They didn't want better lives

" Those people didn't want to be upgraded", the 70 year old Afrikaans woman said after I told her of my visit to the District Six museum. This museum tells the story of the Capetonian neighbourhood District 6 that was destroyed by the apartheids regime because it was "unhealthy" and " too crowded". It reality the land was designated to become a white neighbourhood, so the black and coloured inhabitants had to go. The pictures of the people leaving their house reminded me of the deportation of the Jews in WOII to the ghettos. Wagons full of household belongings pushed forward by beating down people, faces drenched in grieve...

(The District 6 museum itself)

I told the Afrikaans lady how shocked I was and what an outrageous thing to do. But she had her own views; " These people lived in old and dirty houses. We gave them new, better houses, but they didn't want them. They didn't want a better life". Better houses? They were send to the townships of the Cape Flats. Better life? They never complained. The people of District Six loved their vibrant neighbourhood.

Talking to the Afrikaans lady felt like talking to my grandmother; set in her ways and very unlikely to change her mind. It made me wonder: was her view of things the way the apartheids-regime communicated it to the white people back then? That the coloured people were an ungrateful bunch? Or did she come up with her analysis all on her own?