'Representing Difficult Pasts within Complex Presents ... - T2M

‘Representing Difficult Pasts within Complex Presents:
Creatively Rethinking Possibilities for a Transport/Mobility
Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.’
1
N Jade Gibson, Cities in Transition VLIR/UWC Postdoctoral Fellow –
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
DRAFT PAPER, NOT TO BE CITED OR CIRCULATED WITHOUT
AUTHOR’S APPROVAL Contact: jadegibson@gmail.com. Tel. South Africa +27798601330
Abstract
Taking the perspective that transport museums should represent sociopolitical histories, the
transport history of South Africa, inasmuch a story of progress and technological advances, may
alternatively be argued as one soaked in blood, suffering and violence, developed within a trajectory of
colonial progress, slavery, apartheid segregation and economic disempowerment. Transport thus has a
highly problematic history in South Africa when considering the entire population, argued by some as not
representing mobility, but immobility – blockages, restrictions, barriers and boundaries that relate not only
to physical access but also extend economically and socially to underlie the divides of South Africa today.
How then could, or should, such a history be represented in a transport museum in South Africa, or even
in other transport museums around the world?
This paper, instigated through a University of the Western Cape project for researching
possibilities for a transport museum in Cape Town in 2010, takes a pluralistic and multidisciplinary
approach to assessing and interpreting the representational possibilities for transport histories in South
Africa. More conventional transport museum displays in South Africa are argued as ethnographically
fragmenting past from present - excluding through their material and categorical modes of representation,
establishing representational silences that ignore the inequality of hierarchies of the past that underlie the
present. The paper consequently argues for the possibility of a transport museum as a social intervention,
as a lens to raise questions and de-stabilise set approaches to divisive disciplinary understandings through
juxtapositions and multiple interpretations to present a complex social history of transport in Cape Town;
as a complex present shaped by a difficult past. The paper explores using creative, artistic, interactive and
multidisciplinary modes of display, in which the museum is argued to be potentially discursive rather than
didactic, creative and open-ended rather than presenting a single narrative, towards understanding
transport as shaping social networks within the city of Cape Town. Consequently, the paper raises the
challenge as to whether a transport museum could be seen as a way of raising questions, unsettling set
narratives and shaping multiple narratives of experience and relevance in which problematic transport
histories raise questions in the present – an approach arguably applicable not only to South Africa but to
transport museums elsewhere?

Introduction
Museums can be perceived as analogous to artworks (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004:2), stemming
historically from the Kunsthammer, or curiosity cabinet, to the collectively constructed archive of today’s
museum. They involve the reassembling of the world based on speculative ideas which shape a series of
installations, or exhibitions, which claim to represent concrete reality, presenting an inside-out view of
culture (Preziosi 1996). Consequently, museums, whether scientific, or humanities based, present
ourselves to ourselves. They evoke memory and familiarity in our own attempts to construct a ‘history’,
and also notions of difference and otherness, through what is deemed unfamiliar, exotic, geographically
or historically removed, categories shaped through representation which define and imagine communities
of belonging and exclusion (Anderson 1983).
The glass cabinet has been argued to both distance and frame artefacts, fetishizing them by
‘conferring an instant aura of preciousness’ (Henning 2006:8), acting as a lens that ‘sets apart’ objects
from each other. Even the glass case removed does not prevent this distancing within the museum context
(Henning 2006:6) – a conundrum which results in, Kirshenblatt (1991) argues, ‘an act of excision, of
detachment, an art of the excerpt. Where does the object begin and where does it end? … Shall we exhibit
the cup with the saucer, the tea, the cream and sugar, the spoon, the napkin and placemat, the table and
chair, the rug? Where do we stop? Where do we make the cut?’ (388) She suggests not the term
‘ethnographic object’, but ‘ethnographic fragment’. These fragments become separated from their original
meanings, argues Strathern (1990), to become marginalised within the self-referential domains of a
refined form of aesthetics, ‘The exploration of internal design, the attention to artefact qua artefact, the
preservation of exemplars … a self-referential universe (39). Such fragments become recontextualised
within a ‘rhetorics of value’ (Kratz 2011) – processes of circulation, recontextualisation, exhibition
production and interpretation, through museum design, lighting, architecture, labels and texts, which
shape visitor interpretation.
With the above in mind, creating a new museum offers an opportunity for new artistry and a
rethinking of concepts, an opportunity even, to rework tropes of museum-ness, even to turn the museum’s
gaze on itself 1 . The ‘poetics and politics’ (Kratz ibid.) of display can be utilized in such circumstances to
1 A suggestion recently made by Professors Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz at a panel discussion concerning
Cape Town’s Iziko Museum’s Social History Collections. Social History Collections: Registering Change in Iziko after
Apartheid. Iziko Slave Lodge. 16 September 2010. Also see Legassick and Rassool 2000 concerning a call for
restitution and de-accession of human remains at Iziko museum. The exhibition ‘Mis-cast’ depicting the storage of
human remains at Iziko also raised similar issues.
2

create new perceptions and understandings; such as the experiential, and notably powerful, embodied
experience created through a combination of design and architecture at the relatively new Apartheid
Museum in Johannesburg 2 (Rankin and Schmidt 2009). Through a combination of art-making and
community involvement at District Six Museum in Cape Town, a museum may also serve as a site of
activism (Rassool 2006a).
Such an opportunity to think about the possibilities for a new museum arose in 2010, as a result
of proposals for the possibility of a transport/mobility museum for the City of Cape Town. This interest
arose from several angles. Hoskins Consolidated Interests (HCI) Foundation, the charitable branch of the
large corporate HCI, had been collecting donated artefacts since 2005/6 such as memorabilia,
photographs, albums, books, uniforms and oral histories from pensioners of Golden Arrow Bus Services 3
(GABS), the main public transport bus service for Cape Town. The Foundation also established a ‘Cape
Town Public Transport Museum’ online website, with the claim that it sought to ‘encourage the
participation of all role players in the public transport system 4 ’. A small collection of the collected
artefacts were made available for viewing at HCI Headquarters in central Cape Town 5 . The Cape Town
Station, revamped for the World Cup 2010, also included official plans for a site, albeit relatively small,
dedicated to a transport museum 6 , which at the time was at a very early developmental state and to the
time of writing, has not materialized under Station management. At the same time, Steam Train
enthusiasts had also petitioned for an abandoned steam train at Cape Town station to be made into a
tourist attraction.
HCI Foundation decided to initiate research into the possibility for realizing a large-scale Cape
Town Transport Museum concept. HCI Foundation brought on board the University of the Western Cape
Humanities Department, which was to provide research to assist HCI Foundation in exploring and
expanding the possibilities for and the concept of a Museum of Transport and in 2010 the UWC History
Department/Cities in Transition Transport/Mobility Museum Project was set up 7 . The GABS archive was
2
Visitors, at random, are given ‘white’ and ‘black’ entry cards, and consequently are forced to take
separate entrance and exhibition routes into the museum, to directly and bodily experience the impact of
segregation.
3
Acquired by HCI in 2004.
4
Http://www.capetownpublictransportmuseum.org/news/save1.asp acc.030410
5
They also had restored a 1960 Daimler double decker bus at the Epping depot, but had no exhibition
space for this.
6
Through Makeka Design Architects.
7
Professors Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz, Nicky Rousseau of History, Professor Gordon Pirie of Geography,
myself and Anis Daraghma as postdoctoral research project leaders, and a team of MA and honours students.
3

accessed, mostly dating from the 1980s, at the Golden Arrow Epping Depot and made available to UWC
researchers 8 . Research discussion suggested the possibilities of a museum exploring a broader concept of
‘mobility’ beyond a conventional ‘transport’ theme. New approaches favoured examining the history of
transport as reflecting not just vehicles themselves, but as reflective and instigative of South African
culture itself. Although, following a year of research, HCI management was uncertain as to whether to go
ahead with the museum project, partly as a consequence of changes in management capability from
within HCI Foundation, this paper examines the representational findings, possibilities and implications
for thinking through a museum of transport for Cape Town.
This paper proposes a transport museum concept in Cape Town as an opportunity to challenge
and rework social perceptions, urban divides and legacies, in the present. Through an overview of some
of the displays that are present, and not present, in South African museums selected for the possibility of a
‘mobility’ museum, the paper examines possible exhibition themes, social frameworks through which the
origin and impact of transport history in South Africa may be understood, and the need to challenge,
create debates and engage visitors (both local and further afield) with the understanding and extent to
which the transport past is interconnected and impacts upon the urban present.
Placing these debates at the forefront, it is argued, demands a particularly creative way of
thinking about museum display – open-ended rather than didactic. In particular, the paper rethinks
museums traditionally seen to be technological, or scientific, which are seen to antiquate, make nostalgic
or ‘fetishise’ collected objects as ‘highlights, masterpiece or a collection in its entirety’ (Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett 1991:388) within the realm of the socio-political. In a South African context, the paper explores
possibilities for museum exhibitions which, as Divall 9 (2003) suggests, ‘display the history of transport,
travel and mobility through objects in ways that encourage visitors to reflect critically on the past, and
what it means for them’ (263), how to site stories of people and networks as a key theme in relation to
transport exhibitions (Lubar 10 2004), to demonstrate how ‘museum learning is as much about feeling,
emotions and desire – the affective dimension – as it is about formal categorization and analysis’ (Divall
262). 11 The paper argues a complex approach to museum display, to satisfy, as Cameron and Mengler
(2009) put it, ‘a need to explain the meaning of objects beyond disciplinary boundaries ... to rethink
8
Full access to the archives took several months to obtain, due to some initial resistance from
management.
9
Professor Colin Divall of York University attended a workshop at the UWC Transport project in August
18-19 2010
10
Lubar writes of the replacement of a 40 year old transportation exhibition with a new one at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
11 Also see Divall and Scott 2001; Divall 2008; 1999; Stratton 1990; Lubar 2004.
4

