South Africa’s Apartheid Museum is still evolving in trying to document the country’s brutal past and the complex history of white racist oppression and the black liberation movement.
Christopher Till, the director of the museum, said the gut-wrenching images and sounds were reflective of a tough history.
”Apartheid was not calm and quiet, South Africa was not calm and quiet. It was in turmoil. It’s a tough place because it’s a tough story,” said Hill.
Apartheid ended about 10 years ago in South Africa, which has since then painstakingly strived to become a real ”rainbow nation” where all people are equal irrespective of colour, religion, gender or sexual identity.
Texts, photographs and recordings record in chronological order the evolution of white racist rule — which was formally in place between 1948 and 1991 — and based on the classification of people according to their race.
The arrogance and the myopia of the erstwhile ruling class shows up in an extract from a parliamentary debate in 1950.
It runs: ”The white man is the master in South Africa, and the white man, from the very nature of his origins, from the very nature of his birth, and from the very nature of his guardianship, will remain master in South Africa to the end.”
Then there is a photograph of Steve Biko, a martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle who was killed on September 12, 1977, while in police detention along with the amazing reaction of then police minister Jimmy Kruger.
”I am not glad and I am not sorry about Mr Biko. It leaves me cold,” Kruger said.
There are also moving testimonies to the anguish felt by leading members of the anti-apartheid struggle such as Desmond Tutu, who later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. A video shows Tutu, his face lined with emotion, speaking at the funeral of a black activist in the black Johannesburg township of Soweto.
”God we do believe that you are in charge. God, we do believe that we will be free. But why must the cost be so high,” Tutu says.
The musuem’s origins are somewhat unique — it followed a government offer to private companies to build a casino and an amusement park in a suburb of Johannesburg.
The rider was that anyone who got the contract would also have to finance a project that was linked to tourism and would also create jobs.
The consortium which was awarded the contract, financed the construction of the museum, which was built in a record 18 months and opened in 2001.
Museum director Till said: ”We were able to fast-track something which might have taken years and it was a very positive thing.”
The high-ceilinged building combines stark materials — concrete, steel and brick; gigantic black and white photographs; and a wierd but sonorous cacophony to reproduce the tensions of the past.
It has however drawn some criticism.
Helen Suzman, a former liberal lawmaker and for years the only discordant and dissenting voice in the heart of the pro-apartheid parliament, has deplored the lack of any reference to the white South African intellectuals and writers who often paid a high price for publicly airing their opposition to apartheid.
But Till said the museum would be in a permament state of evolution.
”This is a work in progress,” he said.
The 35 000-odd texts and other items are being reviewed. And a section of the building will now be devoted to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconcilation Commission — which was set up to heal the country’s deep scars.
The museum is not only a cathartic reminder of the past but also a lesson for young South Africans, Till underlined.
”The youth in South Africa today has no idea of apartheid. It’s extraordinary for us to see how the kids don’t even have a vague sense of what it was like in such a short period of time,” he said. – Sapa-AFP