Ebrahim Murat said a quiet prayer for his late wife moments before accepting the keys to his new home in Cape Town's District Six area from former president Nelson Mandela on Wednesday.
Murat and about 67,000 others were evicted from District Six, a once bustling neighborhood on the edge of Cape Town, 37 years ago after the racist apartheid government declared it a "whites only" area under the 1950 Group Areas act.
PHOTO: EPA
Former residents can now return to the land, although most of the buildings were destroyed, or be compensated for their lost property under the government's land claims program.
"My wife died last year a short while after we heard we could move back to our home where we raised our 15 children," Murat, 87, said at a ceremony celebrating the return.
"Now I will live here with my surviving four children," he said.
Mandela handed Murat the keys to his new home -- the first of many that will be given to about 4,000 families returning over the next three years.
For now only nine white double-story houses stand at the edge of a vacant field that was once a bustling suburb.
"I am very happy indeed to be here and able to give the keys to settle in peace and permanently in your new home with no threat of being removed like so many years ago," Mandela said to the crowd of about 3,000 who had gathered for the ceremony.
Mandela, who was given the symbolic keys to District Six, said he was surprised people wanted to hear him speak. "My colleagues say people won't want to listen to me because I am no longer in power. They say I am a has-been," he said to applause from the crowd.
The day also marked 14 years since Mandela's release from jail.
District Six was a vibrant predominantly mixed-race suburb on the outskirts of the city. It was established in 1867 and inhabited by traders, merchants and freed slaves.
Blacks were the first to be forcibly removed, in 1901, when the white government began enforcing racial divisions.
In 1966, the apartheid government declared it a "whites only" area.
The government gave eviction notices to the thousands who called "the Six" their home.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
RSS