object interfaces on the basis of a range of multiple, mobile metaphors – material, solid and linguistic, to
which various actors can contribute as a kind of transdisciplinary practice.’ (213-214).
Cape Town and a Museum of Transport?
South Africa’s Rainbow-nationhood present is imbued with past practices and memories which
filter through to the present as modes of praxis and habituation (see Bourdieu 1977) which have been
argued to perpetuate, in many cases, the problematic racialised heirarchisation and segregation of South
Africa’s past. Watson (1998) writes of the ‘spatial imprint of apartheid’, and Robins (2002: 666) of the
way in which everyday socio-spatial legacies of apartheid continue to be reproduced. The advent of ‘City
Improvement Districts’, has been argued to contribute to the growing divides between rich and poor
(Robins 2002; Miraftab 2007. Despite a small growing black middle class, South Africa’s Gini coefficient
has been claimed to be above Brazil to be the highest in the world (Pressly 2009), based on racialised
divisions of economic practice and access established during the past. These socio-spatial legacies are
arguably applicable to museum modes of collection, display, exhibition and silences in South Africa’s
museological past. Material, embodied, non-verbal representations in museum exhibitions arguably, could
re-enforce notions of difference, otherness, racial hierarchy and oppression that implicitly continue to
divide groups of persons based on hierarchies related to the past.
5
Applying socio-political arguments to a history of South African transport is particularly relevant.
Both during the official apartheid years (1948-1994), and pre-apartheid years of colonialism, transport
segregation was present in South Africa, in which racialised and hierarchised segregation of South
African society went hand in hand with the development of transport (Pirie 2009, 2008,1992,1989; Sey
2008; Horrel et al 1946 to present, Khosa 1991). Train lines were set up not only to transport goods but
also manual labour (Pirie 1993, 1997). Migrant labour workers’ compounds, or hostels, were
consequently set up attached to factories, municipal works and mines, where they lived in cramped
barracks, many bunks to a room, and returned home only once a year. Recruiters actively set out on ‘train
campaigns’ to recruit ‘badly needed’ new workers, and new workers in more distant places were even
enticed with an aeroplane journey 12 .
Local labour was also used to construct railway lines and roads 13 under colonial supervision. The
first cars to cross Africa relied heavily on the labour of local villagers to push or pull stuck vehicles across
12 Interview with Anne-Katrin Bicher, June 2010, Curator at Workers’ Museum, Johannesburg
13 As evidenced in photographs on display in the Outeniqua Museum of Transport, George, South Africa.

sand-dunes and other difficult terrain (Pirie 2008) for their elite white owners. Under apartheid, access to
driving motor vehicles was also racially segregated, as well as driving occupations (Horrell et al 1946-
present). South Africa’s large urban, and often notorious, taxi industry arose as a result of forced
removals as a result of the Group Areas Act (1950) during apartheid requiring people to travel greater
distances, transport being now required beyond the feeder limits of bus services, which too benefited from
forced removals (Khosa 1991). The impact of longer and more expensive travel distances to work, along
with racial segregation imposed on public transport services, led to bus and train boycotts throughout
Cape Town’s transport history (Pirie 2009, 2008, 1992, 1989, Sey 2008, Horrell et al 1946-present).
6
Likewise, ‘buffer’ zones were created through the construction of highways and railway lines in
apartheid Cape Town, to separate white, black and coloured residential areas (See Sey 2008; Morris 1969;
Watson 1998). Part of the argument for forced removals in Cape Town in the 1960s and 1970s was the
need for highways to create a new city architecture that favoured white privilege (Morris 1969; Bank and
Minkley 1999). Even access to train tickets under apartheid was controlled and restricted, in which
special permission was required to obtain a ticket, for example, to work in Cape Town, as a means of
monitoring and preventing the mobility of black South Africans (Horrell et al 1946-present). It is not
surprising then, that transport in South Africa has been argued not as mobility, but as ‘immobility’ (Pirie
2009); blockages, restrictions, barriers and boundaries not only in relation to physical mobility but which
also even today continue, economically and socially, to have impact.
In recent years, cities as a whole have been argued to be fluid creative spaces shaped through
praxis, narrative and social imaginaries (Cinar and Bender 2007; Bridge and Watson 2004; Appadurai
1991; Field 2007; Pile 2005; Taylor 1996; Biron 2009). Pile (2005) for example writes that the city does
not only consist of a static urban infrastructure, but is infused with other meanings – myths, fantasies,
desires, narratives, imaginaries, or what he terms ‘phantasmagorias’ – the more metaphorical, emotional,
desires, fantasies and haunting sides of the city, in that ‘what is real about cities is the sheer
expressiveness and passion of its life’ (1-2). Although Pile progresses to exploring vampire and ghost
stories in the city, it is possible to extricate such an approach to transport histories in South Africa – what
are the ‘ghosts’ of the past, the memories and associations, that haunt the present, through the presence of
transport vehicles and a transport infrastructure? What are the ‘hidden’ problematic aspects of transport,
the negative elements that, arguably, suck the life-blood out of the concept of a motile, mobile city of
Cape Town?

7
Such concerns might include issues concerning violence and death, such as the high level of road
traffic accidents in South Africa 14 , the fact that there is a practically non-existent safe public transport
system at night, the spread of HIV recorded through lorry routes in South Africa (Karim and Karim
2002), deaths and injuries through previous taxi shootings and taxi-bus ‘wars’ in the past (Khosa 1991),
bus strikes and riots and the burning of buses during apartheid (Pirie 1989) and reports of xenophobic and
other attacks on trains 15 . There is also the more distant, but equally relevant, history of the importation of
slaves into Cape Town on ships from Africa, India, Madagascar and elsewhere, and of indentured
labourers and migrants from all over the world in South Africa’s history, contributing to the country’s
diversity.
What then does one ‘do’ with these problematic and difficult pasts of transport, soaked in blood,
suffering and violence, in relation to a more ‘social’ representation of a history of transport?
In a more positive light, cities are also perceived as transnational, global sites where one is
simultaneously both ‘here’ and ‘there’ through networks, Diaspora, migration and immigration,
boundaries and experiences merge and cross, and new hybrid cultures may form (see Appadurai 1995,
Vertovec 2001, Ash 2002a, 2002b, Bhabha 1990, Said 1978). Furthermore, for the 2010 World Cup,
Cape Town airport was reconstructed, along with Cape Town Train Station and central bus routes. This
was argued to support the potential for Cape Town as a lucrative tourist destination.
There are also alternative themes to concepts of transport and mobility in the city, such as
walking, cycling, hiking and other modes of transport. Bissel (2009) has explored the ways in which
passengers experience the concept of ‘the journey’, Pile (2009) the experience of walking the city, and
Beckman (2001) the concept of automobility and autoscapes. If one wanted to be particularly expansive,
then the internet may be seen as a mode of ‘transport’ – of ideas, media and communication - and
commerce, importation and exportation of material goods and culture, as relevant to transport studies.
14 See Clark 2010 for a discussion of the representation of road trauma in European museums.
15 A Zimbabwean man, for example, was reported as having survived being physically thrown off a train
due to a xenophobic attack shortly after the end of the World Cup.

