Return
By 2003, work had started on the first new buildings: 24 houses that will belong to residents over 80 years old. On 11 February 2004, exactly 38 years after the area was rezoned by the government, former president Nelson Mandela handed the keys to the first returning residents, Ebrahim Murat (87) and Dan Ndzabela (82). About 1,600 families were scheduled to return over the next three years.
The Hands Off District Six Committee mobilized to halt investment and redevelopment in District Six after the forced removals. It developed into the District Six Beneficiary Trust, which was empowered to manage the process by which claimants were to get their "land" back (actually a flat or apartment residential space). In November 2006, the Trust broke off negotiations with the Cape Town Municipality. The Trust accused the Municipality (then under a Democratic Alliance mayor) of stalling restitution, and indicated that it preferred to work with the national government, which was controlled by the ANC. In response, DA Mayor Helen Zille questioned the right of the Trust to represent the claimants, as it had never been "elected" by claimants. Some discontented claimants wanted to create an alternative negotiating body to the Trust. However, the historical legacy and "struggle credentials" of most of the Trust leadership made it very likely that it would continue to represent the claimants.
Read more about this topic: District Six
Famous quotes containing the word return:
“There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)