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100-year-old woman returns to District Six five decades after being forced out

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Shariefa “Mama” Khan is the oldest of 108 people to receive a new home. (PHOTO: Misha Jordaan)
Shariefa “Mama” Khan is the oldest of 108 people to receive a new home. (PHOTO: Misha Jordaan)

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.

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