Hundreds to return to S Africa suburb after apartheid removal

Ebrahim’s eyes light up when he talks about returning to District Six once the new houses are built, possibly by next year. "Although I left when I was 26, my heart is still there," he said. He still prays at the District Six mosque, one of the few original buildings in the 90-hectare area, 40 hectares of which has been made available for the redevelopment.

After the removal, a "white" technical college was built, with a handful of other buildings, but much of the area was left undeveloped and barren. Leaving was a wrench for Ebrahim and his large extended family. "My father cried, I cried," he said. "As I drove off, they started bulldozing my house."

At the District Six Museum, where Ebrahim works, black-and-white photographs show the demolished suburb as shabby and crowded but vibrant and safe, with children playing in the streets and jazz bands in the halls. "We didn’t care about skin colour, we lived as one big happy family," said Ebrahim. Most of the residents were coloured but white, Indian, black and Chinese people also lived there, he said.

Like him, Miriam Richards, 68, and her two elderly sisters have never felt at home in the now crime-ridden Cape Flats, about 20 kilometres away, where they were allocated homes. The sisters will return as soon as there is a house for them, Richards said. "That is where our parents planted our roots for us," she said and added: "It was very hurtful to be forced out. It hurt your dignity greatly. It’s like a wound that can never be healed."

City councillor Saleem Mowzer said the restitution was part of the "healing" of Cape Town — where whites still live mainly in the central suburbs, with other races in areas far from the city centre. "The homecoming to District Six is a major step towards reintegrating the people of Cape Town and becoming a city in which all residents feel they belong on an equal basis," he said.

President Thabo Mbeki will preside over Sunday’s ceremony, where restitution settlements for 1,763 ex-tenants — 400 of them black and the remainder of mixed-race — will be signed. Claimants will receive 17,500 rand (2,300 dollars), Western Cape Land Claims Commissioner Alan Roberts said.

The some 1,000 claimants who had indicated they wanted to return to the area and rebuild their homes would receive extra grants, he said. Their compensation will be pooled and go towards the reconstruction of the area into a low-cost housing and commercial zone.

Only 2,443 individual District Six claims were lodged by the end of 1998, the cut-off date, which saw 65,000 claims lodged nationally, Roberts said. The remainder were from property owners and institutions and are still being finalised. Models for the new development, which will have to rely on bank loans for the new houses, would now be drawn up, said Anwah Nagia, chairman of the District Six Beneficiary and Development Trust. Ebrahim and Richards acknowledge that the spirit of the old District Six can never be recaptured. But "I’ll be happy if I can have some of the life I had there," Richards said.