“Waar Val Jy Uit?”: District Six, Sacred Space, and Identity in Cape Town

Abstract

This article discusses apartheid-era urban redevelopment in Cape Town, South Africa, and the forced removal of the residents of District Six in the mid to late twentieth century in particular. It looks at how the memories of former District Six residents have been enrolled in the shaping of coloured subjectivity in Cape Town. Moving beyond conventional social scientific approaches of history and memory studies, it critically engages with former residents’ recollection of the suburb as a form of mythopoeia using theory and method from religious studies. In so doing, it demonstrates that District Six evictees interpreted their experience of forced removal and the radical transformation of the city’s urban profile through concepts of District Six as a utopian space of Fairyland, a degenerating space of Wasteland, and a lost space of Exile. Attending to religious-like practises aimed at recovering human dignity in a context of urban and social dehumanisation that resonated with a particular segment of the coloured population, this article posits that the District Six story became a form of symbolic currency in post-apartheid claims of coloured cultural and subjective authenticity. Overall, it seeks to extend the work of previous analyses of sacred space in the city of Cape Town, and highlight the significance of religious studies methodology for understanding the practise of subjectivity formation in South African urban settings.