The District Six Museum and Cape Town

Chapter 1, “Intimate Apartheid”, introduces one to the group of homeless people living on Edgewater Blvd. It dives into the racialized micro-geography of homeless encampments and how segregation plays a key role within the lumpen. However, the authors do reveal moments where the racial hierarchy is trumped by the “moral economy” of street life.

Thesis Statement: Apartheid may have been a horrible era in South African history, but only so because the whites were forced to take action against the outrageous and threatening deeds of the blacks in order to sustain their power.

| Relevant Biographical Information About the Author: * White * Born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1903 * Father was Scottish and mother was South African of English heritage * Worked at a reformatory with black youths

In this book, the author describes the long process it takes to create a national museum that will commemorate the Holocaust. He covers issues such as, the location of it, the design and construction aspects of the museum building. He informs readers about how they’ve tried to represent the Holocaust through the museum with sensitivity. I will use specific facts from this book to show that this museum was built with the help of many and required a lot of thought into it. I will show that this museum does in fact show sensitivity to an individual.

During my visit to the Brooklyn Museum, I found it both intriguing and informative. The layout of the exhibition was divided into about three to four sections. Each section of the museum represented a movement of the 60’s. The themes represented were segregation of blacks and whites, how they tried to gain equality and the changes they anticipated would happen in the future. The artwork throughout the exhibit was displayed in a varying gradient of black and white to colors.

The readings from these past weeks on on issues of race and cultural patrimony were too informative considering the Native American exhibits I have attended, my work in an anthropology museum, and anthropology classes I have taken. Somehow, Cooper’s “The Long Road to Repatriation” provided more context and weight to the historical atrocities against Native Americans than any of my other educational experiences. To be fair, I am not a scholar of Native history, but I am certainly not uninformed, and it should not take a scholar or be a native person to understand these issues. As Lonetree mentioned, the Holocaust Museum presents a difficult subject and forces the visitor to “confront inhumanity” (106). I think the impact of this information as an educational experience in a museum would have a huge impact on current social and political tensions.

It is first very important to understand deep history of Apartheid to actually understand the story of The Island and the messages it sends. The beginning of Apartheid marked a big turning point in South African history. In the beginning,

Upon walking into the first level of the museum there are five glass cases, each contain artifacts that’s relate to the main reasons why people migrate, these reasons being: Freedom, A better life, War and Conflict, Family and Disaster each glass, I saw artifacts that belonged to the people who came to this country, objects that were the reason people migrated and models of the life people either had or wanted when they made the ultimate decision to migrate. When walking further into the darkly lit room your eyes are drawn to a wall that has video projected onto it, each video segment covers the five topics as mentioned previously, this is the first example of how narratives are framed throughout the exhibit. Throughout the museum there are interactive exhibits that portray stories of migrants and

Staten Island, New Jersey and Long Island (Osman, 2014). As a result, there was a great influx of Puerto Ricans and African Americans who arrived at the newly vacant neighborhoods in search of work, but ended up trapped in decaying dwellings and poverty. Determined city planners aimed to revitalize Brooklyn, specifically the Boerum Hill neighborhood, by replacing outdated, deteriorating Victorian housing with modern high-rises and creating open space and parks which would make the city greener and overall more appealing to middle-class taste. However, the Boerum Hill Association (BHA), a group of newly arriving middle-class homeowners referred to as ‘brownstoners’ composed of artists, lawyers and other white-collar workers protested this

In 1652 the Europeans established the refueling station in Cape Town, South Africa, the settlers had a positive relationship with the local tribes. As time passed the cordial relation turned sour. The nomadic people use to traveling around lost their land to the settlers. The settlers believing themselves superior to the African society cultivated a community, of nearly five decades, of apartheid: a system and philosophy dedicated to privileging Europeans and non-whites. This system originated from 1948-1992 . In 1965, where the book begins, Johannes, the antagonist of Kaffir Boy, was raised in apartheid South Africa. During this time period the Johannesburg Government had strict segregation law that separated the colored from the whites, Europeans. In Mark Mathabane’s autobiography he tries to recreate his childhood and youth in Alexandra, a black ghetto community of Johannesburg, South Africa. When Mark Mathabane started working on his autobiography his hometown had just been saved from being extinguished, already half of Alexandra had already demolished.

Although the Rhodes Must Fall movement may have been ignited around the issue of the Rhodes Statue, the existence of the statue is only one aspect of the social injustice of University of Cape Town. According to Mbembe “The fall of Rhodes statue is symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege for students on the campus” (Mbembe 2015:126). This emphasizes that its presence on an intellectual learning space may be an insult to the black student, as they were the one who are affected by colonialism. Its removal can open a discussion about heritage, symbolism and signage in and around the

Many of the contemporary issues in South Africa can easily be associated with the apartheid laws which devastated the country. The people of South Africa struggle day by day to reverse “the most cruel, yet well-crafted,” horrific tactic “of social engineering.” The concept behind apartheid emerged in 1948 when the nationalist party took over government, and the all-white government enforced “racial segregation under a system of legislation” . The central issues stem from 50 years of apartheid include poverty, income inequality, land ownership rates and many other long term affects that still plague the brunt of the South African population while the small white minority still enjoy much of the wealth, most of the land and opportunities

I have always thought that Nelson Mandela has been one of the most important people in history. I find it very fascinating that one man could end the Apartheid and that is why I want to find out more about this. South Africa is a country with a past of enforced racism and separation of its multi-racial community. The White Europeans invaded South Africa and started a political system known as 'Apartheid' (meaning 'apartness'). This system severely restricted the rights and lifestyle of the non-White inhabitants of the country forcing them to live separately from the White Europeans. I have chosen to investigate how the Apartheid affected people’s lives, and also how and why the Apartheid system rose and fell in South Africa.

Today I will be constructing an analysis along the bases of migration, exploring the film “Last Grave of Dimbaza,” which occurs during the Apartheid era and comparing it to the book “Living, Loving, and Lying awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona,” which explores the idea of forced migration from the woman's point of view. Both the film and the book exhibit the differences amongst the Whites and Blacks within South Africa. In compare and contrast, the film establishes a ground of separating the urban life in comparison to the rural life within South Africa and showing the different ways that migration has changed both parties' lives. In the reading by Magona, she shares the experience amongst the women in South Africa and how migration within

The apartheid era in South Africa, uprooted the lives of many people who were forced to endure oppressive laws and inequality based on the colour of their skin. It continues to remain a painful memory to those who lost loved ones in their struggle for freedom. In Chris Van Wyk’s novel, Shirley, Goodness & Mercy (2004), he explores fond memories growing up in a township called Riverlea. This township is predominantly occupied by coloured people as a result of segregation laws. Contrary to the negative connotations that apartheid holds, Van Wyk shares the memories which enriched his life during his formation. It is against this setting that I will explore various moments in the novel that contributed to Van Wyk’s views of a pre-apartheid time in his growing up. I will establish this by discussing the given extract, and looking at how he perceived a sense of freedom with his friends, his open state of mind towards knowledge, his outlook on justice and the wrongs that were not evident in his growing up. I will also discuss how it relates to the whole novel.