries were also included in this exhibition. They include James Matthews, Arthur Nortje, Bessie Head and Peter Abrahams.
The personal reactions of some of these writers and poets to Rive’s murder are documented as well and convey a strong sense of the impact which he had on their lives. What is also conveyed is a sense of how directed the literary efforts of Rive’s generation were. Whilst the exhibition itself is compelling in many ways, it seems to be tucked away on the first floor of the old church building and something should perhaps be done to draw visitors’ attention to the display area.
If you were to explore all that the museum has to offer, however, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover Buckingham Palace, District Six’s richly textual retrospective. And if you linger for a while longer, you might be fortunate enough to catch Vincent Kolbe, tinkling away at the old ivories.