District Six Museum

What to expect at District Six Museum

District Six was a densely populated, mixed neighbourhood on the slopes below Devil's Peak, home to some sixty thousand people, when the apartheid government declared it a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act in 1966. Over the following years the residents were forcibly removed to the sandy townships of the Cape Flats and almost every building was demolished, leaving a scar of empty ground that is still visible today. The District Six Museum opened in 1994 in the old Central Methodist Mission church on Buitenkant Street, a building that had sheltered anti-removal meetings, and it was founded not by the state but by former residents and activists determined that the memory would not be flattened along with the houses. It functions simultaneously as a museum, a community archive and a working part of the land restitution process.

It is a small building and the impact comes from the density of what is in it. The centrepiece is an enormous hand-painted canvas floor map of the old street grid, on which returning residents have written their names on the spot where their homes stood; you walk over it. Suspended above hangs a long cloth banner of embroidered memories stitched by former residents. Along one wall stand the original enamel street signs, saved from the rubble by a truck driver who was ordered to dump them in Table Bay and hid them instead. There is a reconstruction of a domestic interior, Nomvuyo's Room, drawn from a memoir, cases of family photographs, barber shop chairs, records and the paperwork of removal orders. A staircase leads to a mezzanine of changing displays and the shop.

Plan an hour to ninety minutes, or two if you take a guided tour, which is what most people should do. The guides are former residents or their descendants and the difference between reading the labels and hearing someone point at the map and say that was our house is the whole museum. Book a guide when you arrive or by phone in advance for groups. The associated Homecoming Centre a few doors up Buitenkant Street hosts talks, performances and exhibitions and is worth checking. Skip the temptation to combine this with three other museums in one morning: it is emotionally heavy and does not sit well as one stop in a checklist.

Getting there is easy on foot from the city centre. The museum stands at 25A Buitenkant Street on the corner of Albertus Street, an eight to ten minute walk from Cape Town station and the Civic Centre MyCiTi terminus, five minutes from the Castle of Good Hope and about twelve minutes from Greenmarket Square. MyCiTi buses serving the Civic Centre and the inner-city routes stop within a few hundred metres, with fares of roughly R12-R20 on a myconnect card. Metered street parking on Buitenkant and the surrounding blocks runs about R10-R15 an hour during business hours, with a garage on Commercial Street nearby. E-hailing from the Waterfront costs roughly R60-R90 and takes ten to fifteen minutes depending on traffic.

Admission is modest. Standard adult entry is in the region of R60, with reduced rates for students and pensioners, and free or nominal entry for school groups from Cape Flats communities by arrangement. A guided tour led by a former resident is an additional charge, commonly around R45-R60 a person on top of admission, and is booked at the desk or in advance for groups. Payment is by card or cash. The museum shop sells books, memoirs, recipe collections and prints from about R80 to R450, and the proceeds support the museum, which receives limited public funding. There is no cafe on site, so budget separately for coffee on Buitenkant Street or in the East City.

Weekday mornings, from 09:00 to about 11:00, are the calm window, when you can stand on the map without a tour group moving through. From late morning the coach parties arrive, and in December and January the small rooms feel full quickly. The museum closes on Sundays and most public holidays, which catches out a lot of weekend visitors, so plan for Monday to Saturday. It is an excellent rainy-day destination, being entirely indoors and central. Commemorative dates, particularly 11 February, the anniversary of the 1966 declaration, bring events and larger crowds. Nothing about the exhibits changes with the seasons, so there is no bad month.

It suits anyone who wants to understand modern South Africa rather than photograph it, and it is the single best hour a first-time visitor can spend on the subject of forced removals. Teenagers respond to it strongly, especially with a guide. Younger children will find it static and text-heavy, though the map on the floor engages them. The ground floor is accessible and staff assist, but the mezzanine is reached by stairs and there is no lift, which is a real limitation. Anyone with an hour to fill before a train from Cape Town station, ten minutes away, could not use it better. Visitors looking for grand architecture or large collections should adjust their expectations.

Nearby, the Castle of Good Hope is a five-minute walk east, the Company's Garden and the Iziko museums are about fifteen minutes west up Government Avenue, the East City and Harrington Street bars and galleries are two minutes away, and the Bo-Kaap is a twenty-minute walk across town. Honest caveats: this is a small museum in a converted church, not a large modern institution, and visitors expecting extensive galleries will be surprised by how compact it is. Labelling is dense and the design is deliberately unslick. Without a guide, a lot of the meaning stays behind the glass. And the empty land itself, visible from the doorway, is more affecting than any exhibit, which some people only realise as they leave.

Plan your visit TicketsR60 adult Time needed1-2 hr visit WhereCity Bowl Opening hours Mon-Sat 09:00-16:00 Closed Sundays and most public holidays Last entry 15:30; guided tours by arrangement Hotels near District Six Museum

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