In honor of Nelson Mandela, I post these photos from my visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, in 2012. The Museum describes itself as "a beacon of hope showing the world how South Africa is coming to terms with its oppressive past and working towards a future that all South Africans can call their own."
During the 1980's, there was an international movement to pressure governments, universities and private business to remove all their economic connections to the apartheid regime in South Africa and to impose punitive economic sanctions on Pretoria until the apartheid system was dismantled, a movement known as "divestment". I am very proud to have been a part of that movement in the United States. As part of the divestment campaign, speakers from South Africa were brought into the United States --often illegally, since, in the paranoid Cold War atmosphere of the Reagan years, the US considered Mandela and all the other members of the African National Congress to be "communist-supported terrorists". I was part of a group that brought ANC speakers into the US and arranged for speeches by them, usually in church groups, in Philadelphia and New York.
The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg.
The entrance plaza
At the entrance, everyone is randomly divided into "White" and "Non-White"
Stark walls inside the prison, coupled with images of South African people.
An entire wing of the museum is dedicated to Mandela and his life
Reproduction of Mandela's prison cell at Robbin Island
Reproduction of prison walls and guard tower
Artifacts from different cultures inside South Africa.
T-shirt from the anti-apartheid movement.
Photos of prison life
The nooses represent those who were executed by the apartheid regime
Reproduction of the isolation cells used by prisons to keep political prisoners in solitary confinement
An armored car used by security forces to break up demonstrations and protest rallies
Photo of a protest rally organized bv Cosatu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, one of the major players in the anti-apartheid movement
A collection of anti-apartheid posters
Posters from the "divestment" movement in Europe and America
Gay rights rally in South Africa. South Africa's was the first constitution in the world to specifically protect gays and lesbians.