The Apartheid Museum: Piecing it together

Annette and I spent five hours on Thanksgiving Day in the Apartheid Museum. We enter through separate doors. Annette has the ticket for the white door. Mine is non-white. The entry cooridor is a cage, oversized citizenship documents (in the case of whites) an identity cards (in the case of non-whites) dangling from behind metal bars. These cards determined one's place in Apartheid society.

We are momentarily reunited on an outdoor walkway. We walk among life size photos of South Africans posted on mirrors. At various points, we each see glimpses of ourselves among the crowd. Other than the two of us, nobody is around. We look over the Johannesburg skyline and the industrial mechanics of the gold mining that brought this city into being.

I enter a round room on the life of Robert Sobukwe, the first president of the Pan African National Congress. It outlines his life, time in prison, exile and death. Various books and personal effects are sealed in glass cases. I have never heard of him before. I think about how difficult it must have been to put this museum together. It is such recent past. In some instances, less than twenty years. Most of the people featured in the museum as heroes are still alive. And undoubtedly, most of the South African visitors who aren't here as part of a school group, lived through this time. Families must object to their portrayals. Surely some people swear it happened differently. That other figures were larger and those featured here less prominent. Even the creation of the museum must have been messy politics, nevermind the creation of the modern South African state.

The exhibit holds Sobukwe up as a moral leader. One panel talks about his leadership qualities. It is there in the Ford Foundation-funded temporary Mandela exhibit as well, written under a photo of a free gray-haired Mandela talking with Larry King. Larry King asks him about his ego and Mandela says all of South Africa is his ego. He is a leader only for a collective. Elsewhere, this theme is built upon. Written on a wall toward the end of the exhibit, it says a true leader must be truly in love with his people, each and every one of them. And that may just be true for Mandela. "Leader, Comrade, Negotiator, Prisoner, Stateman," is the title of his exhibit. Quotes from interviews with his jailers talk about how he won them over at Robben Island with his deep respect for the dignity of every human being.

The exhibit's entrance features seven Warhol-esque portraits of Mandela, from a pudgy bearded revolutionary young man to a gray-haired suit-wearing statesman. It talks about the influence of communism and Gandhi. And his break with the African National Congress when he publicly pushed for militance, and later convinced the ANC to pursue violence in addition to non-violence as a tactic. As I wander through it, the exhibit becomes brighter and more colorful. It is decorated by the sounds of children singing "Nelson Mandela" from the recording of a choir, presumably from his inauguration. I find a few familiar photos in the corridor, images depicted in Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Mandela rallying support for the Springboks during the Rugby World Cup.

We wander into the pre-history of Apartheid. It starts with a film about the history of South Africa. It first introduces the idea that white South Africans claimed a god-given right to the land. This justification of colonialism says each (European) people has a niche to rule a particular place. The white South African minority seemed to rule in fear of the black majority. With less than 11% of the population, they had to maintain control to maintain power and continue their rule. As other African countries cast off their European rulers, Afrikaaners and British came together to tighten the reigns on non-white South Africans. This yielded to a complicated system of racial political identity. More than a dozen classifications included Asian, Malay, coloured, Indian, and others. Review boards made up entirely of white men reviewed up to 1,000 appeals from individuals for racial re-classification. Maybe 30% were successful, but not one black person became white.

The museum then leads me through a corridor focused on life for black South Africans during Apartheid. Well-written articles are blown up on the wall. They cover everything from the lives of domestic workers and their white women bosses who lunch to discuss "how to handle them." Entire neighborhoods were torn down, people forcibly removed, in the name of Apartheid. Soweto was created in the 1950s for blacks because their current homes were torn down for developments. One article explains that this did not invoke imminent domain, because imminent domain requires the government's reclamation of land to be for a greater good. And this simply was to maintain Apartheid and more deeply enforce racial segregation.

And the state-sponsored oppression seemed to only become more blatant. A room with more than 100 nooses hanging fromt he ceiling is there to remind us of the political executions. Six solitary posters hang underneath the nooses. Each tells the story of one of those who were killed through newspaper articles, photos and quotes. Several are white. A video shows the head of the department of corrections denying any knowledge of how Steven Biko died in prison. He denies that it was a hunger strike or the brutality of his captors. I begin to hum Peter Gabriel song from the Playing for Change album my mom bought all of us chilren, the week of my wedding, the week she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. "Biko, because..." Another video shows an interview with him. He looks almost geeky with his glasses, sweater, protruding front teeth with a little gap. But he explains brilliantly why Africa for Africans is more than just a slogan.

The following room is concrete and empty. Three cells line one wall, each no more than two meters long. Light comes in from the top, which is maybe four meters high. I look up and think to myself that I am sure the real ceilings on the solitary confinement cells in Robben Island were much lower. I will find out soon enough, I conclude.

Soon I find myself face to face with the tire of an armored car. A Casspir. It is half tank. It is nine-tenths tank. Just missing the turret. These became common sights in Soweto. Like National Guard Hummers in September 2005 in New Orleans. Manned by white people with orders to stop looting and violence without much in the way of empathy or understanding for the local population. It started when the government pushed to have all schools teach in Afrikaans in Soweto (and presumably elsewhere as well), a language most Sowetan youth did not know. They boycotted school. Then things got violent. It went on for two corridors and close to two decades. The ultimate goal became to make South Africa ungovernable. That is what the revolution requires. Not Civil War. Just ungovernability. Tens of thousands died in the process. But it forced the Apartheid government to free Mandela and negotiate an end to Apartheid and a new government. Supposedly, this was the only toppling of a European colonial regime in Africa without civil war.

I am greeted by a door to a small area outside with a vending machine. "Halfway point," a sign says. Wow!

Much of the second half of the museum is the pathway from negotiations to a new South Africa. I sit on a bench in front of four television screens. Each has an interview with a negotiator who took part in the creation of the new government. A white negotiator recounts how he explained to a news reporter that the white people did not lose, that they were becoming free by the end of Apartheid as well. I think about the security and electric fences in Parkhurst. Even with Aprartheed over, they are not completely free. Behind the television screens are huge projections of old news clippings of the violence that was happening outside of the negotiating rooms. That is the backdrop.

I reunite with Annette near the Bill of Rights. On the opposite wall is a sign for the declaration of intent, which started and guided the negotiations. But nothing is there. Four nails mark where it once was, or perhaps where it once was planned to be. Then there are huge photos of people voting for the first time. One is an aerial photo that shows a line snaking around on itself multiple times. It is a boa constrictor around the voting booth, easily three kilometers long. Another shows a jubilant Desmond Tutu casting his ballot. Another shows a blind and handicapped man assisted by a younger man, also in the act of voting.

Then comes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A panel expains that it wasn't perfect, but it was historic. And it is a model Annette and the folks at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation back in Mississippi are looking to. But the exhibit is empty. I stare at the blank white walls and wonder why. Perhaps there are still too many people unwilling to face the truth with the courage required for reconciliation. Perhaps the wounds are still too raw.

I think South Africa is what 1970s Mississippi must have felt like. Legal segregation ended in the last twenty years. And the messy business of building an integrated society on top of those scars is still fledgling. I expected to leave the Apartheid Museum depressed. But instead, I am inspired. Inspired ot be a part of building a multi-racial society out of these ashes, making the promise of the rainbow nation--a promise made when I was a teenager--a reality.