District 9 and District 6

It’s hard to accept no intentional link between the movie District 9 and the lost District 6, where freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants once lived. This vibrant, multi-cultural district in Cape Town was witness to forced removals in 1902, and again in 1966, when the apartheid government declared it a ‘whites-only’ area and bulldozed the area.

Today, the District Six Museum houses the stories, sentimentality, thoughts, images and urban building blocks of District 6. More than a museum, it is a safe place for the displaced community’s memories and closely linked myths in the making. Because as with District 9, there is a space where reality and non-reality merge and become something of its own kind. What remains is the impact of the story that needs telling, over and over, until we, as humans, learn to see ourselves as one. We are still so transfixed on our own differences, that District 9’s aliens had no chance when they sought refuge on earth.

District 9’s director, Neill Blomkamp, set the movie in Johannesburg, where he says the realness, visual richness and unique African flavour “would be incredibly difficult to replicate” anywhere else in the world. Born in and inspired by Johannesburg, it is no surprise that Blomkamp has produced a film that breaks new ground. The city, and indeed the country, seems to be the setting for doing just that - evident when you visit the District Six Museum.