GOING HOME AT LAST

At 100, Shariefa is thrilled to be returning to Cape Town’s District Six after 53 long years

- PIETER VAN ZYL

IT’S a place of memories – of hard work, family fellowship, unspeakable sadness and the cruelty of a political system that displaced people with impunity.

For four decades Shariefa “Mama” Khan lived in District Six with her husband, Dawood, and their children, running the Bombay Café at 238 Hanover Street.

But in 1968 residents of the famously vibrant Cape Town neighbourhood were forced out of their homes by the Group Areas Act and Shariefa and her family were sent to Rylands Estate on the Cape Flats – 12,6 km away, far from the mountain, the sea and the people they’d been surrounded by for 40 years.

When they walked out of their shop, she says, her husband left everything as it was. “All the fixtures and furniture, everything stayed behind in that shop,” she says. “He didn’t want to be reminded of that life.”

Dawood is long gone now, his life cut short by a heart attack in 1978 at the age of 63, leaving Shariefa to care for their children.

But how he’d love to be here today, his family say. Because 53 years after they were forcibly removed from their home, Shariefa has received the keys to a two-bedroom house in her beloved District Six.

She’s among the 108 beneficiaries in phase 3 of the government’s restitution programme who are receiving houses in the redevelopment of the historic neighbourhood.

Last month the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development contacted the family with the good news. Although their home and shop had long been bulldozed to the ground, Shariefa would become the recipient of a new house.