District Six at 60: Lifting the Map, Reclaiming the Future
Sixty years after District Six was declared a whites-only area on February 11, 1966, where thousands of families were forcibly removed from their homes, the District Six Museum has done something unprecedented: it has lifted its floor map.
Replacing its iconic floor map, a standing centrepiece of remembrance, with a blank slate layered in salt and scattered with white stones inscribed with names, street numbers, and handwritten memories.
For museum director Chrischené Julius, the decision was both symbolic and necessary.
“We always commemorate the declaration on this day,” Julius tells IOL. “Each year, we go to the stones of old Hanover Street, where activists and community members have placed stones in memoriam for District Six since the late 1980s.
“But this year, because it’s 60 years, we wanted to do something different.”
That difference signals a shift in how District Six remembers its past and how it imagines its future.
Restoring tension to timely proliferation
“There’s a definite generational divide,” Julius said. “As new families are coming back, older families are coming back, younger generations are coming back, there’s this question: you didn’t grow up in District Six. Do you belong here?”
The museum, she explained, is tasked with working with memory but also interrogating it.
“When we are gone, what stories are there? What do we hand over to a younger generation? How do we get them to fight for believing in the same things that land claimants have fought for all these years?”
The blank floor, layered in salt, a reference to the land once described by activists as “salted earth”, cursed until its people returned, invites those questions.
“When we place the stone and our memory, and our family history on the salted earth, is it possible that we also reclaim the earth back?” Julius asked, metaphorically and physically.
Beyond nostalgia
For decades, the museum’s historical map, etched with former streets and layered with handwritten names, has been a powerful act of reclamation. Visitors would bend down to find their family homes, tracing vanished addresses with their fingertips. It became part of the institution’s identity.
“It was a big deal for us to lift it,” Julius admits. “The map has always existed. It’s part of the museum’s identity”. However, we are currently in a unique period.
A moment is defined by return and restitution. Despite delays in land claims, former residents are returning.
Grandchildren of District Six, who were not born there, are also coming forward to claim their place.
Memory, Fact and the fuller story
An 82-year-old woman who walked past the museum recognised it as the church where she had once worshipped and been married.
She returned later with her daughter, as grandchildren spoke on behalf of their families.
Fietas, another community impacted by forced removals under apartheid, sent messages of solidarity, and an older speaker remarked, “It happened to us in Fietas. We see you.”
The day’s reflections were not limited to longing for a lost community. Julius is wary of nostalgia that flattens complexity.
“We mustn’t only want to remember the good things,” she said. “We must acknowledge how we are all connected.”
She points to a recurring erasure in some narratives. The assumption that black residents were absent from District Six.
“That is untrue. We can factually prove that to be untrue. So we’re trying to pull all those threads together for somebody’s memory, speaking towards what is the historical fact, and weaving that into what a future for District Six can look like.”
The museum’s curatorial approach, she added, is not to fossilise memory but to challenge it.
“Our goal is to be the holder of memory, but also to challenge that memory sometimes.”
That includes confronting the emotional legacy of forced removals. By asking former residents how old they were at the time of the declaration, the museum reframed the event not as a date in a textbook, but as a lived rupture.
“Some were 23 or 24. Someone was one year old. Someone was five, 10, 15,” she said. “It happened to children. It happened to adults. It wasn’t just an event. It’s been the journey of their life.”
That journey shaped what she calls the country’s “emotional ecosystem,” its adults who would go on to raise families, build communities, and participate in democracy.
“When they think about what they hand over to the new generation, do we want it to be just anger?” she asked.
“Anger can be good. But is it just anger that we’re handing over? Is it just cynicism? Or are we also handing over values?”
No matter where we are, we are here
One phrase has emerged as a guiding principle for the museum:
No matter where we are, we are here.
It was first written by a former resident on the museum’s memory clock. Today, it functions as a quiet mantra.
“Whether we return physically to the land or not, we are still here,” Julius says.
“Continuity is important. The older generation can hand that sentiment over to younger people to claim District Six for who they are.”
The stones laid across the salted floor echo the old house numbers. Each tag bears a family surname, a street, and a number.
“When we talk about handing over, does it mean we leave old struggles behind?” Julius asked. “Does it mean we forget? Or are we also handing struggles over?”
The installation will remain in place for at least three months. During that time, school groups, tourists, and returning families will encounter a museum without its familiar map. For staff and storytellers, it is a test of engagement.
“It will be a test of our visitor engagement programme,” Julius said. “It’s about the quality of the dialogue between people, whether you’re from here or from another country.”
Handing over the baton
In the weeks leading up to February 11, the Museum actively held workshops with former and current residents.
During these workshops, the museum “asked not only what they remember, but what they hand over to the younger generation. What values, what struggles, what care do they pass on?”
These questions are difficult; the forced removals have shaped the lives of children and adults alike, leaving an imprint Julius calls the country’s “emotional ecosystem”.
Children and adults who experienced the reality of being removed from their homes in District Six during 1966. 60 years later, families have been built. communities, who all contribute to South Africa’s democracy.
Julius emphasises how handing over is not about forgetting. It is about acknowledging struggles and ensuring the next generation inherits the full story: the pain, the perseverance, and the hope.
During the workshops, Tina Smith, Head of Exhibitions, provided valuable input, speaking to former residents to contemplate the lasting impact they will create, Julius recalls.
“Tina reminded people that you’re also handling struggles over, and it is a part of the inheritance process, and it is part of the story that must continue.”
“This is a moment of opening up questions,” Julius added.
“Land restitution is happening, families are returning, and younger generations are staking their claim. It is time to hand over the baton.”
The museum sees District Six not only as a neighbourhood but more as a symbol with national significance. “It’s about District Six, Cape Town, and South Africa,” Julius said. But the story continues.
“What we hand over today shapes District Six for the generations to come.”
District Six in 2086
If 1966 marked a violent rupture, 2026 invites reflection. But Julius is already looking further ahead.
“In 60 years, it will be 2086,” she said. “What will District Six look like? The world is changing. District Six is in the world. It’s not separate from it.”
The question, she believes, is what values endure amid that change.
“At the centre of it is this very deep desire to reclaim District Six for what it once was,” she said. “It motivates people on a very deep level.”
That desire extends beyond Cape Town. District Six has long stood as a national symbol of apartheid’s brutality and of community resilience. Julius sees its future as potentially instructive.
“District Six can be a model for Cape Town, and it can be a model for South Africa,” she added. “There is a connection between those three things.”
For now, the museum floor is quiet. White stones rest on salt in the shape of a neighbourhood once razed. Visitors move slowly, reading handwritten memories, adding their own.
“It’s almost like a space of contemplation,” Julius tells IOL.
Sixty years after families were told to leave Hanover Street and beyond, the act of remembrance has shifted from mapping what was lost to imagining what might yet be reclaimed.
The map may be lifted. But District Six, as the stones insist, is still here.
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