The inner-city neighbourhood named in 1867 as the sixth municipal district, home to about 55,000 people before apartheid emptied it. It was declared a white area on 11 February 1966, and more than 60,000 people had been moved out to the Cape Flats by 1982. Basil Coetzee was born there and Taliep Petersen grew up there.
Did you know?
Abdullah Ibrahim's 1974 tune is spelt with three n's. The Cape Flats township it is named for has two. The published accounts explain the song, but not the extra letter.
Music Manenberg 1974 Cape Town
Source: SAHA Sunday Times Heritage Project: Mannenberg · Africa Is a Country: How Rashid Vally showed us the way
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Abdullah Ibrahim recorded "Mannenberg" in Cape Town in June 1974 with Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Morris Goldberg and Monty Weber, produced by Rashid Vally for the As-Shams label.
Music Manenberg 1974 Cape Town
Source: SAHA Sunday Times Heritage Project: Mannenberg · Africa Is a Country: How Rashid Vally showed us the way
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District Six was declared a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act on 11 February 1966. Over 60,000 people were removed to the Cape Flats and the buildings were bulldozed.
District Six sat on the slopes above the city centre: crowded, poor, mixed, and by every account one of the most alive places in South Africa. On 11 February 1966 the apartheid government declared it a white area under the Group Areas Act of 1950. The District Six Museum records that more than 60,000 people were forcibly removed to the barren outlying areas known as the Cape Flats, that their houses in District Six were flattened by bulldozers, and that by 1982 the life of the community was over. The cleared land was largely left empty afterwards, which is its own kind of statement. The museum that carries the district's name was built around what former residents kept: their own records, photographs and memories of a place the state tried to take off the map.
History District Six 1966 Cape Town
Source: District Six Museum: About District Six
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The saxophonist on "Mannenberg" was born in District Six in 1944. His family was moved to Manenberg in 1969 under the Group Areas Act, and the township name became his own.
Music District Six 1944–1998 Cape Town
Source: South African History Online: Basil Coetzee · Wikipedia: Basil Coetzee
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Martin records that the Green Point Track was closed to the troupes in 1968 after Green Point was declared white, that marches in central Cape Town were banned in 1976 under the Riotous Assemblies Act, and that the 2 January parades were suspended from 1977 until 1989.
Traditions Cape Town 1977–1989 Cape Town
Source: Denis-Constant Martin, Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (African Minds, 2013) · South African History Online: The Cape Minstrels, Origins and Evolution of Tweede Nuwe Jaar in the Cape
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Cape jazz emerged in Cape Town from the late 1950s. Valmont Layne of the University of the Western Cape, who wrote his doctorate on goema, describes it as the rhythmic essence of collective life among the poor and traces its links to Cape jazz.
Music District Six 1959 Cape Town
Source: Denis-Constant Martin: Sounding the Cape (African Minds, 2013), p. 353 · University of the Western Cape: Art activist Layne probes goema music for his doctorate
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Jol means a party or a good time. The Dictionary of South African English derives it from Afrikaans and says the South African English pronunciation reflects either the Afrikaans accent of working-class Cape Coloured communities or an Englished form.
Language & Slang Cape Town 1957 South Africa-wide
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South African History Online dates the planning of Manenberg to November 1964 and its establishment to 1966. Between 1966 and 1970, 5,621 dwellings were built there for a population of 33,922.
Places Manenberg 1966–1970 Cape Town
Source: South African History Online: Manenberg, Cape Flats · John Edwin Mason, "Mannenberg": Notes on the Making of an Icon and Anthem, African Studies Quarterly 9(4), 2007
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