Initiating a ‘Road Trip’ of South African Museums
8
Bearing in mind the multitude of considerations above, there was first a need to assess and survey
what possibilities, themes and representations in relation to a transport/mobility history were already in
existence in South African museums. When it is considered that, as Leslie Witz, museum historian on the
UWC Transport Research project, claims (forthcoming paper), there are over 40 new museums alone in
the New South Africa, there was clearly some need for selection. It was decided to survey both standard,
more ‘conventional’ transport-related museum collections, as well as collections and museums having
components pertinent to broader concepts– in particular, issues of forced removals, migrant labour and
slavery, the more problematic histories and negative aspects of transport.
The museums finally settled on as a ‘road trip’ were as follows. The District Six Museum, Iziko
Slave Lodge, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, the South African Air Force (SAAF) Museum and the
Maritime Museum, in Cape Town; the James Hall Museum of Transport, the Apartheid Museum, the
Worker’s Museum, and Museum Africa, in Johannesburg; Outeniqua Transport Museum in George, and
The Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex in Mossel Bay 16 .
There were other museums of possible relevance that were not visited. This was primarily due to
time constraints and/or budget restrictions. For example, the Franschoek Motor Museum (a private
collection of 400 vehicles, primarily cars, at L’Omarins Wine Farm, Klein Plaasie), the Cape Town Naval
Museum, the Military Museum near Johannesburg, the Holocaust/Jewish Museum and Bo Kaap Museum
in Cape Town, the Jetty 1 exhibition at the Waterfront of letters requesting visits to prisoners on Robben
Island (curated by Mavis Smallberg) and areas further afield such as Durban, were all further possibilities.
Fieldwork, it should be noted, was carried out during an intense time period just prior to the World Cup in
South Africa, when museums were gearing up for increased visitors and preparing special, usually
football-related, exhibitions, which also posed its limitations. The intention, however, was to get a sense
of the breadth of what types of exhibits and possibilities existed to draw upon, a selected overview, rather
than in-depth survey.
At each venue, curators and museum managers were interviewed concerning the relevance of the
museum to transport/mobility themes, the content of collections, and exhibitions of relevance, as well as
education programmes, visitors and the museum history. Photographs were also taken of exhibitions and
displays. In this discussion, I also reference the UWC/Mayibuye archive fine art and photography
collections and a personal visit to the ‘Ghoema and Glitter’ Minstrels Carnival exhibition at the Castle,
16 Field visits were undertaken by myself, Anis Daraghma and Leslie Witz

Cape Town (curated by Fiona Clayton, also manager of the Slave Lodge). Reference is also made to the
HCI Foundation bus artefacts and photograph collection (including the Golden Arrow Epping Archive),
and interviews with bus pensioners undertaken in a video recording with film-maker Charlene Houston
and research team members, including myself, in mid-2010.
Four key aims are identified for this paper. One is to examine possibilities for what might or
might not be included in a new transport/mobility museum, to ‘get a feel’ of what was present, in order to
rethink concepts and explore new ideas, and to explore different perspectives and concepts for
representation. A second is to explore the not-seen, possibly the aforementioned ‘phantasmagoric’ and
hidden side of transport and mobility, the ‘felt’ aspects of museum representation concerning re-
connecting the invisible social infrastructures and experiences in the mobile, fluid past with static objects
in the present. These static objects, inasmuch as fluid identities present themselves as ‘moments of
presentation’ within ongoing practices of identity (Hall 1990), are moments of solidification,
identification and presentation that appear to ‘make factual’ the past, a focus that may elide alternative
facts, histories and possibilities ofsocial interpretation. Thirdly, is a consideration of a museum in the City
of Cape Town, and how such a museum might aid a creative reworking and reconceptualisation of the
city. Lastly, a concern is to examine how material representation in current museum contexts might be
further expanded to include alternative interpretations, to make visible the absences, silences, and
misdirections throughout history and through the presence and display of artefacts in museum contexts,
exploring modes of inclusion rather than implicitly excluding audiences through their narratives and
interpretation.
The overview that follows, of the consequent research ‘road trip’ of South African (broadly)
transport/mobility-related museums, highlights key issues and observations, specific displays and objects,
and considerations relevant to the shaping of a potential transport museum.
9

Reconsidering Vehicle Fetish and Nostalgia - The James Hall Museum of Transport
10
The first museum visited was the James Hall Museum of Transport, based in Johannesburg. The
museum is an archetypal ‘vehicle fetishist enthusiast’ paradise, in which static transport vehicles of a
bygone age truly become ‘artefact qua artefact’s within a self-referential realm of ‘ethnographic
fragments.’
Figure 1 One of the five halls in
James Hall Museum
The James Hall brochure included
a plethora of transport-related examples –
animal drawn vehicles, steam vehicles,
tractors, a pont, an anchor, diesel buses,
bicycles, motorcycles, wheelchairs, fire-
fighting equipment, motor cars (vintage
and post-war), steam locomotives,
municipal vehicles, agricultural equipment,
farm machines and, finally, South African trams, buses, trolley buses and electric trams. Consisting of
five main halls, which were described in the accompanying leaflet as containing fire engines, buses, trams
and trolley buses, locomotives, a ‘mixed hall’, cars and bicycles respectively, each hall was jam-packed
with vehicles, not just one of each kind, but many of each kind. Each hall was divided according to the
type of vehicle rather than a general chronological history over time, although, as Peter Hall stated, the
vehicles were regularly ‘moved around’, being restored to working condition, some for education
purposes and some for rallies, others for redisplay. On the whole, the vehicles were accompanied by brief
labels providing a short title and year. More detailed labels referred generally to the collector/previous
owner and the technology and history of the vehicle. In the entrance hall was featured an ‘Outspan
orange’ converted mini, one of five previously created for promotional purposes. ‘Special’ vehicles also
features included an electric car from the 70s and a vehicle designed to run (successfully!) on manure.
Peter Hall, the museum Manager/Head of Institution greeted us, the son of Jimmy Hall. Jimmy Hall
founded the James Hall Museum of Transport in 1964 in conjunction with the City of Johannesburg, and
was an avid transport collector and early nature conservationist (apparently of cycads). The collection was
diverse and somewhat eclectic in that it includes Jimmy Hall’s personal collection as well as further
donations and acquisitions over time.

11
The authenticity, sense of nostalgia and uniqueness of the displayed vehicles certainly was awe-
inspiring. We were immediately, materially and visually, through the sheer number of vehicles and
related artefacts, photographs of owners, miniature models, catapulted into myriad time periods of vehicle
development and value that conveyed a developmental narrative of a history of vehicle evolution,. One
display described ‘how to drive a model T-Ford’, others emphasised technological development and
mechanical advancement (Peter Hall, by the way, is a qualified mechanical engineer).
In relation, however, to re-inserting vehicles into a more socially orientated understanding of
transport history, alternative contexts of representation were limited. Depictions of more than vehicles in
the museum included life-size models of oxen drawing a cart, and life-size models of horses drinking
from a water trough, arguably not shifting much from the concept of a ‘transport vehicle’. There were
small photographs of motor vehicles with drivers posing next to them, some reference to individual
people but not society as a whole. A visual ‘timeline’ was present on the wall of one of the halls, running
from the 1950s to around 2000, which attempted to place the transport vehicles within a broader historical
context, containing, for example, images such as coca-cola, Elvis and Barbie dolls in the 1950s, 60s and
70s, providing a somewhat Eurocentric context as a whole.
The hall of buses was also extensive, including trolley buses, Johannesburg’s last tram and many
motor buses. However, there was no detailed written explanation as to who used them, or the routes they
took, other than an indication of which city they came from. There were three dimensional scenes in glass
cases of buses in miniature, showing their development.
When considering the hall of buses, given previous discussions and the aims of the paper to
explore broader representations of transport, its networks, its passengers, one could ask what was missing
from the displays and labels? For example, a green double decker Cape Town bus stood in the hall.
Putting the social fabric back in, what was not there? Clearly, the bus was not moving, there was no
street, or the physical environment the vehicle existed and moved within. There were also no people, the
bus being presented as an empty shell, an object in its own right, truly, an excised fragment of a previous
socio-cultural life. Devoid of ethnography, the bus became an artwork, to be read against other buses
within a technological and mechanical aesthetics of comparison. What, then, if one returns people to the
scene, puts back in the presence of people waiting at a bus stop, the driver in uniform and cap seated at
the front of the green bus in the driver’s seat, the conductor waiting in the entrance with his ticket
machine snaking tickets into passengers’ hands? If one steps onto the bus, onto the entrance on the lower
level, and becomes a passenger, then what does one see?

