Willie Bester (South African, born 1956) The clearance of William Street, District Six
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Notes : Provenance:The Baxter Gallery, Cape Town, circa 1989.As a young boy, Bester's Coloured family were forced to leave their farm and move to a homeland under the Group Areas Act, a law enacted by the National Party government under the apartheid regime, to define and enforce segregation. Under the same Act, on 11 February 1966, the government declared District Six, a vibrant residential area of Cape Town and home to over 60,000 Cape Malays, coloureds, blacks, whites and Asian people, a whites-only area. Residents were forcibly removed and relocated; their houses were bulldozed."I was angry...so I used my work as a tool against apartheid. I didn't care if it matched your curtains or not. My art was a chance to be heard."(The artist, as quoted in C. Spring, Angaza Afrika exhibition catalogue, pg. 62.)
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