We couldn't remember the last time we spent 5+ hours in a museum dedicated to a single subject, and never got bored or looked for the end. It was remarkable, both in the content and the presentation. It was shocking, enlightening, inspiring, and frustrating. It is hard to comprehend that a society that had segregated staircases existed in our lifetimes, but it was interesting to read how it grew from such obvious ideological roots (On quote from a Banto poet: "when they arrived, we had the land and they had the bible. They gave us their bible, and now they have the land"), Manifest Destiny, scapegoating the powerless, using assistance as a euphemism for oppression. It is all there.
One interesting touch is that when you buy a ticket, it is randomly marked "Blankes" or "Nie Blankes", and you are forced to enter the gate so marked. For the first part of the museum, the visitors are segregated, even see different displays, based on random selection of your "colour".
In the end through the uprisings, the oppression, imprisonments and deaths, the enduring message is one of reconciliation and of hope for the future. Even if this hope is tempered by apprehension over the slow pace of change in South Africa.
And through it all is the image of Nelson Mandela. His is a remarkable story. Amongst the multiple scenes of his life, one from the museum stood out to me. After is release and on the occasion of the opening of the new Constitutional Court in Jo'burg, Mandela commented that the last time he had been in a court was thirty years earlier, when they were deciding if he would be executed. There was an audible gasp in the audience upon hearing this, as everyone had the same thought: How lucky South Africa is that his life was spared.
This was a fitting end to our visit to South Africa, and a day well spent.
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