12
Figure 2 Seating sign inside James Hall Museum 'Cape
Town' bus
Immediately upon entering the bus, and
only visible if one made the effort to peer inside,
was a sign stating where ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ could
sit on the bus, immediately positioning the viewer
within a different context of interpretation, moving
from the bus as an inert, technological, and even
aesthetic object, to a divisive cultural tool in the role
of racial segregation, hierarchy and segregation as a
passenger in South Africa’s past. The context shifts to the possibilities of representing disputes,
controversies, boycotts, ways in which segregation was enforced, and resisted, in Cape Town city, and
how it informed the ways in which people moved (or did not move) around 17 . Put the route back in and
then one needs to ask which ‘group area’ or areas the bus served, and the disputes over who could travel
where in relation to constructs of race and identity. Such interpretative frameworks present a material
reality to understanding divisions of transports, networks and society in the past. However, other than the
single sign inside the bus, there were no other alternative forms of interpretation for the silent and static
buses that filled the hall – one had to have the presence of mind or curiosity to look inside the entrance of
this particular bus amongst the many other buses, trolley buses and other such vehicles filling the hall. It
would seem that the hall of buses, indeed, is ‘haunted’ by transport phantasmagorias of the past.
To contrast the pristine representation of the green Cape Town bus, there was a sculpture of a
burnt out shell of a bus (by Peter Meintjes) at the same time displayed at the Mayibuye Centre at UWC,
which suggested a different take on the ‘bus’ as a transport theme; referring to riots and boycotts, the bus
as a sign of defiance. Drawing on a different aesthetic framework, not one of mechanical manufacturing
or engine technology, but of art, it is also aesthetically mesmerizing, and, in a sense, being created in the
apartheid past of South Africa, arguably nostalgic. However, the sculpture of the bus clearly referents a
more socially problematic view of transport history; one that led to social unrest rather than social order.
If representations like this from artworks or photographs either in the Mayibuye Centre, which
contains for example, large banners depicting buses, and photographs of segregation at bus-stops, could
be displayed alongside buses in the James Hall Museum, a whole new and more pluralistic take on bus
and transport history would become evident. Through contrasting two ethnographic ‘fragments’ from
17 Pirie (see references) for example, has written extensively on the history of South African transport.

different transport-related contexts, and drawing attention to artefacts such as the segregation sign on the
bus, the juxtaposition in itself, through the conceptual gap required to relate these together, might suggest
a richer and deeper historical and more diverse perspectives on bus transport as a whole.
13
Searching the museum for more representations of persons actually using vehicles, I did find one
person, a stuffed, pale, life-sized and somewhat disheveled dummy of a woman with a parasol and
wearing a long white dress, seated on what appeared to be the passenger seat of a motor vehicle, and who
appeared either part-sedated, possibly inebriated, or in a partial faint. There was no description or label at
the time accompanying the vehicle she was seated in to serve as an explanation, and my guess, or maybe
fantasy, is that she was created to accompany a driver on a rally. However, her presence, and the type of
person she represents, immediately creates a particular perception, an elite and affluent ‘white’ South
African lifestyle, particularly of the ownership of access to motor car vehicles in South Africa’s past, and
this question - which people drove cars? – raises more questions.
Figure 3 Replica of passenger at James Hall Museum of
Transport
As previously described, the driving of motor
vehicles was, under apartheid, controlled by race. Looking at
recent statistics in South Africa, the car driving population is
primarily, and shockingly, given that the white population is
less than ten percent of the overall population, white. For
example, in 2005, 70 percent of car drivers were ‘white’.
The permeation of the past into present becomes evident.
The very presence of the dummy of the wealthy woman
passenger asserts previous hierarchies, and the driving and
ownership of motor vehicles remains socially
unproblematised. The absence of depictions of a racially restrictive past as far as motor vehicle ownership
goes, ultimately excludes an entire, racialised history which extends in terms of economy and access to
the possession of motor vehicles in the present.
An education officer took groups of schoolchildren around the museum, through whom verbally,
if not visually, it is possible alternative histories were explored. Independent visitors took their own
trajectories, which meant they saw pretty much what I saw. One special feature of the James Hall
museum for schoolchildren was the fact that a real fire engine was driven around to the front of the

uilding for the schoolchildren to climb onto and be driven up and down upon, sounding its siren during
the trip. A group of schoolchildren were visiting at the time. The ability to directly interact with moving
vehicles, given the obvious enjoyment of the schoolchildren, was clearly a big visitor drawing factor, and
such experiences are not to be dismissed. The museum was also planning to build a tram track for trips to
be taken, extending around the museum grounds. James Hall Museum also has an active outreach
programme which uses vehicles taken out to the public, particularly to schools. This included a ‘museum
bus’ with exhibition spaces specially built in, at the time being converted to a ‘Vuvuzela exhibition bus’
for the World Cup, and a specially created ‘football-shaped’ vehicle built into the shape of a football
being pushed by a dung beetle. There was also a relatively old ‘Christmas bus’ that was, according to
Peter Hall, being used again at Christmas, complete with a live Santa Claus 18 . Bearing in mind the ever-
present oncoming World Cup throughout the research period, a soccer display was also in the main
entrance hall, along with the Outspan mini.
Peter Hall had also been involved in the production of a book, ‘The People Shall Move: A
peoples’ history of transport’ in conjunction with the City of Johannesburg (Sey 2008). This book
provided a more socio-political perspective on the history of transport. It was based strongly on issues of
transport, apartheid and resistance, advocating the development of the Bus Rapid Transport System, Rea
Vaya, planned for Johannesburg in parallel with development plans for the 2010 World Cup – and
thematically focused on the ‘evolution’ of transport in South Africa towards transport ‘for all’ as a result
of new development plans.
14
There were no corresponding exhibits to the book in the museum however at the time of visiting,
except several rolled up banners that apparently contained panels of information replicated from the book
which had been taken out to schools and exhibited as part of, it appeared, the Rea Vaya campaign in
correlation with the production of the book.
18 Interestingly there was no bus for other religious celebrations, indicating the audience the bus was
originally aimed at, which contrasts in intent with a diverse ‘rainbow nation’.

15
Moving Experiences and Immobilities - District Six Museum
Figure 4 Ground floor of District
Six Museum
As a contrast, this paper moves
to a very different museum space to the
James Hall Museum, District Six
museum. District Six Museum is
declared ‘Museum of Conscience’
community museum, formed initially
as a response to the displacement of
around 60,000 persons from the District Six residential area near the centre of Cape Town under the
forced removals as a result of the Group Areas Act (1950). (See Parenzee 2000; Bennet, Julius and
Soudein 2008; Rassool 2006a, 2006b).
As a contrast to James Hall Museum of Transport, there are no major ‘authentic’ artefacts in the
District Six Museum to suggest the area of the past – no streets remain, there are no houses, no vehicles –
bar a set of street signs collected from the original streets that were bulldozed to the ground, and small
household artefacts brought in by District Six ex-residents and their families. Much of the museum
consists of creative artistic reconstructions and installations combined with a myriad of exhibition boards
and displays, artworks, craftworks, and the opportunity to meet the original residents of District Six, who
act as voluntary guides. As a museum, District Six has been argued to recreate memory, acting as a space
of memorialisation (Rassool 2006a, 2006b), where the pain of apartheid and its haunting presence in the
present is engaged with through a mode of exhibition that puts people first, at the core of the museum’s
interests.
There are diverse considerations in the relevance of District Six to issues of mobility and
transport. Firstly, the museum acts as a reminder of the Group Areas Act (1950) and the impact of forced
removals on the population, arguably presenting a state of ‘immobility’ rather than mobility, or even a
‘forced mobility’. Transport and mobility is, although not thematically indicated in the museum, arguably
part of the memory of District Six Museum, the remembered ebb and flow of District Six Community –
people moving to and fro from work, people arriving from the docks, moving through the streets. During

video interviews 19 with pensioners at HCI Foundation, one elderly pensioner spoke of working on the
District Six tram that ran to the docks, the influx of dockworkers in and out of District Six via the trams,
and scenes of drunken visiting sailors standing in front of the trams and stopping them moving forwards.
A sense of movement from place to place is also evoked through the street names placed on the stairs one
walks upon to reach the second floor; suggesting movement through the streets, yet the haunting reality of
the absence of the actual streets in the present.
16
Figure 5 Floor map of District Six, District Six
Museum
District Six is particularly famous
for its floor map, probably its most
famous exhibit, a large drawn map
covering the floor of the museum
depicting the streets people lived in and
moved through. Old relationships are
spatially revived through ex-residents having written their names on the homes where they previously
lived, and commemorated and re-evoked materially in the present. In contrast with James Hall Museum is
the evocation of community through the street map, the reconnection of persons spatially divided by
forced removals to different ‘townships’ away from the centre of Cape Town. Rather than being invisible,
or ‘stuffed dummies’, as in the James Hall Museum of Transport, people are made visible and present
through their creations, writing, and photographs displayed embedded in narratives, commemorative
events, active community education, training programmes, and ongoing discourse and communication
about the past.
Flight - The South African Air Force Museum
As a further contrast, the South African Air Force Museum is a small museum at the Ysterplaat
South African Air Force base. The museum contains collections donated from Air Force Veterans and a
selection of air transport vehicles, displayed in separate hangars. The museum is run by Chris Teale who
apparently studied, amongst other short courses, museum installation and design at Michaelis Art School
at the University of Cape Town. He sees much of his exhibition work as along the lines of artistic
19 Present with Charlene Houston, film-maker, mid-2010

