Date: February 17, 2008 10:41:15 AM HST
February 9, 2008 – Johannesburg
I’ve fallen a week behind in writing these journal entries. My days have been so full that before I’m able to write down everything that needs to be said from one day’s experience, I’m thrown headfirst into the next day’s mind/heart-blowing adventure. In the case of my visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg (Jo’burg), I’ve needed the week to even begin to get back to some kind of emotional balance. I recall writing that my visit to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis in 2002 was the most emotionally powerful museum I had ever visited. The Apartheid Museum is its equal.
I knew that this museum would pack a punch as soon as I purchased my ticket. The museum has two entrances: “White” and “Non-White;” visitors enter whichever entrance is randomly stamped on their tickets. As a “Non-White” visitor, I entered a long hall “decorated” with signs such as that reading “Europeans Only,” and with enlarged photos of ID passes which non-whites were required to carry wherever they went during the apartheid years. At the end of the hall, a life-size photo of four serious-looking white men sitting behind a long desk put me in the shoes of someone approaching the Classification Board, which determined the race to which the applicant belonged. Sometimes members of the same family would be assigned different racial classifications, the consequence of which could mean that they would not be permitted to live together. In such cases, they could appeal to the Classification Board to attempt to correct the mistake.
These Pass and Classification Laws constituted only two of the 148 laws and decrees enacted under apartheid, the object of which was to keep whites in a socially and economically superior position by keeping the blacks, Indians, and coloreds (mixed races) in inferior positions. The effect of these laws was to dehumanize the non-white races, which in turn made it easier for the whites to pass even more dehumanizing laws. How else could the government not only force blacks en mass from areas they had occupied for years, but move them to vast tracts of barren, dusty lands on which were constructed only latrines (and not enough of them)? As I went from one heartbreaking exhibit to another, I grew more amazed and impressed that when the majority of blacks took over after apartheid ended, they were able to refrain from slaughtering – or even discriminating against – the white minority.
The exhibits, consisting of photos, text, artifacts, and video footage shown on large and small screens, are arranged chronologically and in meticulous detail. Presented alongside the evidence of overwhelming repression, the evidence of resistance serves to emphasize the heroism of the thousands of ordinary citizens who fought that repression, from Nelson Mandela to the anonymous schoolchildren of the Suweto Township, scores of whom died in the June 16, 1976 uprising. (This uprising, by the way, launched youth to the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement, where they joined union members in spreading the resistance.)
I can’t describe the hundreds (thousands?) of photos, artifacts, and written descriptions in the museum, but several overwhelmed me enough to warrant mention: the three, three-foot by eight-foot, bare, windowless solitary confinement cells; and the room with 133 hangman’s nooses suspended from the ceiling in seven rows of nineteen – one for each political prisoner executed – most immediately come to mind.
But for sheer malevolence, nothing tops the yellow “Casspir,” a thirty-foot long by twelve-foot high armored vehicle used to ferry police and troops into demonstrating or rioting crowds. With tires four feet in diameter, the vehicle appears to have had enough room to hold up to two dozen men, with enough headroom for some of them to stand up inside so as to better level their guns at the surrounding crowds. The smell of old oil wafting from the “Hippo,” as it was called, added another dimension to the assault it made on my senses. Climbing into the vehicle, I was able to view police surveillance footage on a TV, at full volume, complete with police whistles, of one of the massive anti-apartheid demonstrations in Suweto Township. It felt like the next best (?) thing to being there. Though I didn’t feel sorry for them, I did understand how afraid the men in this Hippo must have been.
As I toured the exhibits, I thought often of two important differences between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the civil rights struggle in the US. Those struggling in the U.S. remained peaceful in the face of all sorts of provocations, while the leadership of the ANC (African National Congress) adopted targeted violence as one of its tactics. This became understandable to me as I considered the other major difference between the two situations: African-Americans in the U.S. constituted a minority of the population (hence the emphasis on pacifism); in South Africa, non-whites made up the vast majority of the population (hence the emphasis on targeted violence).
But I am left with one overriding similarity between the two groups of oppressed peoples. Given the odds against success, I consider those who placed their lives on the line in the 1950s and ’60s to be the greatest heroes in our history. I am even more impressed with how few of those who endured discrimination, death threats, and beatings appear to be bitter towards their former oppressors – maybe it’s because they can look back on their achievements with the pride of knowing that they changed history. Similarly, I look with wonder and awe at the black Africans who forsook violence and accepted Nelson Mandela’s Peace and Reconciliation plan after they were finally able to overthrow apartheid. They, too, ended up heroes on the right side of history.