Glimpses of Apartheid

In Cape Town, we visited the District 6 Museum and Robben Island, giving us small glimpses into the history of apartheid in South Africa. (We've been overwhelmed by the prominence of race here as the defining issue, and plan to write a post specifically on this topic at the end of our time here--for now we'll stick to the specific sights.)

District 6 is a neighborhood of Cape Town near the water which was a poor but very mixed area; inhabited by Blacks, "Coloreds" (the South African term for a mix of black and white), Jews, Indians, and "Malays" (the term for Muslims). The first forced removals from the neighborhood happened in 1901, when local officials declared it a sanitation hazard. In the 1960s, all nonwhite residents of District 6 were forced to relocate: Blacks into nearby ghetto areas called "townships," other groups into their own separate areas. The museum houses a huge amount of personal photos and artifacts from the people who were forced out. Begun as a temporary exhibit in the early 90s, it was so popular that the museum found permanent housing in a former neighborhood church. According to Lonely Planet, the museum remains as popular with former residents as it does with tourists.

It was interesting to read about the interaction of the Garden City/Le Corbusier ideas of urban planning within this particular hyper-racialized context. After the residents were removed and the area cleared, several projects were built but most of the land remains vacant today, the object of ongoing claims by former residents and potential developers. The wealth of objects and information presented in the museum showed how the removal affected people's lives, but sometimes it seemed to understate the historical responsibility of the people and government for what occurred, displaying it as a tragedy but one which is safely behind us. Rachel noticed that one visitor had written in the guestbook "I'm ashamed to be white." That feeling is important for the past, but there also needs to be responsibility for the present.

We also visited Robben Island, which had been used as a prison since the Dutch arrival in the 1600s (the only successful escape happened in one of those early years) until it was recently converted to a museum. Taking the ferry from Cape Town's wealthy waterfront, we could look back and see the city framed by the awesome Table Mountain, a view that African National Congress (ANC) prisoners took as inspiration for the land they would one day return to. The visit was a contrast between the comfort (and of course freedom) that we experienced as tourists in a landscape that could have been any coastal vacation spot, and the awful conditions and degradation that prisoners experienced here. Arriving at the island, we saw photos of the ANC prisoners arriving in the 1960s, and when we were loaded onto our bus passed under the original sign: recalling the "Arbeit Macht Frei," of a Nazi concentration camp (which were first employed by the British against the white Afrikaaners in the Boer War), this sign read "We Serve with Pride." On the bus, we passed through the village, where some former prisoners who work as tour guides now live. The highlight was the limestone quarry where Mandela and ANC leaders were isolated and sentenced to hard labor, going blind from the sun on the limestone and getting TB from the limestone dust. During their lunch break, they would go to their "classroom": the tunnel in the limestone used as a latrine, telling the guards they were looking for shade but actually teaching each other from the chapters of the books they had read.

In the prison itself, our guide was Sparks, who was imprisoned in 1983-1990 for being a member of the military wing of the ANC, the MK or "Spear of the Nation." Everything about the prison life was based on segregating by race: Coloreds could wear long sleeves, pants and shoes while Blacks had to wear short sleeves, shorts and no shoes during the cold, windy and rainy winters. Food rations were also different by race. We saw Mandela's cell where he was imprisoned for 18 years, and the courtyard where he hid his autobiography, eventually transported out by the man who would one day become the Minsiter of Transportation!

At the end of the tour, our guide Sparks announced that we were privileged to have with us on the tour a former warden at the prison, who hesitantly, briefly raised his hand when Sparks requested, and said only that he had worked on Robben Island from 1976 to 1983, and at another prison after that. One Black tour member asked the warden if there were any Black wardens, to which of course he replied that there weren't. Sparks went on to speak of the reconciliation that has occurred, how he wasn't personally angry and how people need to live together now. However, as the group filed past him to reboard the ferry and journey back to Cape Town, we noticed that, unlike most tour members, the warden did not shake Sparks's hand. From the history of apartheid, some reconciliation does seem to have occurred, but much also seems to remain.