Date: March 7, 2008 1:49:59 AM HST

Saturday, February 23, 2008 – Cape Town

Though apartheid consisted of almost 150 laws and proclamations, I’ve noticed that certain museums focus on the effects of specific, especially odious laws (the Sharpeville Museum’s focus on the Pass Laws, for example). The District Six Museum in downtown Cape Town fits into this pattern; it has been brought to us courtesy of the Group Areas Act of 1950, which allowed the government to seize desirable lands for whites, while ordering blacks who had occupied those lands to move into townships or rural areas.

First settled in the early 1800s, District Six developed into a lively mixed race area despite (because of?) deliberate neglect by the government. In February, 1966, under the authority of Group Areas Act, the government proclaimed it a “white” group area, and sixty thousand non-whites were forced out over the next fifteen years, most moving to the barren Cape Flats area (which today is the most economically depressed part of Cape Town). The museum, housed in a Methodist Church, shows visitors what has been lost.

Most of the items and displays are personal, giving the place a down-home feel. In addition to photos, newspaper clippings and maps, one sees original street signs, homemade banners, murals and quilts, and children’s toys. Sections of a “Namecloth” contain messages from former residents and museum visitors. The complete cloth measures one and one-half meters wide by more than one kilometer in length – and it’s still growing.

The museum presents both individual and neighborhood stories: one can listen to recorded music from popular post-World War II dance bands, or step into a small beauty parlor/barber shop, or read poems and stories about life in District Six. It was not a wealthy area by any means, but I did get a sense of its vibrancy.

One display shows a public washhouse built by the government. Women originally washed their clothes in a stream that passed through the district. To prevent bubonic plague, the government built the washhouse, which it permitted the women to use for free. Then someone in the government decided that charging a fee for the use of the facilities would be appropriate. The majority of the women were too poor to pay, so they went back to using the stream. The government rescinded the fee, and the women returned to the washhouse, at which point the government again instituted a fee, at which point the women went back to the stream. Finally the government relented and abolished the fee.

Deb and I have talked at various times about the use of the word “evil” to describe people or governments. She thinks – and I agree – that too-frequent use of the word drains it of its power.

In addition, I think that in some cases at least, the word suggests a certain malevolent intent. I don’t, therefore, think that the District Six Museum constitutes evidence of evil in the apartheid government (though I do think that there are many other policies and instances that do, but that’s another, long entry). The museum does show a perhaps parallel quality to evil, however: a remarkable inability – or unwillingness – of the people in power to empathize with the people affected by their power.