South Africa
Director of District Six Museum

 @bonita_bennett
districtsix.co.za/

Bonita Bennett

Bonita was appointed as director of the District Six Museum in 2008. Her professional training is as an educator with strong anti-apartheid activist roots. She completed both her under- and post-graduate degrees at the University of Cape Town and her 2005 masters dissertation focused on the narratives of people who had been forcibly removed from various areas in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Both her parents are from District Six, and she grew up in township called Bonteheuwel together with other families who were forcibly removed, when the areas where they lived were declared for ‘whites only’.

The District Six Museum provides a wonderful platform from which to confront issues both directly to the affected community and their descendants, as well as to raise awareness about the indivisibility of human rights, thus sensitising people to issues which call for their solidarity and empathy.