District 9

AS you can imagine, South Africans like myself are very excited about the release of DISTRICT 9.
I've read some of the early reviews. The consensus seems to be great visuals and CGI, but some plot holes.
There's already a website discussing the physics of District 9: www.district9facts.com. Shades of Star Trek!
(The story, if you don't know it yet, concerns aliens stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa, who are packed into a refugee camp known as District 9.)
There are two references that reviewers haven't picked up on:

The aliens are known disparagingly as "Prawns," because of their crustacean appearance. But there's a second reason. Johannesburg (also known as Joburg, Joeys, Jozi and Egoli) is infested with cockroach-like insects known universally as Parktown Prawns. (Parktown is a suburb of Joburg.) They are a bit of a national joke, and a Joburger can always get a laugh by recounting an encounter with a Parktown Prawn. So calling the aliens "Prawns" implies they are filth and garbage dwellers like cockroaches.The Prawns are housed in an area known as District 9, and the movie is about attempts to move them out to a resettlement camp in the country. This is an obvious reference to District 6, a big open area at the foot of Table Mountain close to downtown Cape Town. It was home to the mixed-race community known here as Coloureds (it's not a pejorative term, -ish). The apartheid government moved them out en masse to soulless dormitory suburbs in the 60s and 70s in the name of slum clearance, and razed the buildings, except for the churches and mosques.

This destroyed the community links built up over generations, and is blamed for much of the alcoholism, drug abuse and gangsterism found among the Coloured population. Thirty years later, District 6 remains a grass-covered wilderness, despite being the best-located land in the city, because it is still a political hot potato.
(Sorry about the long history lesson, but some of you might like to know this stuff.)

Martin B