installation – incorporating collages 20 , assemblages and more esoteric 3-dimensional installation pieces.
The objects brought in by veterans 21 were somewhat reminiscent of the collection of artefacts by HCI
Foundation Golden Arrow pensioners, including photograph collections, badges, uniforms, writings, and
small items of memorabilia. There were display cabinets depicting themes such as ‘Women in the Air
Force 22 ’, and exhibitions commemorating the work of individuals, their awards and stories of bravado in
17
the SAAF. The most recent exhibition was on the
Korean War.
Figure 6 Display at SAAF museum
Being an in-house museum, the SAAF
museum took a fairly uncritical look at the history
of the South African Air Force 23 . It is focused
primarily on commemorating the people who
constituted the workforce, including cleaners,
assistants and drivers. Veterans also acted as voluntary guides for
visitors at the museum.
Figure 7 Author
peering into
Chris Teale's
installation
Figure 8 Label
outside the
installation
20
For example he has his own secret jokes hidden within, such as Hitler, a non-smoker, being surrounded
by Mussolini smoking a cigar and other smokers.
21
Items from a veteran were also being delivered during interview, arriving in suitcases.
22
Women pilots apparently played an important role in the SAAF in training new pilots
23
A more recent, and possibly critical, development, was that apparently an art student was in the process of
creating an installation on the SAAF Angolan war experience – described by Chris Teale as planned to represent a
beer hall, because the SAAF just got drunk all the time, they felt so bad about everything.

One exhibit of interest was an installation piece created by Chris Teale that consisted of a
blacked-out large glass cabinet, with a single peephole. The cabinet had a sign at the front – dedicated to
the memory of ‘all black, coloured and Indian soldiers who served their country in two world wars’.
Inside the installation were poppies, one for every soldier who died. Also inside the cabinet was what
these SAAF servicemen were given when they retired from service - five pounds, a citizen’s suit in khaki,
and a bicycle, another somewhat ironic form of transport. Teale’s conceptual approach was that, through
having to peer into the cabinet, what was perhaps invisible information became noticeable; consequently
he claimed he drew attention to this particular aspect of SAAF history.
Stasis and Change - Museum Africa
Museum Africa in Johannesburg was undergoing reassessment of its collection under its new
director, Ali Hlongwane. There were a few items and exhibitions of note for this discussion. One exhibit
in the geology exhibition section had a construction that allowed children to stand on a replica of the
moon’s surface with their head through a hole in place of the face of a figure in a moon suit - a little like
old-fashioned seaside holiday pictures - to have a photograph taken as if going to the moon. Although
maybe stretching (both metaphorically and physically) the point a little here, perhaps a museum of
transport and mobility could include issues like trips to the moon and space travel 24 ? This exhibit is
apparently very popular with children, and such interactive factors could be borne in mind when creating
a museum of transport and mobility, also serving to provide the memento of a photograph.
18
Museum Africa also had an exhibition on Gandhi’s visit to South Africa, where he is known for
having had a dispute on a train in South Africa in 1893 concerning segregation ,and was thrown off in
Pietermaritzburg. The museum also contains the famous Bensusan museum of photography, an excellent
resource for early photographs of transport in South Africa. One of the photographs blown up to a large
size in the main hall of Museum Africa portrayed the square in front of the museum, filled with ox carts.
Migrancy and Labour - Lwandle Migrant Labourers’ Museum, Workers’ Museum, and
Outeniqua Transport Museum Trains
Migrant Labour museums also relate to issues of South African mobility and transport. Migrant
labour needed the use of an intensive network of trains to transport people across South Africa, as well as
goods produced by factories and mines (Pirie 1993, 1997). As mentioned earlier, labourers lived in
cramped conditions, many beds to one room, and could return home only once a year to their families, for
24 This might not seem too ridiculous, given that South African multimillionaire entrepreneur Mark
Shuttleworth recently went to the moon.

approximately several weeks to a month. Such migration and movement had inevitable repercussions on
family relations and relationships, both within residential compounds and in rural areas. They are also
reminders of the strong rural land links maintained by many South Africans living in urban areas,
exemplifying how persons can be simultaneously located both in one place and another, even in the same
country.
Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, just outside central Cape Town on the N2 near Somerset
West, is sited in the old community hall of Lwandle Township, a residential area that grew up around the
workers compounds attached to the local factories. Despite the exhibition in the main hall consisting of
mostly flat text and image-based panels and a few artefacts that bore reference to issues of transport and
mobility. What helped bring the exhibition to life was the fact that a real person, who lives in the
township and thus is related to the history of the development of Lwandle, told the story, thus making
history ‘come alive’.
19
In relation to mobility and transport interests, the museum included aerial shots of Lwandle from
1953 onwards, showing the proliferation of street networks and dwellings around compounds attached to
local factories over time. The museum also displayed narratives of travel and arrival at Lwandle. There
was a pile of suitcases, representing migration, and a permanent exhibition of photographs by David
Goldblatt's of long journeys on buses taken by people to and from work. There was also a recently
opened exhibition (2010) depicting the work of clothes designers in Lwandle, arguably as alternative
narratives to stories of loss and victimization, to one of contribution, innovation and talent that individuals
bring into the area - arguably a sense of movement not just of persons, but of material culture and artistic
production into the area. 25
The ‘star attraction’ of Lwandle Museum was ‘Hostel 33’ the original place where workers used
to stay when working at nearby allocated factories 26 . The hostel at the time was undergoing restoration, in
an effort to restore it to its original condition, each room, with four beds apiece (which extended to one
bed per family), planned to be shown in different decades. A decision had also made by the museum to
keep up the sign of complaint when squatters who had occupied the previously empty Hostel 33 were
25 It is also worth bearing in mind that taxi industries arose in townships as a need to get around, given the
limitations of bus services as townships grew and distances grew further and further. Today in Lwandle, according
the education officer, Lundi, taxis extend to places as far as Mozambique (also indicating the changing constitution
of Lwandle residents], and special taxi services run as funeral taxis at special rates for those who die in the township
but wish to be buried in rural areas (usually in the case of Lwandle, the Eastern Cape).
26 Noleen Murray is the architect/postdoctoral fellow assigned to this project.

asked to move out, consequently demonstrating that controversies of property and ownership run into the
20
present in Lwandle. Opposite Hostel 33 are other, now converted,
hostel buildings that families live in.
Figure 9 Interior of Hostel 33, Lwandle
The Worker’s Museum, alternatively sited in the centre of
Johannesburg, not in a township, was also a hostel for migrant
labourers. For the museum exhibition, the City of Johannesburg
assigned an outside design team 27 - the outcome being a more
‘glitzy’ exhibition providing a history of migrant labour through the
use of video, sound, installations and photographs. The emphasis,
again, was on people’s experience. For example one of the rooms
depicted a rural backdrop with photographs of migrant labourers in
the foreground, suggesting both the urban and rural origins of these
persons. The living quarters were not as originally constructed, but were painted a bright red, with less
emphasis on the ‘authenticity’ of the past, and more on design aspects - certainly not created to replicate a
sense of being ‘lived in’ as in Hostel 33 of Lwandle Migrant Labour museum.
The curator, Anne-Kristin Bicher, pointed out that the museum does not specifically concentrate
much on the actual journeys to and from the workers’ compound through public transport networks, such
as the railways. However, there were references throughout the museum displays that referred to aspects
of transport and mobility. For example one of the video displays portraying memories of people arriving
in the worker’s compound, had one narrative filmed on a train. Furthermore, one large photograph, on the
wall outside, portrayed people apparently having just arrived from the train station in Johannesburg,
carrying their luggage across the street.
The Workers’ Museum timeline contrasted with the James Hall Museum’s timeline, being not
one of coca cola and Barbie dolls but one which focused specifically on a South African historical
apartheid and resistance context. The museum also contained artefacts people brought and made at the
hostel, and apparently the compound was a site of creativity for performances and music in the past. Also
of interest, possibly in relation to recent issues of xenophobic violence in 2008 and since, was a map
27 This has its drawbacks - one artefact exhibited inside a glass case had fallen down but the museum had
not managed to get hold of the designers to fix it and the exhibit had been broken for a long time

