The recent history of South Africa cannot be said to be very encouraging. In the center of the city, the District 6 museum is one of the places that best explains the bitter reality of apartheid history.
The museum has been established in this building, which has been serving as a methodist church for over 170 years, in the area called District 6, to tell the history of apartheid and the stories of ordinary people during this period since it opened in 1994. Guided tours are held at certain times every day and people who lived at that time make these guided tours by telling their own life stories. So it's pretty impressive. When ı visited the museum a woman in her 50s, who lived in District 6 until the destruction of their home in her childhood, gave the guided tour in a very detailed and chilling way, giving examples from her own life.
The apartheid period in South Africa, which is called the separatist and racist period implemented as the official state policy from 1948 to 1994, is the positioning of all people of different origins and religions as second-class people by the ruling class by the European-origin whites and systematically with the constitutional order. Until 1994, when the first black president, Nelson Mandela, came to power and put an end to this regime.
In the museum, how South African citizens are classified according to their race (white, mixed, colored, etc.); how District 6, where people from different cultures lived together until the apartheid period, was demolished and its inhabitants were exiled to the far corners of the city, is explained in detail with photographs, documents and many more documents.
The mission of the museum is 'to build Cape Town as a place where people live, not races.' A must visit place, don't miss it!
Admission (Ran 65 with guided tour); transportation: Uber