District Six Revisited

District Six Revisited is set to become the definitive collection of photographs of this vibrant suburb in Cape Town, whose destruction in terms of the apartheid 'Group Areas Act' became a symbol of the inhumanity suffered by the people of South Africa. The book attempts to reconstruct the spirit of the place from important historic photographs, some of which are published here for the first time.In February 1966, the National Party government announced that District Six was to be razed to the ground in order to make space for a new 'white area'. George Hallett and Clarence Coulson produced an intimate portrait of the area before the bulldozers came in.In the 1960s Jackie Heyns ran a weekly column in the Golden City Post called 'Aunt Sammy's', which he illustrated with his own photographs. The columns - three of which are reproduced in the book - were based on the real Aunty Sammy, a shebeen owner living in District Six with her white husband and a rich source of local stories.Gavin Jantjes was a student at Michaelis Art School, University of Cape Town, who lived in District Six; his pictures were taken during his wanderings in the area.Finally Wilfred Paulse, a free-lance photographer, covered the district shortly before its destruction, along with the bleak new developments on the Cape Flats outside Cape Town, where most of the inhabitants ended up against their will.

George Hallett and Peter McKenzie are both freelance photographers. George Hallett is also the author of Portraits of African Writers (2006) and co-editor of Women by Women: 50 Years of Women's Photography in South Africa (2006). An exhibition based on Portraits of African Writers has been scheduled for the Birmingham Library to celebrate 'Black History Month' in October 2007.