6 December 2001
analysis
Building was specifically designed to induce a sense of isolation in visitors, says director Christopher Till
FROM the car park the museum to one of the most tragic periods in SA history does not look like much.
Across the road to the right there is a casino. To the left an amusement park with an array of rides where thrillseekers scream on the way down a rollercoaster at the Gold Reef City complex, southwest of Johannesburg's city centre. Outside a red brick wall with a notice in black and white: Apartheid Museum.
Walk through the gates and the visitor is confronted by the realities of a system in which racial segregation was institutionalised and challenging it could mean detention or death.
After four years of preparation, the museum opened its doors last month.
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 postapartheid SA.
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 National Party regime, was unleashed on June 16 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 painful memories. Three of my friends disappeared during that time," Nhlapo said.
"But it makes me proud to work here and I'm not angry any longer. It was a long time ago," he says.
He wants the school children who visit the museum to learn and remember in a way that evokes the words of SA's most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela: "To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."
Inside the building, which director Christopher Till says was specifically designed to give the visitor a sense of isolation, there is an array of multimedia exhibitions tracing the history of SA from 1888, when gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand.
But its probably not so much the photographs or even the armoured car with a police surveillance video playing inside that hits home as much as the collection of more than 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 one of the darkest periods in SA's history, ending with the release of Nelson Mandela and the advent of democracy in 1994.
"It is 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 is a notable absence of colour. The concrete building and stone walls have an almost prisonlike feel to them.
Till says that it compares favourably with other museums of this nature around the world, notably the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
He says the Apartheid Museum falls into the same category as an exhibition at Robben Island prison near Cape Town. There Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in jail with other veterans in the struggle.
What make this museum different from others built after 1994 is the creation of time and space in which 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 is a room where visitors can record their memories on video, some of which will be played back as part of the exhibition.
"It's 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 Hendri Fourie. He had just taken 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.
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