Johannesburg Apartheid Museum: A Powerful And Educational Experience

The Johannesburg Apartheid Museum, assembled by a multi-disciplinary team comprising curators, architects, filmmakers, historians, and designers, leads visitors on an emotional journey through the past of South Africa and the present, telling the history of a state-sponsored system that was solely based on racism.

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After spending a few hours in the Apartheid Museum, you will feel as if you were in the townships of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. You were fighting off teargas or police bullet canisters in the streets, marching or “toyi-toyiing” with hundreds of schoolchildren, as well as carrying the corpse of a “comrade” to the nearby home.

The museum is now one of Johannesburg’s most popular tourist attractions and is a mandatory visit for tourists and residents alike.

The museum, complete with huge blown-up photos, metal cages, and monitors that play footage shot in South Africa before 1994, is located near The Gold Reef City casino and theme park, five kilometres south of Joburg’s town centre.

The museum’s first exhibit should focus on apartheid South Africa. It should have opened in Johannesburg, which was the place where, at the beginning of the early 20th century, there was a sudden influx of individuals of every race from all over the world due to a variety of reasons, mostly related to gold and war.

The museum was conceived as part of a gambling bid in 1996. Bidders had to incorporate the social responsibility aspect in their bid. The winning consortium announced they would construct the museum and spend around R80 million, delivering on their pledge.

The museum covers approximately 6,000 square meters of seven hectares of the veld as well as indigenous vegetation, including pathways and a lake that run alongside an impressive, stark building.

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“The combination of the natural elements and the finish of construction, such as concrete, plaster red brick, galvanised and rusted steel makes for a harmonious interaction with the building and its surrounding environment,” says John Kani, a well-known South African actor and the chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees.

A multi-disciplinary team of curators and filmmakers, historians and curators, museologists and designers was gathered to create the museum’s exhibits. The museum attempted to create animations of the apartheid tale by blowing up photographs, artefacts, newspaper clippings, artefacts, film footage, and many more.

Tickets to the museum are credit card-sized plastic cards that show either “Non-white” or “White.” If you have one in your hands, you’ll know that you’ve started a frightening journey.

When you pass through the turnstiles on your journey through history from the early inhabitants of South Africa to the birth of democracy in the country in 1994, cages welcome you. Inside the cells, you will find blown-up copies of the first identification cards and identity books, as well as the infamous passbooks as well as identities that were racialized.

The rest of the museum is the same:

• A large police armoured blue and yellow vehicle, dubbed”Casper” or “Casper,” where you can relax and view footage shot from the inside of the car as it travels through townships.
• The roof is dangling on the top, 121 nooses representing political prisoners who were hanged during apartheid.
• A room on June 16, 1976, features a curving wall of screens showing footage of the day from across the globe.
• A cage filled with weapons employed by security forces to protect apartheid.
• A remarkable 1961 BBC interview with Nelson Mandela when he was under the protection of authorities, as footage of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd speaking to a crowd in English in which he explained how this country would be run only when its people were not separated.

Sometimes, during Johannesburg excursions, you are overwhelmed by screens and the sounds and images they project. The museum guides you through rooms in a series of geometric forms, with some having tall roofs, others dark and gloomy, and others with a view of other images hidden behind cages or bars that remind you of the terror of apartheid.

When you realize you’re not able to handle the assault of your senses, you find yourself in a calm area, complete with a glass box that includes a copy of the post-apartheid Constitution and pebbles scattered across the floor.

You can support those who suffered under apartheid by putting your pebble on the pile. Then, you walk into an open grassland that has paths that will lead you to a small lake. You may require this moment of reflection.

Additionally, there is a recording studio where guests can record their stories of apartheid if they have any and for other people to listen.