District Six Museum Homecoming Centre

Five closely adjoining buildings have survived among blocks where the former development has almost disappeared; between them, part of an old Gothic-style church hall remains. Fabric and clothing were traded wholesale in these premises: tailors and seamstresses took material for their work, while families chose items for weddings and for babies. Later, classes, exhibitions, and meetings of former district residents and their families were organized here.

Buitenkant Street marked the western boundary of historic District Six. In eighteen sixty-seven, the municipal council divided Cape Town into districts and assigned this area the sixth number. Right at the boundary stood the wholesale warehouse of Sacks Futeran—now the District Six Museum Homecoming Centre.

Elias Sacks founded the family business in clothing and fabrics in nineteen oh six. Later, the firm occupied a complex of five connected buildings. District tailors and seamstresses came here: they bought fabric, turned it into dresses, suits, shirts, aprons, and curtains, and then sold the finished items to their neighbors. Families chose trousseaus and clothes for newborns here.

Twelve-year-old Victorine Gilbert helped her tailor father support the family. She bought small goods wholesale at this warehouse—socks and stockings—and then went door to door with them. Her earnings consisted of the difference between the wholesale and retail price. For her, this large warehouse was the place where the working day began.

After the forced removal of District Six residents under apartheid, most of the surrounding buildings were demolished. The warehouse complex at the edge of the district remained. Decades later, staff at the District Six Museum needed a space for meetings of former residents, educational classes, and work on the return of land rights. The money from a charitable grant was not enough to buy it at market price.

Then Martin Futeran, the owner of the complex and a descendant of the family that had traded here for almost a century, substantially lowered the price. He gave up part of the value of the family property so that the museum could acquire it. In two thousand two, the museum trust bought the buildings, and restorers then adapted the warehouses and the surviving part of the old Gothic church hall for their new work.

That is where the name District Six Museum Homecoming Centre comes from. They do not recreate a single lost apartment here, and they do not hand out keys to former homes. Former residents and their families gather here, discuss returning to the district, take part in memory programs, and decide what the restored community should become. The buildings house administration, classes, exhibitions, and community meetings; some of the halls are rented out, and this income helps maintain the museum.

Behind the facade of the former Sacks Futeran, people once bought material to sew goods for sale and earn their living. Now, in the same five buildings, families removed from District Six discuss returning there, whose historic boundary runs directly along this street.