The Apartheid Museum, and feeling at home in South Africa

Curse this tournament for its format. It’s been loved by everyone for its brevity and sharpness, and professionally it makes sense. But it has been so hectic that only yesterday did I go to a place in South Africa that isn’t Sandton or Centurion.

The trip to the Apartheid Museum was completely unplanned, organised on the hoof early(ish) in the morning. Obviously it was worth it, because if the tale you’re documenting is itself so remarkable then it is difficult to not do a good job. Fortunately, it is much more than good. Anyway the material, the documents, artefacts, photograps and audio-visual footage is so compelling and painstakingly brought together that had you put it in a four-walled, bare, windowless cell, it still would’ve been worth visiting. But the conceptual beauty of the interior, the way the building is designed and winds round the history, is almost as breathtaking as the learning it holds inside.

The birth of the museum is interesting, because not many museums in the world, surely, can claim to be the collateral cost of a casino. The museum was built for approximately 80 million rand and opened in 2001, the costs paid for by a private consortium that had bid for a licence to build a casino. One of the stipulations laid down by the government in 1995, when granting licences, was for bidders to demonstrate how they would attract tourism to help the economy: the consortium committed to building a museum and once the bid was accepted, land adjacent to the casino was provided. Since then the museum has been run by a board of trustees, relying mostly on donations and sponsorships.

It is a must-visit, and a very cleansing one, in the way places where history in all its good and ugliness is not hidden or distorted, but instead cherished, generally are.

We stopped by in Fordsburg after the museum trip. Fordsburg is home to a large Indian and Pakistani-origin community. It reminded me not so much of home as exiled and displaced diaspora homes across the world, in areas of London, in Rusholme in Manchester, in Bradford, in Devon in Chicago, where an effort has been made to try and recreate home as it is remembered.

Home is thus remembered in the foods, the smells, the familiar names (Bismillah, Makkah, Usmaniya restaurant), the fashions, and in the simple bustle of life and humanity, walking around, chatting, loitering, getting in the way, gathering together, honking and so on. One of the things that struck me most on this trip is how cocooned and sanitised Sandton, where I am staying, is.

Where I live in Karachi is similarly bubbled from the rest of the city, so much so that you can go about life each day without needing to ever step out. Life as you see around you in Fordsburg in Johannesburg, or areas such as Nazimabad or Bahadarabad in Karachi, you don’t see in Sandton.

Much of Fordsburg, it seems, was preparing to head down to the Wanderers for the Pakistan-New Zealand semi-final. One restaurateur complained he wasn’t allowed to carry a flag that wasn’t either Pakistan's or New Zealand’s. No matter, for they made their way to the stadium as the game wore on and gave it by far the liveliest atmosphere of the tournament, even if it wasn’t enough for the result they wanted.

And as I end this entry, the electricity has just gone. Readers in Pakistan will know that is the best way to feel at home abroad.