Apartheid Museum

Last Pday (day off) we visited the Apartheid Museum here in Joburg (Johannesburg).  As you pay your admission, you are given a random ticket which assigns you as a white or non-white.  To enter the museum, you are required to enter the corresponding door.  For the first few hundred feet, you do not mix with the other class of people.

The museum tells the story of South Africa, from when the first white settlers came (Dutch back in the 1600’s) to when Nelson Mandela was elected President in 1994.

Apartheid was a dark chapter in South Africa’s history.  Apartheid laws were passed in 1948 and a policy of segregation was institutionalized.  But even prior to 1948, the blacks had no voting rights.  Under apartheid, each citizen was classified as black, coloured, and white.  Different jobs and wages were available to each class of people.  There was an office for race classification that would measure things such as skin color, hair characteristics, employment, socioeconomic status, and eating and drinking habits.  You were required to carry your classification card with you at all times and could be immediately imprisoned without it.  Poverty, low wages in the mines, and unequal education fostered uprisings among the blacks.  This ruling white governmental response was repression and relocation.  Much of the world refused to do business with South Africa.  They were not allowed to compete in sporting events including the Olympics.  They increasingly became and isolated nation.  It reached a point where the white government could not control the blacks unless they imprisoned, resettled or killed millions of them. 

White statesman FW deClerk and Nelson Mandela shaped a new future of South Africa through negotiation and reconciliation in 1993.  They were both awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  South Africa is still experiencing growing pains.  The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us to live peaceably with our neighbors and show love to all of our brothers and sisters here on this earth.