OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Cape Town | Monday
IN A bittersweet moment, the South African government gave the people of Cape Town’s District Six, who were evicted under apartheid, back their land at the foot of Table Mountain – but only a handful will return.
The deal gives the evicted, now mostly elderly, the right to a new home in the razed suburb or to a small sum of money – some R17500 – in compensation decades after apartheid laws forced 66000 people out of their homes.
But only a handful of ex-residents will go back to rebuild the legendary neighbourhood, where all races lived together before the regime intervened and bulldozed their homes.
President Thabo Mbeki and a crowd of 15000 people looked on as Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza signed the deal with the oldest surviving residents of District Six, 104-year-old George Makapula and octogenarian Fatima Benting.
“We have come here today to say that racism and apartheid were wrong. We are returning the mountain to those for whom it was their youthful playground,” said Mbeki.
The government received and verified land restitution claims from 1763 former tenants and families. Of these, only about 1000 have opted to return, the rest saying they are too old to be uprooted again and that District Six can never be the same.
“I have lived all my life elsewhere and I will never, never come back. It is too late to move again,” said 62-year-old Gabsa Misbach.
But Jasmien Abrahams, 52, said she would apply for one of the houses the state plans to build here, with the help of foreign funding, and leave behind Mitchell’s Plain, one of the suburbs far from the city centre that was built as a dumping ground for District Six residents.
“This is my roots, my heart was always here. When I came to town and I drove past in the taxi, I kept looking and looking at it,” she said.
Some critics muttered that the government’s timing was political opportunism. Municipal elections are eight days away and Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) needs all the votes it can get to, for the first time, win control of Cape Town at local government level.
The signing ceremony resembled a rally and Didiza urged people to vote for the ANC. – AFP