Two museums, two unreconciled South African histories

A woman holds a poster outside the house of former South African President Nelson Mandela after news of his death in Houghton, South Africa on December 6, 2013. PHOTO | REUTERS 

In Summary

• The Voortrekker Museum would not want its history drowned out by the voices of the new South Africa. Freedom Park represented the history of black people that apartheid almost destroyed.

By ALICE WAIRIMU NDERITU
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In November 2013, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory convened a group I was part of to talk about Mandela’s legacy in a South Africa that was turning 20 in 2014. We dwelt on Madiba’s
statement.

“In the life of any individual, family, community or society, memory is of fundamental importance. It is the fabric of identity”. We read with fascination Mandela’s Robben Island diary entries and beautifully handwritten love letters to Winnie.

This conversation was more important than any us knew then. In less than a month, on December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela, whose legacy we discussed as he lay ailing and separated from us by a wall, would be gone.

Museums featured in our conversation. Visitors to South Africa are familiar with Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum’s depiction of the creation of apartheid by the National Party in 1948, legalising racial segregation.

The Museum offers a total apartheid experience with entry tickets designating visitors as either black or white. If designated black, going through the museum becomes difficult, frequently stopped by “Whites Only” signs. Those with tickets designated as white can go to any part of the museum.

Visitors are allowed both black and white experiences so it’s possible to view film footage, primary sources and artefacts that provide evidence of the systematic racial oppression non-white people suffered. The Museum tour ends by celebrating the end of apartheid.

Our organisers took us to the Voortrekker and Freedom Park museums, both in Pretoria.

The Voortrekker museum celebrates Afrikaner history, particularly the wagon migration of Dutch-speaking settlers named The Great Trek of voortrekkers, which means pioneers.

Freedom Park Museum honours South Africa’s heroes as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Museum tells the story of Africa as told by Africans, through creation legends, ancestors, African civilisations influencing the world, colonisation, apartheid, and resistance leading to Constitutional democracy.

Having assumed South Africa’s globally touted reconciliation as given, the two narratives were bewildering. The museums stood on two hills, divided by a valley, facing each other, proving the existence of two South Africas. Two histories eyeballed each other, none willing to blink first. Where is the reconciliation museum that represents everyone? We asked.

One of my colleagues, Anna, whose family had been tragically separated by the Berlin Wall for decades, and I had a conversation with two senior officials from the museums.

Both museums, Anna and I said, tried to give clear and simple answers to complex history. However, the Voortrekker Monument had a “hidden story” in the artefacts beside the official one.

On display was an “eternal flame” for those who brought the light of civilisation to Africa and posters of Africans who had been living, apparently “uncivilised” in these areas for 6,000 years. Africans were portrayed in subservient positions, especially at the Battle of Blood River.

Despite South Africa having nine African languages among the country’s 11 official languages, none of the descriptions on the entrance plaque were in African languages. Rather they were in English, Dutch and Afrikaans.

Freedom Park told the story of the liberation struggle through ANC eyes with scarcely any detail of atrocities between Africans. There was not much on the role of whites who fought against apartheid. The two senior officials surprised us.

Telling each other’s histories was difficult and changing exhibitions a long board decision process, they said. The Voortrekker Museum would not want its history drowned out by the voices of the new South Africa. Freedom Park represented the history of black people that apartheid had almost succeeded in destroying.

Both museums knew neither made sense without the other. Two South African histories existed, and, on either side of the actual Blood River, stand two memorials on the same event, one Afrikaaner the other Zulu. Apartheid’s legacy of structural racism is not easy.

Wairimu Nderitu is the author of Beyond Ethnicism and Kenya: Bridging Ethnic Divides. E-mail: info@mdahalo.org