depicting the different places migrant labourers came from, including African countries from outside
South Africa.
21
Figure 10 Workers' Museum film clip
Outeniqua Transport Museum in
George consisted mostly of steam
locomotives and rail-related road
vehicles 28 . The museum previously ran a
steam train from Knysna, known as the
‘Outeniqua Tjoe-Tjoe’. However, flood
damage destroyed the route and the line
now ran from Mossel Bay, a fact that sorely depleted the number of visitors to the museum. Filled with
steam locomotives and road vehicles, the museum appeared to offer a primarily colonial historical
perspective of transport history. The presence of a Royal Train and President Kruger train harked back to
colonial and apartheid days. Interestingly, what were not present were signs indicating segregation on the
trains and at waiting areas, which remained completely invisible in the museum space. The decision to
remove the signs, the manager claimed was due to complaints after 1994 that the signs were offensive and
racist in the New South Africa. Their removal created, however, an erasure of history, based on
forgetting, rather than drawing attention to injustices of the past. The trains, as with the vehicles of James
Hall museum (and possibly even more so) appeared to stand alone, objects for the aesthetic contemplation
of a bygone age, rather than a critical interrogation of social transport frameworks and hierarchies.
Incidentally, one attempt to recreate the interior of a train with three-dimensional life size figures,
recreated the ‘white’ passengers portrayed in a nearby photograph of a train interior, but did not recreate
the black waiters from the same photograph – raising questions around the creation of presences and
absences in museum depictions – was this a deliberate choice, or was the invisibility of the waiters
already present in the mind of the exhibition designer? There were also models of transport vehicles 29 ,
including a mechanized miniature model train circuit activated by a coin, as well as artworks 30 depicting
trains rolling through the countryside, bellowing wreaths of smoke. An exhibition of posters along a
28 See Leslie Witz, forthcoming paper, for a more in-depth discussion.
29 Model-making enthusiasts, as a thematic subject for display, could offer a very interesting theme for
future exhibitions?
30 According to the station manager,’ transport art’ makes great collectors’ pieces.

passageway, from a post-1994 transport poetry event, did present a critical take on the apartheid years,
although the poems were displayed with little accompanying description.
22
A side-partitioned and badly-lit section of the exhibition floor 31 focused on representing transport
workers. It included black and white photographs of workers building railways, carrying rails in long
lines above their heads, always with ‘white’ supervisors. In one photograph, black workers (or servants)
were pushing what looked like their white bosses along train lines on a small rail cart, presumably for the
amusement of those having their photographs taken, yet also poignantly delineating social divisions and
relationships of servitude, control and exploitation associated with the railroads.
Figure 11 Photographs displayed at Outeniqua Transport Museum
What was striking in the museum was the lack of integration of the exhibition of workers with the
trains on display. There was clearly an absence of a truly critical take on issues such as migrant labour,
train segregation and apartheid resistance and boycotts over the years, or an exploration of continued
transport problems in the present. Also, what was lacking was an active community from the present
similar to that of District Six – where were the present train workers, and their families? Where were the
people and/or goods (and their merchants) who traveled and travel in the recent past, and the present? The
museum became a historical piece, severed from the present, an artefact of history rather than a
representation of society.
31 Apparently economic problems meant that lighting was largely inadequate.

Of Sailing Ships - The Dias Museum Complex, Maritime Museum and Slave Lodge
23
Figure 12 Dias Museum 1987/8 replica
of 1488 ship.
The Dias Museum Complex was constructed
around the actual built replica of a ship which
traveled from Portugal to South Africa in
1987/8 to commemorate the 1488 trip of
Bartolomeu Dias, supposedly the first
European to set foot in South Africa. He then
apparently returned back to his ship and sailed
off again. The museum commemorates the
1988 festival (Witz 2006) and remains focused on the coming of ‘civilisation’ and a maritime history to
South Africa. There were exhibits of a diorama of Europeans first meeting locals, artefacts of primarily
Western social history, maritime memorabilia, and a profusion paintings and craftwork created for the
1998 festival. As part of the depiction of ‘maritime history’, there was a map of the ‘Spice Trade’ which.
interestingly, did not reveal that the Spice Trade route taken by the Dutch East India Company was also
the route through which slaves were delivered, along with goods, to South Africa. Postal stones were also
prevalent, as the Dias Museum is said to be the site of the first ‘Post Office’ of sorts in South Africa - post
obviously relating to transport here.
Likewise, the Maritime Museum in the Waterfront depicted the seemingly wondrous world of
shipping, paintings of full-masted ships fronting the entrance to the previous Union Castle building at the
Waterfront. An exhibition, ‘The Union Castle line in the Twentieth Century’, covered working on and
travelling on the Union Castle liners, including posters depicting holidays clearly advertised for the
‘white’ elite. There was a panel on immigration to Cape Town, with people disembarking in a basket
hoisted above the water into Cape Town harbour, yet no distinct representation of slavery or the fishing
industry in the museum, despite Cape Town being a major port for the importation of slaves by the Dutch
East India ships in the past 32 , and having a large fishing population and industry. There were many old
32 Interestingly, the Maritime Museum falls under Iziko, which also houses the Slave Lodge Museum - does
this then indicate that the relative categories of classification of museums materially ‘divorce’ maritime history from
slavery?

ships models 33 , and there are apparently a great deal more in storage. There was also a small exhibition –
‘The Last Voyage of the Mendi’ with video as well as text/photographic panels, depicting a shipwreck.
The Slave Lodge, in Cape Town, is in the building constructed on the site of the original slave
lodge in Cape Town 34 . The exhibition ‘Remembering Slavery’ was on the ground floor, a multimedia
exhibition with thematic room installations, poetry and sound. The exhibition manager, Fiona Clayton
claimed that the story of slave transportation depicted by the exhibition is overall a more general story of
slavery, rather than one specific to the experience of travel by Cape Town slaves. An example is the
inclusion of the archetypal picture of the specially-designed well-known ‘slave vessel’, despite the fact
that slaves along the Dutch East India Company route were transported not separately, but as goods, with
other ‘goods’ such as spices.
24
Figure 13. Slave trade, captured slaves 1861,
displayed at The Slave Lodge
In relation to the ‘act of looking’
and representation within the museum
context, the image of what was described as
a ‘typical slave ship’ at the Slave Lodge
suggests the Dias Museum image of a ship –
displayed as an object in itself, of colonial
celebration, travel and discovery, detached
from the history of exploitation and slavery that followed it. An image of slaves being led in chains after
capture at the Slave Lodge also depicts a different perspective to that of the Maritime museum’s story of
maritime transportation, or maps of trade and discovery at the Dias Museum. The map depicting ship
routes where slaves were taken from to Cape Town on display in the Slave Lodge, can be compared to the
map of Spice Routes in the Dias Museum – two maps intrinsically related but existing within different
contexts of interpretation.
33
The museum previously had a full-time model maker who apparently stayed very busy, and ship
companies previously had ship models that were given to the museum.
34
The building, which originally housed slaves after arrival at the Cape, changed its official name from the
Cultural History Museum to the Slave Lodge in 1998 and still houses many what are arguably colonial ‘cultural
artefacts’ on its upper floor

25
A display of artifacts 35 at the Slave Lodge, was displayed evidence of artistry and skills brought
into the Cape contributed by slaves and indentured labourers. There was also an installation of typical
slave surnames that enabled visitors to ascertain if they had possible slave ancestry.
Space, Separation and Resistance - Ghoema and Glitter, and the Apartheid Museum
The ‘Ghoema and Glitter’ exhibition of the Cape Town Minstrels Carnival (see Martin 1999) at
the Castle also highlighted the fact that there are many different ways of looking at mobility. ‘Taking
over’ and moving through the streets on foot as part of Carnival is a statement in itself of a form of
resistance, often in conflict with authorities. Not only is the carnival about dancing and parading, being
mobile through the streets, but it also traditionally brings those who were dispersed across Cape Town
through forced removals back into the city centre, where the streets, again, are owned. Also of interest is
the fact that the participants hire a large number of Golden Arrow buses to move around the city during
the Carnival and for the Carnival competitions. 36 Carnival requires a different use of the city. It reshapes
and destabilizes city norms of mobility and access during its presentation, destabilizing temporarily
established city flows and presenting an alternative world of ownership within seeming anarchy, but
actually within a very well structured organised movement of large numbers of people across a city, to
converge at key points and times, in bursts of creativity and well-rehearsed celebrations.
Figure 14. Kaspir at Apartheid
Museum
The Apartheid Museum in
Johannesburg, the final point of
arrival, was a high-technology
museum, rich in video and sound, as
well as text and installations. The
museum has been criticised due to
its investors being the Gold Reef
City entertainment/casino complex
where ‘In the larger framework of
35 Interestingly, objects recontextualised from the original Cultural History Collection
36 The competition used to take place at Greenpoint Stadium until it was converted to the World Cup
Stadium and the completion had to move to Athlone – what does this say about mobility and displacement caused by
the World Cup?

