JAN HENNOP, Johannesburg | Wednesday
FROM the car-park, the museum to one of the most tragic periods in South African history does not look like much.
Across the road to the right, there’s a casino. To the left, an amusement park with an array of rides where thrill seekers scream on the way down an ultramodern roller-coaster at the Gold Reef City complex, about five kilometres southwest of Johannesburg’s city centre.
Outside, a red brick wall simply states in black and white: Apartheid Museum.
But walk through the gates and the visitor is suddenly confronted by the realities of a system in which racial segregation was institutionalised and challenging it could mean detention or even death.
After four years of preparation, the museum opened its doors at the end of November.
Back then it started off as part of a package offered by a consortium to win a bid for one of the country’s casino licences. Now it has the potential of becoming one of the most powerful symbols in post-apartheid South Africa.
Seun Nhlapo was a 10-year-old pupil at a black school north of Pretoria when the full fury against Afrikaans, the language of the regime, was unleashed in June 1976.
Today, the 36-year-old electrician is putting the final touches to a section where a picture of activist Hector Petersen dying in the arms of a fellow student after being shot by police in 1976, is immortalised on the wall.
“To me it brings back the painful memories. Three of my friends disappeared during that time,” said Nhlapo.
“But it makes me proud to work here, and I’m not angry any longer. It was a long time ago,” he adds.
He wants to see school children who visit the museum to learn and remember in a way that invokes the words of South Africa’s most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, on a wall at the entrance.
“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in way that respects and enhances the freedom of others,” the Mandela quote reads.
Inside the building, which director Christopher Till says was specifically designed to give the visitor the sense of isolation, there is an array of multimedia exhibitions tracing the history of South Africa from just before the turn of the 19th century, when gold was discovered on the Rand.
But its probably not so much the photographs, or even the eerie display of a armoured car with a police surveillance video playing inside, that hits home as much as the collection of over 130 hangman’s nooses – one for each person executed under the system — or the three solitary confinement cells.
A walk through the museum takes the visitor on a one-and-a-half hour trip through some the darkest periods in South Africa’s history, ending with the release of Nelson Mandela and the advent of democracy in the country in 1994.
“Its supposed to be an emotional journey. The design of the building specifically had apartheid in mind,” says Till.
Except for the occasional green tree, there’s a notable absence of colour. The building is constructed of concrete and the walls made of stone, with an almost prison-like feel to it.
Till says it compares favourably with other museums of this nature around the world, notably the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
H says the Apartheid Museum falls into the same category as an exhibition at the Robben Island prison, off the Cape Town coast.
There, Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in jail, together with other veterans in the struggle against apartheid.
What make this museum different from others erected after 1994, is the creation of time and space to reflect and, like the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, give victims and perpetrators a chance to tell their stories.
At the exit, there’s a room where visitors can record their memories on video, some of which will be played back as part of the exhibition.
“Its not an indictment of anybody, but a story that needs to be told in this country,” says Till.
“It’s shocking and brilliant at the same time. We grew up under a system but we were never really exposed to it,” says 23-year-old Hendri Fourie.
He had just finished the museum tour with his friend Eunice Retief. Both are Afrikaners in their early twenties who grew up under apartheid.
“In a museum like this there is a feeling of the deliberate void of emotional freedom that a system like apartheid brought. I would recommend that every South African pay a visit here,” he said. – AFP