Most of the museum is given over to apartheid,how it came in,its biggest proponents and the outlandish beliefs they had about the superiority of the white race.Credit:Getty Images
Nelson Mandela's solitary confinement prison cell,so narrow,you can't even stretch your arms out. A series of nooses dangling down from the ceiling marking those 131 freedom fighters,one as young as 17,executed by the Government.
Film of heavily armed white supremacist members of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement vowing to precipitate Armageddon if black people ever won the vote.
South Africa's Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg about its history of racial segregation can be a profoundly disturbing experience for visitors but,at the same time,it can be incredibly inspiring.
The vast museum is a beautifully curated reminder of how Apartheid was ended.Credit:Getty Images
When you see the might ranged against the black citizens of the country,the tight restrictions on their movements,the brutality,the constant insistence on their inferiority,it's astonishing that they ever triumphed against such seemingly unassailable odds to win equal rights.
But,happily,they did. And this vast museum is a beautifully curated reminder – at times,heartrending,at other times,wonderfully uplifting – of how they did it.
Now open again after a two-year COVID closure which many feared would leave the museum devastated financially,it's back bustling again,with a steady stream of visitors,both local and from overseas. Happily,its future now looks assured.
The museum first opened in 2001 to illustrate the rise of apartheid,its horrors,the battle against it and finally its fall. It was funded by consortium Gold Reef City which put in a bid to the Government for a casino licence which also included a commitment to build an 80 million Rand (about $A6.7 million) museum on adjacent land.
They're strange partners in many ways,with the driveway to what's considered the country's pre-eminent museum through the gaudy gates of the casino,but perhaps the juxtaposition of both helps highlight the bizarre nature of the past system too.