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Witness History

Returning to District Six

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Zahra Nordien was forced out of District Six in Cape Town in 1977, she vowed to one day return. She was one of the 60,000 people who were forcibly removed from the neighbourhood because of the racist South African apartheid government. What seemed like a pipe dream became a reality when Zahra set up the District Six Working Committee campaigning to get former residents into newly rebuilt homes. In 2013 her elderly mother moved back into District Six with Zahra, more than three decades after they were expelled. Zahra tells Reena Stanton-Sharma about her ongoing fight for restitution. (Photo: Cape Town, South Africa in the 1970s. Credit: Gallo Images / Juhan Kuus)

Transcript

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0:00.0

World Football in Qatar is the podcast taking you behind the scenes with all 32 teams at the World Cup.

0:07.0

We're hearing from the players, the fans and people in Qatar telling the truly global story of the competition.

0:15.0

That's World Football in Qatar from the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

0:30.0

Hello and thanks for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Reena Stanton Sharma.

0:37.0

We're going back to South Africa in 1966, when the government segregated people based on their race.

0:44.0

My biggest memory of District Six is when we were forcibly removed. That for me was very traumatic and is something that we will never forget.

0:56.0

That's Zahada Nadine. With her family, she was one of the 60,000 people who were forcibly removed from District Six,

1:04.0

a bustling neighbourhood in inner city Cape Town.

1:12.0

It's nestled between the picturesque table mountain and the South Atlantic, a stone's throw from the city centre.

1:22.0

In February 1966, the racist apartheid government declared it a slum and announced that the neighbourhood would be redeveloped as a white zonely area.

1:34.0

Within two years, demolition had started.

1:38.0

It was very painful when they started demolishing District Six, because most of the people, me included, and my family, we didn't want to move out.

1:49.0

It was traumatic. One day I came from the beach and I just saw my next door neighbour, their furniture was all on the track, and they had to leave.

2:02.0

So it was so sad the community was so close, it was like family, and losing your next door neighbour. Don't know where is their next home going to be.

2:14.0

That sense of community was strong, Africans and people of mixed heritage, so-called collards, as defined under apartheid law, were moved to bleak and windswept areas known as the Cape Flats, far from the city, after their shops, cinemas, and homes were bulldozed.

2:32.0

It was one of the apartheid regime's most notorious force removals and took 15 years to complete.

2:39.0

Zahra's from a Muslim family, and they were expelled in 1977.

2:44.0

I remember the day when we moved out. Most of the stuff we lived behind, because everything couldn't go onto the track, and it was really sad, leaving and moving to our new home.

2:59.0

Her family had enough money to buy a new home in an area called Kensington, but others weren't as fortunate.

3:06.0

It's going to be demolished. They were waiting for me to move out. I received a notice of eviction. Within seven days I've got to leave, but I'm not moving, because I'm angry.

3:21.0

We're not going to move to. Go to the soulless Cape Flats. Are refuse to move.

3:27.0

That deep sense of injustice of a community erased ignited a fight within Zahra, as she vowed to return to the place she loved.

...

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