Over the past few weeks spent in South Africa, we
visited many museums in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. The first museum we visited was the Apartheid
Museum in Johannesburg, which stood to memorialize the traumatic recent history
of South Africa. Organized chronologically, the Apartheid Museum provided much
necessary context for our learning on the rest of our trip. Prior to entry into the museum, our tickets
randomly branded us as “whites” and “non-whites,” and we briefly went through
separate doors and followed different paths, a powerful means to introduce the
contents of the museum, enough to set the mood and provide insight to the
micro-injustices faced in everyday spaces under the apartheid rule, while
refraining from making people relive the experience entirely. The inside of the
museum, crafted intentionally to feel like a prison, consisted of a dark,
windowless space of brick and metal fences to symbolize the oppression and lack
of freedom that came with apartheid. One
of the most memorable parts of the museum was the room with the nooses hanging
from the ceiling remembering the killing of jailed political dissenters which
were put on record as “suicide by hanging.”
The location of this museum right next to the Gold Reef City Theme Park
felt like a strange juxtaposition, but overall, this represented one of many
informative experiences.
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| Entrance to Apartheid Museum |
The
next museum we visited in Johannesburg was a former prison at Constitution Hill.
This museum differed from the Apartheid Museum in that the space itself was the
actual site of past injustices. We spent most of our time here learning about
the Number Four prison cell, utilized for the non-white inmates which shows how
racial distinctions carry over even in prison.
The racial power structures were further maintained in the amount and
quality of food white prisoners received, as compared to the lesser and lower
quality meals that coloured (mixed black and white) and black prisoners got. People
like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela spent time in the Constitution Hill
prison. I thought the most interesting
part of Constitutional Hill is that right next to the old prison stands the new
Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa built in 1995. The reconstruction of this space at the end
of apartheid recognizes the past injustices of the old court and represents a
physical means of expressing a reform in attitudes toward justice. The court utilizes bricks from the old prison
in its structure as a reminder to learn from the past to build a better future.
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| Constitution Hill |
In
Cape Town, we visited a colorful neighborhood called Bo-Kaap right in the
center of the city which had its own Bo-Kaap Museum. This neighborhood is home to a large
population of people of the Cape Malay ethnic group. The Cape Malay people are descendants of
those brought by Europeans as workers from places like Indonesia, India, and
Madagascar who generally practice Islam.
Each of the houses in Bo-Kaap is painted vibrantly, as a generational
continuation of a means to claim ownership of their houses metaphorically after
being granted ownership of their houses after apartheid when non-whites could
not own these houses. However, the
Bo-Kaap Museum, located in one of these houses, maintains its original off-white
color. Smaller than the previous two
museums, the Bo-Kaap Museum recognizes the history of transition from workers
to residents of the community.
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| Bo-Kaap |
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| Bo-Kaap Museum |
When
in Cape Town, we visited the Robben Island Museum, another reformed prison. We took a boat ride for a half hour to reach
this actual island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in the maximum-security
prison and the government built a house for the solitary confinement of Robert
Sobukwe, a prominent anti-apartheid activist.
During apartheid, many political dissidents received prolonged sentences
here, cut off from the participation in the country by water in addition to the
constraints of being in a prison to begin with.
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| Entrance to Robben Island |
Lastly, we toured the District Six
Museum near the center of Cape Town. District
Six, an area formerly populated by mostly black and coloured South Africans,
was declared a white group area during apartheid, which prompted forced
removals and demolitions for the transformation, justified by the necessity of “redemption”
due to high disease rates and prevalence of crime such as gambling, sex work,
and shebeening. After District Six was
declared a white group area, 60,000 people were displaced between 1968 and
1980. To me, the museum felt like a
memorial shrine, with remnants of things found in the rubble of District Six
such as old furniture, toys, and photographs from people’s homes. The space represented a combination of
remembrance and history, with quilts and poems from District Six residents as
well as maps and articles pasted on the walls.
This museum was the most powerful to me because it made tangible the way
apartheid uprooted people from their lives and destroyed their homes and
communities. The museum structure was a
former church meant to house a temporary installment, which has continued for
years. Not created with tourists in
mind, the museum was not chronological and not commercialized like some of the
others, but rather meant to be a space of healing for the victims of forced
removals made by the victims to encapsulate their memories, tell their stories,
and heal with others who have experienced similar trauma.
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| Inside of District Six Museum |
*Note- These images were taken of a Google Image Search, not by me
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