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BOOK REVIEW

District Six: Memories, Thoughts and Images – A remarkable book that sparks emotions of joy and laughter as well as anger and loss

District Six: Memories, Thoughts and Images – A remarkable book that sparks emotions of joy and laughter as well as anger and loss

Architect and photographer Jan Greshoff documented much of what happened to central Cape Town during the tumultuous, ruinous 1970s high water mark of apartheid. After he died in 2007, his nephew Martin scanned all the negatives he inherited, and uploaded Jan’s photographs of District Six to a Facebook page he started in 2014. The response was rapid and remarkable: within a few months, hundreds of memories of District Six’s streets, shops, homes and landmarks were shared under each photograph, exhibiting a wide range of emotions from joy and laughter to anger and loss. This book is the final, remarkable product.

Tom Slater is Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Edinburgh.

Before providing some details about this remarkable book, some personal context seems necessary. I am neither a Capetonian nor a South African, nor am I old enough to have seen District Six before the bulldozers came. But for several years before the Covid-19 pandemic, I brought groups of University of Edinburgh human geography undergraduate students to Cape Town to learn about the fascinating, troubling history of the city and consider some of its contemporary challenges.

Urban inequality is a major theme of their studies, so I felt it was important to bring my students to one of the most unequal cities in the world, where they could see and reflect upon some of the consequences of centuries of imperial arrogance and listen to Capetonians talk about their experiences of survival, resistance, solidarity, love and hope in the face of political strife, past and present.

Constitution Street, District Six, 1973. (Photo: Jan Greshoff | Copyright: Kathy Abbott, Martin Adrian and Robert Greshoff)

One of the educational highlights of these trips was visiting the District Six Museum to learn about the ravages of apartheid and the Group Areas Act. The renowned, beautifully curated museum is particularly valuable for students of human geography, as it leaves them in no doubt about the essence of their subject: the enormous importance of places in our lives, even when certain places are no longer there.

Every year I ran these trips, the students were treated to an extraordinary experience by Joe Schaffers, a senior education officer at the museum and a former resident of District Six’s Bloemhof Flats. With more personal depth, Joe not only helped the students make sense of what they were seeing in the museum, but he also walked them along Constitution Street into the heart of the empty, forlorn, enormous tract of grassland in the heart of Cape Town where 60,000 souls once lived.

There, in a landscape that is still a painful sight for all who knew the spirit it once sustained, Joe seamlessly integrated an awesome knowledge of neighbourhood, city, country, region and globe, and delivered it to the students with a glorious mix of wit, wisdom, anger and passion. His efforts have since been acknowledged by the University of Edinburgh — Joe will receive an honorary doctorate as soon as travel from South Africa to Scotland becomes possible again.  

So it was with much anticipation and eagerness that I opened my copy of Martin Greshoff’s astonishing compilation of memories, thoughts and images from District Six. The story behind the project is as poignant and inspiring as the content within it.

Corner of Pontac and Russell streets, District Six, 1974. (Photo: Jan Greshoff | Copyright: Kathy Abbott, Martin Adrian and Robert Greshoff)

Martin is the nephew of the late architect and photographer Jan Greshoff, who documented so much of what happened to central Cape Town during the tumultuous, ruinous, 1970s high water mark of apartheid. After Jan passed away in 2007, Martin scanned all the negatives he inherited and uploaded Jan’s photographs of District Six — the majority taken during its steady, brutal destruction — to a Facebook page he started in 2014, as he felt “it was important that the photographs were seen and appreciated by the community that Jan photographed”.

The response was rapid and remarkable: within a few months, hundreds of memories of District Six’s streets, shops, homes and landmarks were shared under each photograph, exhibiting a wide range of emotions from joy and laughter to anger and loss.

One former resident, Cécile-Ann Pearce, suggested a collection of short memoirs illustrated by Jan’s photographs, and together, Cécile-Ann and Martin began working on the project. Although Cécile-Ann was unable to continue her editorial role due to work commitments (thankfully she has a fascinating memoir in the book), Martin, assisted by sub-editor Marge Clouts and book designer Charles Abbott, proceeded with the laborious task of securing contributors and encouraging them to share their memories and thoughts.

Fruit hawkers, District Six, 1972. (Photo: Jan Greshoff | Copyright: Kathy Abbott, Martin Adrian and Robert Greshoff)

Given what everyone lost when District Six was destroyed, this was surely an editorial task like few others, requiring patience and tenderness as contributors, now scattered across the city, country and well beyond, relived the agony of racial domination and forced eviction, and reflected on the often devastating consequences to their lives.

Any serious review of this book therefore must begin by noting the epic nature of the editorial achievement — 62 detailed memoirs, 11 chapters of poetry, hundreds of Jan’s hauntingly beautiful photographs (with additional, equally powerful images supplied by Rudolf Ryser and David Strachan), two beautifully detailed maps, an elaborate glossary of the bewildering number of children’s street games played in the district, an elegant and heartfelt foreword by Bonita Bennett (former director of the District Six Museum), a marvellously succinct and instructive short history of District Six by one of its great intellectuals, Crain Soudien, and a comprehensive listing of further reading.

It is difficult to do justice to Martin Greshoff’s monumental editorial effort unless you have the book in your hands. A beautifully presented, substantial volume, it is also difficult not to feel moved by its very existence, given that its editor also had to work tirelessly to seek donors in order to fund the printing costs.  

