Apartheid Museum

There is no more thankless task in the universe than ordering customized T-shirts for a large, disparate group of people with exacting standards. Whenever I asked myself why I undertook it, the answer eventually emerged...so that Diversity Committee would have the funds to sponsor a field trip to the Apartheid Museum for the groups doing their pre-service training, eager naifs expecting soon to swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers.

This time I actually got to go to the Apartheid Museum in the course of the training; last time, sadly, the organization of a braai (South African style barbeque) monopolized my attention. The Apartheid Museum, located in Johannesburg, is a rough equivalent to one of the larger Holocaust museums, though as far as I know it's the only one of its kind, excepting a few small, location-specific historical museums in Cape Town and Durban. It's an overwhelming experience that the few hours we're able to allocate can't possibly be sufficient for.

Apartheid, as a review/introduction, was a government regime in South Africa during the 20th century where the white minority oppressed and exploited the black minority. Its closest equivalent in the US was the pre-CIvil Rights Act South when Jim Crow laws and the like reigned, though sometime the German Jewish ghettoes during the Second World War seem like a more direct comparison. In fact, concentration camps predate both Apartheid and the Holocaust; there were used by English South African settlers to control and confine Dutch South African settlers, who are more often called Boers or Afrikaners.

The Anglo-Boer war, only the last in a series of encounters between those two sides, was fought between the two white ethnic groups in South Africa around the turn of the 20th century. The English won, and South Africa has since been a member of the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire. Oppression and exploitation of the natives, in this case a number of unrelated and often rivaling African groups whose histories are interesting in themselves, was par for the course, but not a particularly distinctive issue for the ruling English minority. The English secured their position as the economic elite of South Africa, while letting their interest in political control of the civil government languish relatively. As such, though they had comparatively little economic or cultural power, the Boer minority came into political power within several decades of their humiliating defeat and not too long after, enacted Apartheid. A psychological reading of this history would suggest that Apartheid was a method of giving the relatively disempowered Boers absolute control over a group even more disempowered than they.

Apartheid's restrictions were comparable to patterns borne through in the antebellum and postbellum American South, and Europe during the Nazi regime. A strict set of four racial groups was established: white, colored, Indian, and black. Even groups that did not fit into the eponymous descriptions were given equivalent designations--Japanese South Africans were white, Chinese South Africans were black. Certain areas were designated as residential areas for certain racial groups, and pass books were required to pass from one area to another. Whites, which included both the Anglo and Boer ethnic/linguistic groups, monopolized both political and economic power, and voting was restricted by race. Unimaginable violence and exploitation was carried out under the aegis of Apartheid.

Apartheid began to wane in popularity during the 1980's, and officially ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela, formerly a freedom fighter and long-term political prisoner, became president. International boycotts of South Africa and gradually evolving cultural and social ideologies, as well as internal pressure by resistance groups, all played their part in its downfall. Following Mandela's election, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission took testimony from many, thereby preserving records of both perpetrators and victims of acts of violence and exploitation.

The Apartheid Museum covers all of this history, beginning briefly with the long history of South Africa and jumping in in earnest with the ratification of Apartheid and telling narrative after narrative of those who lived under the regime. Though interspersed with the occasional sculptural memorial or historical video footage, most of the museum is experienced through reading. The narratives are diverse, though not exhaustive, and focus primarily on the black-white struggle, but they are incredibly powerful. I was glad to have went.

Afterwards we went to a nearby mall, because that is what Peace Corps Volunteers do, and the trainees were desperate for some exposure to fluorescent lighting and American food.

It should be noted that there are no citations on my history lesson for a reason, I am writing this from memory while eating dinner, not while paging through a history book.