The Quiet Demise of Zonnebloem

Sometime earlier this year, I arranged a meeting at St Marks District Six and when I gave people directions I told them to follow the signs to Zonnebloem. I was a bit surprised therefore when on my way there, I saw the sign had been changed to District Six. This was the original 1867 name of the area close to the Cape Town Central Business District (CBD) which for over a century housed a mixed community and then was declared to be for whites only in 1966.

It gave me a bit of a lift - Wow! the City had given the area back its rightful name - or so I thought.....

A few weeks later, I am walking around the Cape Town Art Fair and I chance upon a video made by Haroon Gunn-Salie. And what is it about? It is a film of 2 hoodies going out at night with ladders and rolls of wide tape replacing all the Zonnebloem signs. I am rather amazed to see this evidence of what actually had transpired. Far from this being a decision taken by the City Fathers (or in Cape Town's case, the Mothers) it turns out to be a "site-specific installation" by a young artist and his friends. And do you know? Its been up since August 2013 and not a single one has been removed! and I guarantee none will be. In addition it is probably illegal to do what Gunn-Salie did, but you will never hear of a court case about it. A terrible wrong - the apartheid government's forced removals in 1968 of thousands of people from a vibrant community - which was then euphemized by calling the area Zonnebloem (Sunflower) - was quietly addressed by a brilliant artist who sensed the time was right for a return to the place-name - "District Six". No-one has been offended or excluded by his action. In fact his works on the forced removals of District Six have won him great acclaim.

The University of Cape Town students currently protesting about the statue of Rhodes (Southern Africa's arch-colonialist) so prominently placed on campus, or even Max Price, the beleaguered Vice-Chancellor, could do a lot worse than consult with Haroon Gunn-Salie about what to do with the Rhodes statue and what to put in its place!