Red earth, sweat and money were the cornerstones to build the City of Gold, Gold Reef City, a “coral reef” where to dig to make the whites rich and to make the blacks weary of fatigue. Mines, dusty roads and garbage were the foundation stone to build Johannesburg and racism with it. Here is the Apartheid Museum, the story of how segregation was born, raised and (more or less) disappeared. But now a sign on the door says that from March 1st the museum is “closed until a later date”. Last year, the coronavirus brought him to his knees. In December, holidays just around the corner, it also reopened, but the water table slowly dried up. There are no cars or buses in the parking lot, around the grass begins to regain space.
Apartheid was called so, with a euphemism coined to avoid hurting the sensibility, “separation”: white on one side, black on the other. It’s the same concept with a different name, after Afrikaner whites won the election against British whites in 1948. Gold Reef City still thrives a little, but abandoned in the early 1970s for a theme park, attractions, the Ferris wheel, and a jump to see where the gold was mined, now being pulled up in other areas. Apartheid one day ended with the liberation, and with the election in 1994, of Nelson Mandela who will be president of blacks, whites and all the colors in between. It was the rainbow nation.
The date chosen for the opening of the Apartheid Museum is in itself a significant moment: in 2001 the century is new, new expectations. The first visitor is Mandela, with the golf cart goes around with the curator Christopher Till that in the end he will say only this: “This, President, is your story”.
With the ticket at the entrance you choose: white here, black there, then rushes into hell. Prisons, riots, murders, Sharpeville and 1976 in Soweto, Winnie Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, Ruth First, ordinary people, the Rivonia trial against Maldela and other exponents fighting segregation, leaflets, Biko, the casspir, trucks with fire hydrants and above all bullets to load blacks, Indians, even whites. And finally freedom.
When he visited it Michelle Obama and his daughters, the guide was John Kani, a famous South African actor and one of the advisors of the museum. At one point she held her breath: “I want to go out, breathe before continuing.” She had stopped to count the ropes hanging: there are 131, those people, with a name at the base, that the racist police have hanged.
The regime of Verwoerd O Botha, De Klerk O Vorster has “bloody hands”, the word of one of the hit men in the service of racists, but Till speaking to a journalist says that “racism is present even now on all sides, let’s face it. The heritage constituted in this place is more important now of 2001. It is important as a teaching for everyone “. The coronavirus has closed other spaces that show the nation’s identity, such as Liliesleaf, the farm near Johannersburg where the leaders of the uprising against segregation were taken, or the Fugard Theater, in Cape Town. Now the TVs are off where clips of interviews and demonstrations are projected, everything is dark, obscure. It is unlikely that in September, as Till hopes, it will reopen. Funds are sought, it is thought of bringing it to the Internet, better than nothing, but a museum is alive when you see it in real life, especially the Apartheid Museum.
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