Nonwhites Evicted From Cape Town Get Land Back

About 2,000 people crowded central Cape Town on Sunday to celebrate the return of land taken from them at the height of South Africa’s racist apartheid system.

Bands played and choirs sang as President Thabo Mbeki gave final approval to the transfer of land to the families of those evicted in the 1960s and ‘70s from the central city area known as District Six.

“The development we have come here today to celebrate represents the most important signal that we have broken with our terrible past,” he told the crowd.

“District Six must once again show us the way to building a peaceful, prosperous and nonracial society of the future,” he added.

The event, billed as a nonpolitical celebration, became a rally for the ruling African National Congress ahead of key municipal elections Dec. 5.

ANC flags were handed out, and posters told the public that the ANC was giving back what the National Party had stolen.

P.W. Botha, then minister of community development--and later president--in 1966 declared District Six a “white” area and began the forced removal of all nonwhite residents.

In the next 15 years, more than 60,000 people were uprooted, their homes bulldozed behind them.

When bulldozing ended in 1984, with only a handful of churches and mosques left standing, the government renamed the place “Zonnebloem,” or sunflower, in an attempt to give it a new image. But the area remained mostly barren land.

When the ANC came to power in 1994, it began to seek out the former inhabitants of District Six and their families. More than 1,700 of them have lodged formal land claims and had them approved. On Sunday they were given the official nod of approval to start to move back.