the Gold Reef City Complex as a whole… the Apartheid Museum is one of a range of attractions…. For
those investing large money in the new entertainment business, reliving apartheid is another legitimate
experience, an attraction, not quite a snuff movie, but in the same league’ (Hall and Bombardella 2005).
For others, it is a successful and powerful reminder of a recent past and its exhibition methods succeed in
conveying a traumatic and exploitative past (Ranking and Schmidt 2009).
The museum, according to curator (Education and Exhibitions Consultant) Emilia Potenza,
depicts the more the overriding ‘grand narrative’ of apartheid, including the history of resistance, rather
than the individualized and ‘community’ experience of the District Six Museum 37 . In relation to vehicles,
the museum contained ‘Mandela’s car’, created for him by transport workers after his release, and a type
of vehicle not present in the James Hall Museum - a kaspir – representing an ominous feature of the
apartheid past, which one could climb inside and look out from, to create a sense of understanding of
apartheid surveillance and control.
Two of the most successful exhibits of the Apartheid Museum, according to the curator Emilia
Potenza in interview, were two displays where embodied experience played a major factor. As previously
mentioned, the museum integrated architecture and design to create separate ‘black’ and ‘white’
exhibition entrances, claimed by some to act as a bodily destabilizing experience, mimicking experiences
of control, oppression, surveillance, segregation and liberation in its efforts to convey the experience of
apartheid in the past (Rankin and Schmidt 2009). The second was a room that represented those who died
from hanging, convicted as a result of apartheid resistance – an installation of hangman’s ropes- one for
every person who died. Of note, according to the curator, was the effectiveness of the embodied
experience of actually standing in the presence of an installation, or the body being made to move in
certain ways.
Discussion – A Plurality of Representations?
26
Transport and mobility as an exhibition theme suggest an in-between state, somewhere between
artefact and movement. If one were to move away from merely depicting vehicles as objects to instead
explore the thicker contextual world/s people moved – and in many cases, continue to move – within, in
relation to the establishment of networks, divisions, linkages, access and non-mobilities, to unpack the
spaces in-between ‘here’ and ‘there’, maybe there is an opportunity to interrogate, even break down, some
of the constructedness of divided identities and communities in South Africa. Certainly, on an
37 There are some memory boxes at the entrance, but the Apartheid museum focuses less on community and
people stories overall, nothing like the scale of District Six museum.

international scale, through exhibitions such as ‘America on the Move ‘ at the Smithsonian (Lubar 2004)
and the London transport museum (Divall 2008) transport museums have been actively working towards
representing the social concerns of transport and its construction, taking on a broader interpretation of
transport and mobility studies. There is no reason why a new museum of mobility and transport in Cape
Town should not do this.
However, to do so, one needs to be particularly cognizant of issues of exclusion and privilege
when faced with the apartheid past, the problematic social fabric that delineates, divides and differentiates
persons even today in Cape Town. Is there perhaps a way of incorporating a social take on a mobility and
transport museum, to provide a museum space that ‘comes alive’ as a discursive creative space that
integrates and interconnects the past with the present, and doesn’t just leave themes, to use an apt
metaphor ‘standing’, but which itself has its own mobility, fluidity, flexibility, a forward-movement of
thinking that, through exploring the past, examines the present and creates not a linear experience, but a
multiplicity of experiences? This paper effectively has the indulgence of fiction, in that the Cape Town
Museum of Transport/Mobility does not exist as a solid constructed or defined material object, albeit the
emergence of various interests, different collections/ potential archives and available spaces, as well as
proposals, propositions and negotiations having taken place in Cape Town. Like an unformed artwork,
there is currently creative space for conjecture and suggestion – flights of fancy that may indeed – to
27
continue the transport metaphor – one day become airborne?
The museums described previously show different aspects and relevance to concepts of mobility
and transport, absences and presences that explore the history and complexity of mobility, and mobility
restriction in South Africa. Is there the possibility for plural interpretations of transport mobilities and
histories in a museum context? A new museum would need to effectively deal with the concept of flow
and movement, but transport can also be represented as non-mobility, points of blockage as well as
movement. Should one focus on the technological aspects for transport enthusiasts 38 and the nostalgia and
reification of the motor car and various models of transport antiquity? Or should one, as highlighted in the
previous examples, reveal the more sinister side of transport in Cape Town, focusing on the underlying
skeletal framework and not the façade – such as the Slave Trade, the spread of Empire and colonialisation
through contextualizing trains, migrant labour, the uprooting of people though forced removals, the
establishment of highways and rail tracks as barriers and boundaries, the expansion of bus and taxi
museums.
38 Divall (2008) notes that transport enthusiasts are not the most numerous visitor numbers in transport

transport as people had to commute further and further to work 39 ? What about interactive exhibits,
transport rides, the pensioner in uniform who delivers tickets to children without problematising the past.
Should one focus on (as Divall puts it) the BLO’s (Big Lumpy Objects) in South Africa as key attractors,
known to work well in UK transport museums, or AVC’s (Astounding Virtual Constructions – - my own
terminological creation) instead? Or both?
28
Technology and Science, and the social sciences are often perceived to be theoretically far apart,
difficult to merge in theory (see Mitchell 1998). Through focusing merely on one aspect, we ignore
multiple other interpretations, thus creating a narrative that potentially excludes. Should one display
collections of motor vehicles to populations who may not ever possess a vehicle of their own, as a
constant reminder of what one does not have, or as representing possibilities – desire and dreams and
fantasies for what maybe for what one might have, one day. Would people want to come to the museum
because of this?
Interestingly there is a motor vehicle event that takes place at Good Hope Centre in Cape Town
annually, in which panel beaters display and win prizes for converted vehicles which draws on an
audience primarily from ‘coloured’ residential areas, and certainly involves creativity, uniqueness and
artistry in relation to vehicles. Perhaps a museum of Transport could incorporate events or reference to
activities such as these? What about the well-known bicycle and running competitions in Cape Town such
as the Argus? Can artworks also be used, as the burnt out bus of Roger Meintjes, or artists brought in to
create new works, who, as Schneider (2003; also see Schneider and Wright 2010; 2006) argues, research
in a manner similar to anthropologists in society. Artists, as in District Six museum, could also be part of
work-shopping the museum's construction, presenting more imaginative, playful interactions with the
public that seek to interpret and interrogate transport realities, not as add-on art exhibits to collections
already present, or as decorative pieces, but as part of planning and creative thinking around specific
exhibitions. Should there even be an archive? If so, what objects or texts should be included and who
should have control and access over them?
Certainly, as Hostel 33 shows, the ‘real thing’ has considerable impact. But the high tech virtual
environment can also have impact. A concept where individuals can experience, say, an actual bus, - the
‘real thing’ - and move handles, knobs etc while taking a ‘virtual’ tour of Cape Town in the past and
present could be exciting. Interactive maps on walls could show changing routes and places over time,
39 Uma Mesthrie is writing about the Black River Community and the relationship of the Black River
Golden Arrow Depot to forced removals (as yet unpublished), for related published work on Black River by
Mesthrie see Mesthrie 2000)

that provide facts and access the past? As Lwandle has also shown, the real person has impact too, a
storyteller who takes the person through the exhibits. Perhaps even a virtual person is possible. However,
real actors can also be used – a technique that was extremely effective when the Slave Lodge was
renamed in 1998 on Heritage Day with a local company re-interpreting the past though a tour around the
building with individuals portraying different slaves ‘coming to life’ as visitors entered each room (see
Gibson 2009) .
29
One recent discussion with the Transport museum research core team suggested a museum could
also be a form of transport, say a bus (or a train for that matter) that moves from site to site, through a
series of ‘nodal’ exhibitions in which the city becomes the archive and the vehicle becomes the site of
mobility, moving between carefully constructed nodes of embodied experience and archival
interpretation. Multiple routes could thus form a new, multifocal museum.
Perhaps a museum of this kind can bring together science and society. The fact that an object
exists in-the-world provides a point for self reflection with regard to its praxis; its interaction with and
creation of habitus and social spaces in relation to the structuring of society. Artworks, literature and film
media have been contextualised in relation to imagined and collective identities that emerge in the city-
scape, so can a vehicle be explored in a similar way? It is possible that a bus be taken, literally and
metaphorically, apart, into its various technological, historical and social constituents - its passengers, its
routes, its existence, its construction, its transport to Cape Town, its technology, how it was presumed to
contribute to the advancement of society and the problematisation of this view, its relationship with
enthusiasts, as well as its re-interpretation as a theme by artists. A plural perspective would be an exciting
exhibition, or series of exhibitions.
The question as to who the audience are, as Divall (1999: 2001) has pointed out is crucial. How
would you get people in the door, given there is not a history of museum visiting in less privileged groups
in Cape Town, except for schools being ‘bussed in’. How could one move from a public that was
historically excluded, to inclusion, for the first exclusion is if they do not even come in the door in the
first place? Museums have been described not only as ‘dead’ in the past because of inert objects in glass
‘coffins’ but also in Cape Town would be ‘dead’ if people did not go through their doors. For a truly
dynamic museum, people access would be important. Should the museum be free of charge? Would it
require special events? Maybe there could be free transport to the museum? And how much should or
should the museum incorporate commercial involvement, would there be a form of showcase, like a
science centre for transport, exhibitions on environmental issues and so on, funded by companies

