The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

While the biographies of national political leaders may not have been its focus, life history
was a key feature of the District Six Museum’s memory work from the beginning. Rows of
large‐scale portraits of former residents, printed on transparent architectural paper, and
hung from the balconies, gazed down upon visitors on the map. These portraits of
prominent District Sixers and ordinary residents seemed to give the Streets exhibition a
sense of being protected by the area’s ancestors. In the hand‐painted alcoves on the side of
the map, photographs, drawn from albums and collections donated by former residents,
bore testimony to District Six life histories and forms of cultural expression. From its
inception processes of inscription, annunciation, conversation and contestation marked
the Museum’s memory work as former residents inscribed their biographies into the
materiality of the museum on the memory cloth and the map. 70 At the same time, the
Museum began a project on collecting oral testimonies of lives in the District and
developing a ‘memory booth’ for ex‐residents. This oral history work culminated in the
creation of a Sound Archive in 1997. 71
Life histories were also negotiated in the District Six Museum through the interpretive
work of its education officers, Linda Fortune and Noor Ebrahim, who conducted tours
and educational forums with tourists and learners since 1994. Their own life histories of
family and community, and removal and restitution became important elements of the
Museum’s mediation of District Six’s history. Their stories of their District Six lives and
removals were told in the Museum through artefact, image and narrative. Both Fortune
and Ebrahim also went on to become authors of District Six autobiographical books. In
1996, Kwela Books published Fortune’s life story as part of an interest in women’s
autobiography in South Africa. After not fitting into the Kwela series, Noor Ebrahim’s life
story was published by the Museum itself. Kwela also published another District Six story
as part of their project to recover women autobiography, namely that of Nomvuyo
70 Peggy Delport, ‘Signposts for Retrieval’ pp 34‐38; Ciraj Rassool, ‘Community museums, memory
politics and social transformation: histories, possibilities and limits’.
71 On the work of oral history collection in the District Six Museum, see Valmont Layne and Ciraj
Rassool, ‘Memory Rooms: Oral History in the District Six Museum’, in Ciraj Rassool and Sandra
Prosalendis (eds), Recalling Community in Cape Town.
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