Cold and rainy museum day

It's winter in South Africa. When we checked the weather before leaving 90-degree Congo, we saw 60s and 40s at night in Cape Town. We thought, "Oh, a sweater." Wrong. There is 60 and there is 60. When you live "up north" and you go to Florida in the winter and it is 60, it's great. You are on the beach. When you go from Congo to South Africa and it is 60 and rainy, it feels really cold and damp.
So we declared cold and rainy Monday as Museum Day.

The District Six Museum came highly recommended.  Basically, here is the story. Once Apartheid became official in 1948, every day life in a large swath of Cape Town had to change to conform. A diverse, very densely populated neighborhood called District Six had to be demolished and the people sent to segregated housing estates elsewhere. This meant that mixed race Christian families that lived alongside Jews and Muslims were forced into new neighborhoods by color categories.It made no sense except that those in power were exercising it over others. The disconnect had profound social, economic, and personal effects.

District Six street signs on stair risers

The museum documents the history of life in District Six before and after the forced relocations. They have captured the personal stories of people who lived through this upheaval. Our visit was significantly enhanced by a guided tour from Ruth, one of eleven children of a racially mixed marriage. Her story of life in District Six and the impact of the forced upheaval on her widowed white mother put a face on Apartheid. Within days of forced relocation and after announcing the new place would never be home, her mother died.The cause of death on her death certificate was heart failure. She was an otherwise healthy 58 year old. Death from a broken heart is not on the list of causes of death, I suspect.

As moving as the stories encapsulated by District Six are, I wondered if the museum was stuck a bit in the period just before 2000. As critical as it is to claim the history of oppression and to name it, there might be lessons from the many Holocaust museums in the world about how best to marry this mission with witness to oppression to preventing oppression.

We walked from District Six Museum, to the Slave Lodge, one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town and the original site of the slave market. Today this building looks like it could be any old, well-maintained government building. Indeed, recent use included housing the Supreme Court of Cape Province. A stone's throw from the South African Parliament building, the Slave Lodge is now a museum documenting the history of slavery in and around Cape Town as well as promoting all things South African.

Installation pof record labels

In fact, the Slave Lodge as a museum is struggling for an identity. Its exhibits both permanent and temporary fail to offer an overall theme. There is a very well curated multimedia history of slavery in Cape Town as well as a large collection of Dutch and English colonial artifacts (think, clocks and silver). In addition, there is an unusual but very striking installation of colorful record labels hung in curtains that document South African music produced on 78 rpm records.

There is an enchanting protest music exhibit focusing on the songs of protest and the use of music as a means of communicating during the period of Apartheid. When media were in fact controlled by the oppressors, people turned to music to communicate. They composed lyrics in hard-to-translate dialects and sent news of revolution far and wide. Some, like Miriam Makeba, went into exile and told their stories from afar through music.

Traditionally built woman in red block print.

The exhibit that drew me to the museum and remains my favorite was a special exhibition on "isischweschwe" cloth. In other words, it involved fiber and they had me at hello. Actually, this exhibit filled an important gap left by a fabulous exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston called something like "300 Years of Textile Trade." What the MFA exhibit did not include was the importance of the stopover point in South Africa between the Far East and Europe in the sea routes that took over textile trade from the Silk Route.

DaGama 3 Cats Brand

In fact, block printed cotton was introduced to South Africa by the 16-17th C. Portuguese, British and Dutch sea traders stopping en route to Europe from India and China. It was also brought to the Cape by European settlers who had already adopted this style of printed cotton fabric as a result of the Far East trade. The early forms were blue and the term "blaudruck" or blue print was applied. Today there only one manufacturer of the fabric still operating, the "DaGama 3 Cats Blaudruk,"
whose mark is left on the wrong side of the bolt much like a water mark on fine paper. This exhibit showed the use of the fabric in European folk costumes as well as a wide variety of ways it was used in South Africa. Today's top designers are fashioning everything from evening dresses to children's shoes from this cloth. Creativity seems to be running rampant.

Once alerted to it, the alert observer sees isischweschwe everywhere--in waiter shirts, in one-off jacket designs (purchased by one's daughter), and in creative applications to children's clothing. When we head for the Cape of Good Hope--literally to Cape Point--I hope to stop at a store with the largest selection of isischweschwe fabric available on the bolt. Trouble ahead.