Staff Writer
FIFTY years ago about 60 000 residents of District Six were told to pack their suitcases for good as they would not be allowed back to the area they had lived in for decades.
Residents were forcibly moved to remote and barren areas on the Cape Flats after the apartheid regime declared District Six a white area under the 1950 Group Areas Act.
They were given little warning of their removal and many were left with nothing more than a single suitcase.
The District Six Museum has, and still is hosting a number of events this year to remember the anniversary of the forced removal.
One includes working with Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) Cape Town, which used the suitcase as a symbol and way of telling the stories of those whose lives were brutally disrupted.
Working with the museum and with some of the evictees, the agency found several vintage 1960s suitcases and filled them with items from the era including personal items, books, clothing, valuables, actual photographs and apartheid-era identity documents with racial designations like “Cape Coloured” and “Bantu”.
In March the suitcases were placed on the international and domestic baggage carousels at Cape Town International Airport where they were exposed to a captive audience of 23 000 people.
The collection is still on display at the District Six Museum.
Custom-made luggage tags, each telling an individual eviction story and offering a discount on entry to the museum, were tied onto incoming suitcases.
O&M Cape Town executive creative director Tseliso Rangaka said there is extraordinary emotional power in the idea of a suitcase that contains one’s worldly possessions.
“It’s a window into a life and the decisions that had to be made in a rush about what to pack and what to leave behind.
“We believe this was a really impactful way to tell such an important story,” Rangaka said.
O&M managing director, Luca Gallarelli, said the campaign was the latest in a long-standing relationship with the District Six Museum.
“Our office in Woodstock borders District Six and we want to ensure that we are genuinely connected to, and engaged with, the space in which we work every day,” said Gallarelli.
District Six Museum director, Bonita Bennett, said: “It is so often that historical events are just that – history. People forget to listen and learn from the past and by doing so they lose their understanding of a very trying time in our country.
“By sharing these very crucial stories and providing a platform for evictees to tell their stories we are opening a window to our past that has great meaning for how we can choose to live in the future.”