Junction of Longmarket, Hanover, Tennant and Upper Darling streets, District Six, 1972. (Photo: Jan Greshoff | Copyright: Kathy Abbott, Martin Adrian and Robert Greshoff)

Greshoff’s passionate and sustained drive to provide displaced District Sixers with a space to share their stories is profoundly important work that is at once historical and contemporary. Given the crime against humanity that happened in District Six, and the clear causal effect between its callous destruction, the divide-and-rule scattering of its residents, and the appalling, lasting outcomes of segregation, crime and violence in the Cape Flats, it seems as crucial as ever to elicit attention and support for those who are still bearing the material and psychological consequences of apartheid.

Furthermore, there are valuable lessons to be learnt about the textures of a thriving multi-ethnic neighbourhood. In this book, we hear the voices of those for whom “community spirit” is no cliché, and their voices are too important to ignore in any collective or institutional efforts to imagine a brighter urban future for Cape Town and cities well beyond.

The late, great District Sixer, Richard Rive, author of the celebrated novel Buckingham Palace: District Six, once worried about the authenticity of numerous representations of the area: “More artists who have never lived there have painted it. More authors who have never lived there have written about it.”

Junction of Hanover, Tennant and Godfrey streets, District Six, 1972. (Photo: Jan Greshoff | Copyright: Kathy Abbott, Martin Adrian and Robert Greshoff)

For anyone concerned about ensuing mythology or romanticisation, this book shatters any lingering contention that District Six was either utopia or dystopia. The memoirs compiled in this book are honest, searing portraits of a place full of contrasts and contradictions. No contributor looks back through rose-tinted spectacles — for every single resident, to live in District Six was to experience joy and pain, celebration and sorrow, excitement and monotony, tenderness and violence, pride and neglect, discipline and mischief.

But tellingly, the book brings to life something Rive also noted — District Six had “a mind and soul of its own, a separate and unique attitude, and a sharp, urban inclusivity”. There are no examples in this book of entrenched racial, religious or cultural antagonisms between residents; indeed, one thing that flows through all the memories of former District Sixers is respect for each other as people, regardless of skin colour, creed or culture.

It would be impossible to summarise each chapter, and unfair to single out any individual contributions, but read as a collective, anyone with an interest in Cape Town’s 20th-century history and its hard legacies will learn a great deal from these voices from the streets. Not only are there incredibly detailed accounts of everyday life and events both routine and significant, but there are astute recollections and commentaries on the cultural, educational, retail and sporting institutions that played such a crucial role in the lives of District Sixers, young and old.

Evocative descriptions of koesiesters, snoekkop bredie, bobotie and stappies left this reader salivating! Admirably, characters at the top and bottom of the neighbourhood’s working-class structure are accorded equal attention — we learn as much about rascals and gang members as we do about school teachers, doctors and landlords.

Stone and Albert streets (Photo: Jan Greshoff | Copyright: Kathy Abbott, Martin Adrian and Robert Greshoff)

Key phrases reflecting the delightful and unique verbal dexterity of District Six — “Kombuis Afrikaans” — are presented verbatim, with Greshoff providing translations and explanations of certain words.

Some of the more absorbing sections of the book occur when contributors write about the political turbulence that followed the 1966 declaration of the district as a “White Group Area”, as well as describe their feelings and responses when they received their sickening eviction notices. Although at times a harrowing, difficult read, these accounts of forced displacement are rare in the international literature on the subject, and there is continued importance in documenting them and learning from them.

Regrettably, the passage of time, political and economic strife, spin and laziness mean that injustices like what happened in District Six can fade into history. This book helps to bring them right back into the present, and the obliteration of community and kinship that happened there is a stern warning against the politics of indoctrination that enabled forced removals — politics that are proliferating globally today.

There are countless contemporary examples all over the world of thriving but deeply stigmatised working-class neighbourhoods located on valuable urban land where state authorities are doing something very similar to what apartheid’s social engineers did to District Six. They justify expulsions of vulnerable residents by convincing wider society that an entire neighbourhood (and its people) is a threat to wider public health and safety. People are brutally cleared out and homes are destroyed or gentrified as the land is put to more profitable uses.

Martin Greshoff with some of the writers. (Photo: Supplied)

For the displaced, invaluable social bonds and support networks are broken and further hardship occurs as people try to pick up the pieces in an unfamiliar setting, often many kilometres away.

The District Sixers who so generously shared their stories of such experiences for this book, therefore, deserve to be widely read.

Perhaps most importantly, all the contributors speak of how the spirit of District Six not only shaped their lives, but helped them through difficult times. Many of the contributors are today scattered across Cape Town, some in other parts of the Western Cape and beyond, and more than a few are now living in different countries. The contribution these individuals could have made to South African society, had they been treated differently, can only be imagined.

But their memories in this truly beautiful book have lasting significance for anyone who is interested in finding out what a kinder, humane, respectful, socially just city might look like. ML/DM

Martin Greshoff was born in Cape Town, grew up in Rondebosch and attended Westerford High School. He left South Africa in 1980 to avoid compulsory military service and fighting for, supporting and upholding apartheid. He moved to the UK where he studied furniture design and making. He also works in mental health services and currently lives in South London.

All money generated from the sales of this book will be donated to the District Six Museum to support their valuable work in preserving, and archiving the history, memories and forced removals from District Six and other areas.

The book — ISBN 9780620889865 — is available at the following outlets while stocks last: District Six Museum Bookshop (25a Buitenkant Street); Select Books (56 Surrey Street, Claremont); Clarkes (199 Long Street); The Book Lounge (71 Roeland Street); The Heritage Shop (19 Queen Victoria St); K and R Mobile Store, Belhar (Tel: 0836681836) free deliveries — 20km radius; Timbuktu Books (19 Golf Course Rd, Sybrand Park); Bokmakiri Books (Swellendam); The Kirstenbosch Bookshop; and Bay Bookshop (B6 Mainstream Centre, Princess Street, Hout Bay).

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