'My mother’s generation of grey-haired District Six evictees have almost all gone, with a missing piece of their hearts'

My mother loved to sing. When I close my eyes and focus on my childhood, I see myself as a child in District Six and hear her softly singing Born Free, the theme song of the movie by the same name that Matt Monro sang in the mid-1960s.

Sadly, District Six is no more, and neither is my mother, Marie, and many of her contemporaries. In the days when daily newspapers still ruled, the death columns in these publications would faithfully carry a line that would include the words “formerly of District Six”. The slow death of newspapers switched these announcements to social media.

One such piece of information appeared on Facebook last weekend. It told about the death of a former resident of 2 Eaton Place in District Six, Salama Davids. "Slm eveing d6s just want to let you know of another ex residence of no 2 Eaton place has passaway without being restituted or compensated she was a dear friend of mine janazaah will be at 12.30pm from resident no 10 Summit rd Tafelsig then to mowbray maqbara her name was Salama Davids better known as Loumie."

Many former District Six residents have passed away. Some of their most painful memories live in those of us who have grown from being the children of District Six into grandparents.

My mother died with a flaming desire in her heart to return and once more live under the shadow of Table Mountain in District Six. For people like her and me, this vibrant suburb was the heart of Cape Town, if not the centre of the universe. She and thousands of her contemporaries were victims of an ethnic cleansing – not one executed by military force, but by a government fiat engineered by the apartheid minister of community development, PW Botha.

In his mad zeal to paint Cape Town white, Botha fiendishly ordered thousands of people on 11 February 1966 to leave District Six for new settlements on the Cape Flats. Like rubbish being dumped in a skip, more than 60,000 people were scattered into what seemed like a foreign land, the Cape Flats. Emptying areas such as Green Point, District Six, Claremont, Newlands, Constantia and Simon’s Town of people who were not white, and sandwiching them into places that had names such as Bonteheuwel, Hanover Park, Guguletu, Heideveld, Manenberg, Mitchells Plain and the ironically named Netreg (Just Right) was outright evil.

We were ordered to live in Heideveld and moved into the township as small houses were being built around us, waiting like prison cells for apartheid’s condemned: bewildered men, women and children who were exiled from Cape Town.

Destruction, helplessness and rage were released into so many lives, families, communities and marriages, some of which cracked under the change. Those who were poor in their former areas found that, in their new environment, the social fabric and support that once helped them out of tight spots were gone. To make ends meet, economic necessity ended the association of many young lives with schools, forcing them into low-paid jobs in factories.

Crime flourished. Ruthless gangs emerged and preyed on the defenceless, robbing, raping, murdering and maiming.

Amid the wanton gradual breakdown of social life and norms, brave community builders rose to start sports unions and religious organisations, build churches and mosques, and start new communities. Looking back today, I’m most grateful to them. They gave the soft, eloquent answer to the hard, inhuman blows that the apartheid enforcers were handing out. To my young ears, it carried the message of simply live, change will come.

In our house in Heideveld there were nights that brown bread, wet ever so slightly, with sugar sprinkled on it to make it more palatable, was supper.

On some cold, rainy winter nights, surrounded by her brood in our two-bedroom semi, my mother tried hard to mask her fears as we waited for my dockworker dad’s train from Cape Town to arrive and for him to disembark at Heideveld.

He walked home from Heideveld station carrying a tog bag. Inside it was a pair of scissors, less suspicious than a knife, but with the same purpose, presumably. It could be used to defend himself if he was attacked. Blessedly this did not ever happen.

These experiences were new. They relayed the same message. “Get real. You may be able to see Table Mountain from afar, but this is not District Six.”

District Six was about 12 miles away and being razed, with flats being built there for whites. The landmark Bloemhof Flats, which had pride of place in Constitution Street and the historic Harold Cressy High School as a neighbour, was renovated for new occupants. They were of the kind who could vote to send representatives to their white Parliament, where the National Party and apartheid ideologues like PW Botha ruled and passed more laws to tighten apartheid’s grip on the disenfranchised.

Dennis Cruywagen and his mother, Marie.(Photo: Supplied)

My mother was a worker at OK Bazaars, which was then the biggest department store in central Cape Town, and commuted to work. Every morning from Monday to Friday she was one of the many people packed into third-class train carriages, tighter than animals being taken to a slaughterhouse, and ferried to Cape Town.

There was standing room only on these morning trains. It was a new experience for Marie Cruywagen.

The bulldozers flattening District Six could not obliterate the memories of those who had never said goodbye. Imposed eviction is abrupt, filled with pain, and it produces deep feelings of hopelessness in adults. It causes inner trauma.

Witnessing the effect of this inner pain in adults, teenagers and young adults who were suddenly cut adrift to float and survive or sink in a sea of sand sensitised me to the healing power of saying goodbye to one’s home – and on one’s own terms.

My parents and thousands like them walked around with pain. Many of them did not recover. There was a flicker of hope when apartheid fell and a new democratic government was elected.

Nelson Mandela led that government. His minister of justice was the compassionate, wise and seasoned advocate Dullah Omar, an evictee who had practised law from Hanover Street. On his watch, the Restitution of Land Rights Act was signed into law by President Mandela.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Heartache of brutal District Six forced removals still lingers

My mother was overjoyed because she was hopeful she would return to District Six, even if it was without my dad, who had by then passed away, and die in the area that still was so alive in her heart. My brother Andre applied way back in 1996 for restitution: not money, but the right to return. The first returnees arrived back in District Six on 11 February 2004. They received their keys from Mandela.

We hoped that it would not be long before my mother would join them and once again see a long white cloud covering Table Mountain and experience the southeaster howling. It was not to be. District Six has become a political football that is brought into play whenever elections loom. Then there are glib talks of people returning. But that’s all that it is: talk, and more talk, and playing with people’s emotions.

Since 1996, three land claims commissioners, Wallace Mgoqi, Beverley Jansen and Alan Roberts, have passed away. My mother’s generation of grey-haired District Six evictees have almost all gone. Disgracefully, they have died with a missing piece of their hearts: the part on which was written District Six, and which was buried there when they were evicted.

Now it’s up to us, the children of District Six, to shine a light on the fight to return. We must not give up. When local government elections are held in 2026, we will not be hoodwinked by that now trite-sounding refrain about restitution.

Those who wield political power should know we will not forget where we once lived, played, loved and listened to songs about freedom. We are the depositories of those who sang these songs, of their yearning and their hope. We will not forget. And we will remember how we are being used. DM

Dennis Cruywagen is a journalist and the author of Brothers in War and Peace, and The Spiritual Mandela. He is an erstwhile spokesperson for the ANC and the recipient of two fellowships at Harvard University.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.