REDEFINING THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY-DRIVEN MUSEUMS: REFLECTIONS ON/OF DISPLACEMENT IN DISTRICT SIX MUSEUM, CAPE TOWN.

This paper proposes an approach to museum re-definition dilemma by looking at why museums emerge today, to which end, by which means, and how they engage with their stakeholders. I present a case study based on District Six Museum and neighborhood from Cape Town, South Africa. The museum was developed and maintained as a community museum in the post-apartheid era, by a community that has been forcibly removed and no longer exists as such. My study presents the Museum as it is today and relevant background information, together with an overview of traces of recent histories in the surrounding neighborhood. Together with literature findings on the role of this Museum in South Africa, these constitute the base of final reflections on how knowledge is produced and re-produced under overt and covert oppression regimes, i.e. before and post-colonial and post-apartheid, and how museums can and should rise from community engagement in order to mediate and interpret negative history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]