District Six

A district defined by its absence, District Six was once a lively, mixed-race inner-city quarter on the slopes below Devil's Peak, a short walk from Cape Town's central business district. Home to former slaves, artisans, immigrants and labourers, it was a crowded, musical, cosmopolitan neighbourhood where Muslim, Christian and Jewish families lived side by side.

Its notoriety comes from what happened next. In 1966 the apartheid government declared it a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act. Over the following years around 60,000 residents were forcibly removed and resettled on the bleak, wind-blown Cape Flats. Bulldozers levelled almost every home, shop and place of worship, leaving a scar of open ground that stood largely empty for decades as a silent form of protest.

Today the area is slowly being reclaimed. A land-restitution programme has returned some former residents to newly built homes, and the nearby District Six Museum keeps the memory of the community alive through street signs, photographs and personal testimony. Places of worship such as mosques survived the demolitions and still punctuate the landscape.

For visitors it is a place to walk and reflect rather than to tick off monuments. Guided heritage walks led by former residents trace the old street grid, the sites of demolished landmarks, and the ongoing rebuilding. The gentle uphill setting also offers wide views toward Table Bay. Combining a stroll here with the museum gives a grounded sense of how apartheid urban planning reshaped one of South Africa's oldest neighbourhoods, and of the resilience of the people who are gradually returning to it. Wear sturdy shoes for the uneven ground and carry water for the exposed slopes, and set aside time to sit quietly and take in the weight of what unfolded on this land.