District Six: Rising from the Dust

The memory of District Six is an iconic to Cape Town as Table Mountain and is remembered as a place of vibrancy and culture. In 1960, District Six was declared a whites-only area. This declaration was formalised with the Apartheid Group Areas Act of 1966.

It is estimated that approximately 60 000 t0 80 000 people were forcibly removed form District Six. One of those families is my own. My mother, Nazley Hartley, in her late teens, was forcibly removed with her parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents. A “tribe”, a community uprooted from their home and businesses of four generations.

The documentary is a deeply personal story, which examines the microcosm within the macrocosm and the legacy of intergenerational pain and dispossession of wealth. It is visually and aurally rich with moments of “fly on the wall’ perspective as well as access to nuanced moments of the Cape community.