For the lucky 24, it was a happy night. The government will give each family $2,000, which they will use as a down payment on the first group of new homes that will be built in District Six. Construction of the first homes will begin soon and should be completed by mid-2003. But lost in the good cheer was a stark reality: there’s not nearly enough land or money to resettle all the former residents of District Six who want to go home. For one thing, though the neighborhood once occupied 150 hectares of prime city land, the government has granted only 40 hectares to the District Six Beneficiary Trust. (A technical college was built on part of the land in the early 1980s, and the rest of it may be commercially developed.) What’s more, the resettlement budget is underfunded.“The money’s just not there now,” says Peter De Tolly, the city’s land-restitution director. That is bad news for many of the 3,400 families and business owners who have said they want to return to their old community.
District Six’s problems mirror those that have bedeviled South Africa’s countrywide reparation program, which was conceived in 1994 to redress the wounds of apartheid. The government has spent $143 million to settle about half of the nearly 70,000 claims from people who lost their homes. Since 1994, the government has redistributed ?1 million hectares of farmland. Beyond that, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has recommended paying an additional 21,000 victims a total of some $300 million in restitution. But the government has disbursed only $4.8 million in initial payments to them–and clearly isn’t in a hurry to commit itself to the ultimate settlement. In June a group of claimants sued to try to force the government to disclose its plan. “We’ve raised the issue of whether the policy actually exists,” says Teboho Makhalemele, the group’s attorney.
Among the many injustices of apartheid, the demolition of District Six is one of the most infamous. It’s become part of the mythology of the antiapartheid struggle, and inspired a series of award-winning plays. (The revival of a District Six musical opened to a packed house in Cape Town this month.) But it will take more than political theater to produce anything approaching a real-life happy ending. The Cape Town government has provided about $4 million to restore the old neighborhood, but the reparation needs are closer to $9 million.
Like other apartheid victims, the District Six claimants want the process speeded up. In addition to funding issues, bureaucratic foul-ups and legal wrangling have bogged down the program. Some original District Six families now claim they were unfairly excluded from the re-settlement plan. They’ve organized the District Six Crisis Committee, a grass-roots group claiming a membership of 20,000, and are threatening a lawsuit. “We’re go-ing to stop the house [building],” says chairman Sedick Davis. “People who didn’t get a chance to claim by the cutoff date shouldn’t be left out.” Davis says land-restitution information wasn’t well advertised and people didn’t realize what was going on. “There were 66,000 people living in District Six and only a few thousand showed up to claim? No way. Something’s not right.” Both Nagia and Alan Roberts, the West Cape land commissioner, insist details were well publicized in newspapers and on the radio for months. “The information was out there,” says Roberts. “It’s out of our power to help them.”
For obvious reasons, the reparations issue resonates more strongly with older South Africans than with their kids. Three generations of the Charles family, kicked out of District Six 22 years ago, were among those waiting for news in the Cape Town church. Abdullah Charles, 71, said he could do little else but think about returning to his former community. He was disheartened when his name was not among the 24 called out. “They’ve been talking for too long,” he grumbles. “I want to see some action.” His son and daughter-in-law, Nassah and Gadija Charles, agree. “We were one of the last families to be thrown out,” Nassah says. “We left kicking and screaming.”
Gadija, Nassah’s wife, doesn’t want to renovate their current house in a bleak mixed-race township on the outskirts of Cape Town; they’re saving money for a new home in District Six. Each house will cost about $9,000, of which each tenant is expected to pay $4,500 with loans and grant money from outside sources. “I’ve lived [in the township] my whole life and never gotten used to it,” Gadija says. She dreams of a garden–not possible in their current neighborhood–and living in “a real community, like a big family.” But Gadija’s children aren’t keen to move. Faeda, 14, turns up her nose at the thought of District Six. “People in Cape Town are so boring,” she says. Qaasia Charles, 17, is also indifferent. “He’s just not interested,” says Nassah.
Clearly many will not return unless the government can find more money. One solution may be funding from abroad. Nagia’s trust is busy soliciting grant money from organizations in America and Europe. Nagia is confident that donors will step in. Meantime, Nassah Charles worries that his father won’t ever return to District Six. Still, he hasn’t completely lost hope. “We’ve been waiting a long time,” he says. “We can wait longer.” For now, there is no other choice.
