The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Ngcelwane, whose family had had been removed from District Six in the 1960s. 72 In some
ways, District Six lives were turned into allegories of racial pasts, as part of the
construction of multicultural histories of South Africa. 73
The publication of these books was realised through careful mediation, out of which three
District Six life histories were presented as autobiographical products and authentic
testaments of District Six lives. At Kwela Books, this mediation occurred through the
editor, Anneri van der Merwe, who spearheaded the interest in women’s written lives. It
is not apparent what the precise nature of this mediation was, whether it involved the
work of the amanuensis or whether it occurred through purposeful editing, structuring
and overwriting. It is clearer how these mediations occurred in the case of Ebrahim’s
book, who had a number of assistants in the District Six Museum including librarians,
curators, editors and colleagues (including Fortune herself) who encouraged him to put
pen to paper, who gave him ideas on what to write about, and who turned his words into
a structured, published text.
More than mere recovery, these books involved an active production of memory. What
was achieved was in some ways a construction of District Six memory, which tended to
depict the loss of a childhood paradise, as processed through the organisation of memory.
District Six here, according to the research of Zuleiga Adams, was turned into a magical,
depoliticised place, where the child was presumed to have been innocent and naïve.
Accounts of youth rituals and childish games and experiences, and views of the adult
world provided a stamp of authenticity. These elements have also been a feature of the
story of District Six’s destruction presented through theatre and were also a characteristic
of the Streets and Three Stories exhibitions. 74
72 Linda Fortune, The House in Tyne Street: Childhood Memories of District Six (Cape Town: Kwela Books,
1996); Nomvuyo Ngcelwane, Sala Kahle, District Six: An African Woman’s Perspective (Cape Town:
Kwela Books, 1998); Noor Ebrahim, Noor’s Story: My Life in District Six (Cape Town: District Six
Museum, 1999).
73 On the consolidation and contestation of the discourse on ‘many cultures’ in South Africa, see Ciraj
Rassool, ‘The Rise of Heritage and the Reconstitution of History’.
74 Zuleiga Adams, ‘Memory, Imagination and Removal: Remembering and Forgetting District Six’,
M.A. Mini‐thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2002.
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