(although Divall (2008) complains that in the London Transport Museum such approaches become
didactic)?
30
One way could be to ensure the public contributed in some way to the museum – as in the District
Six museum where community contributions in the form of comments, memorabilia, voices, photographs
and creations form part of the museum. One idea might be to have, say, a photography competition, with
people taking photos on cellphones while travelling and the best selected for museum display, thus
encouraging more visitors. A way of recording visitor comments and ideas on issues such as environment
and transport, could be a discussion forum on a computer where the best threads and comments are
displayed 40 . The museum could also be a mode of voice for transport issues, to improve conditions,
bearing in mind there is a need for a better and more accessible transport system in Cape Town (Pirie
2009). Meetings could be held, complaints and suggestions for improvement registered.
A museum of this kind could become a vibrant space for integrating the city; people from all
regions making up the community. Even a huge interactive board where one can ‘access’ comments from
people in different areas on what it is like and how it is to live there (with some possible monitoring in-
between) is possible. Large electronic screens could be set up in different stations/places where people
could talk with each other, or images displayed from other parts of the city the same day, showing people
moving perhaps through different stations, or streets, a sense of interwoveness and interconnection
evoked despite divided realities and contexts, to create an awareness of the whole 41 . Visual artists and
performers could contribute and develop this concept. A wall of images of bus stops, stations, taxi ranks
at different sites in Cape Town could also be very interesting and would depict the whole city on the go.
To avoid ‘ethnographic fragmentation’ contemporary understandings of the museum would
require perceptions of its archive as complex and multifaceted, challenging representations of colonial
and apartheid histories in relation to the present. The museum should ideally be an intervention, providing
multiple points of access and interpretation that leave the visitor questioning their own position and hstory
in the world and to walk out the door looking differently at the city, wanting to know more. There might
be ways developed of designing gaps, barriers that represent blockages, also manifest in transport history
- perhaps in a metaphorical or experiential manner assigning routes that could not be taken, where
understandings of ways in which people live and interconnect can be reworked. There is space also for
40 The highly successful Hotel Yeoville 40 in Yeoville library, Johannesburg recently established
collaborative multi-platform public art project works along these lines
41 There is a display panel at the Transport Museum in London which does this between global city
centres. (Visited 2010).

oral histories but these will need to be carefully worked out – whose? How would they be selected, who
does the context of their telling shape their narrativisation? Are there alternative modes of collection?
31
All of the above would need careful thought and consideration. In-depth historical research could
underpin methods that could seem playful of even frivolous on the surface, but which, through their
apparent simplicity, lead to deeper interrogation, more knowledge, and a more thorough understanding of
social issues, working hand in hand with design elements to result in a plurality of experiences based on
thorough research and thought.
Such a museum could be aimed at connecting the city, reconnecting persons, through examining
the construction of spatialised divides, and exploring passenger experiences. And can, or should, the
museum be use to address issues like safe public transport at night and increased public transport safety.
Can the museum become a space for transport debates? And what about risk? There might be an
alternative ‘people’ room that creates exhibitions perhaps highlighting groups such as enthusiasts who
photograph, collect and make models of transport vehicles, those that creatively remodel their cars, those
who are in hiking groups. There could also be spaces that are open to constant reworking and
reinvestigation, where exhibits might be allowed to ‘fail’ or creative projects that operate similarly to the
District Six Museum? How can the ‘vampiric’ death side of transport be displayed in a way that is
beneficial and relevant to the present? Can the experience of migrant labour in the past be conceptually
linked to immigration from other African countries as a means to counteract xenophobia? Should the
authentic, the technological, the material, the ideological, the narrative, or social history predominate in
such a museum; alternatively, how can these boundaries of classification, discipline and interpretation be
crossed?
Conclusions
The previous section has been one of creative indulgence, given the museum is as yet fictive and
not fact. Featured within South African mobility history are issues of control and access, not only to
geographical spaces and hence places of work and enterprise, but also people. If a museum can be created
that examines the concerns that fall between the absences and presences in museums explored in the
paper, into new exciting possibilities for rethinking museums, then, even if small-scale, there is
opportunity for a creative approach that moves well beyond the Kunsthammer cabinet of curiosities;
beyond the ‘dead mausoleum’ and the one-sided ethnographic fragment, to integrate issues of technology,
of the environment, urban networks and social trajectories, and an in-depth historical depiction of the

growth and/or ‘non-growth’ (depending which way you look at it) of Cape Town’s road, public transport
networks and interconnections. Such a museum could bring together different disciplines, art, science,
design, computer technology, transport companies, and university research in really thinking beyond
absences in transport/mobility museums.
32
Can we then, put the people back, draw on the most recent research on cities that show cities are
constructed not just from the urban infrastructure, but also the imaginaries, the desires, the multiple
experiential emotions, narratives and negotiations people undertake, to explore the city and its networks?
African city specialist Simone (2004) describes the city as ‘the conjunction of seemingly endless
possibilities of remaking. With its artifice of architectures, infrastructures, and sedimentation channeling
movement, transaction and physical proximity, bodies are constantly are ‘on the line’ to affect and be
affected, ‘delivered up’ to specific terrain and possibilities of recognition or coalescence…. Even in their
supposedly depleted condition, all are openings onto somewhere, textures that punctuate and steer. They
are the product of specific spatial practices and complex interactions of variously located actors that
reflect maneuvers on the part of city residents to continuously resituate themselves in broader fields of
action’ (9) Can such a museum extend to multiple lenses on the past, present and future, be plural,
discursive and contradictory?
Returning to the theme of imagination and the museum as a created artwork (whether virtual, a
building, a series of buildings, or a transport vehicle), a transport museum may be designed to
simultaneously operate on many levels, to assimilate transport vehicle histories, social realities in the past
and present, the imagined city, conceptualisations of identity, and thus community, challenging issues of
belonging and ‘not-belonging’ by looking at the very networks that constructed these divides. Transport
and mobility as a theme can become a tool for a space of artistic re-imagination, through juxtapositions or
moments of unsettledness, to undo the divisions of separate communities through the creation of displays
which enable individuals to understand how artificial divides were created, within narratives of progress,
technology and development? Because, a museum of this sort should ultimately not answer the question,
whose perspective is this from, but, ideally, should be from everyone’s perspective, to raise questions, and
thus, conceptually, shape new perspectives.

33
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A grateful thank you to the following for their time, assistance, interviews, inspiration…
Ali Hlongwane, Director, and Zola, Curator, Museum Africa, Johannesburg
Anne-Katrin Bicher, Workers Museum, Johannesburg
Chris Teale, South Africa Air Force Museum, Cape Town
Do Machin, Virginia and Ferdinand of HCI Foundation, Cape Town, as well as the HCI Foundation
pensioners
Emilia Potenza, Curator, Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
Fiona Clayton, Slave Lodge, Manager, and Ghoema and Glitter Exhibition Curator, Cape Town
Lundi Mama, Education officer, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, Lwandle, Western Cape
Mandy Sanger and Bonita Bennett, Director, District Six Museum, Cape Town
Mariki Victor, Director, Mayibuye Centre, Cape Town
Matthys Van der Merwe, Curator, Maritime Museum, Cape Town
Mbulelo Mrubata, Manager, Dias Museum Complex, Mossel Bay
Michael Wolf, Creative Director, and Marco Rosa, Business Development Manager, Formula D
Interactive Design, Cape Town
Mokena Makeka, Director, Makeka Design Lab Architects, Cape Town
Karl Vol Schenck, Director/Manager, Outeniqua Transport Museum, George
Peter Hall, Head of Institution, James Hall Museum of Transport, Johannesburg
And thank you also to the UWC Transport Research Team – Professors Ciraj Rassool, Leslie Witz and
Nicky Rousseau of the History Department and Heritage Disciplines, Professor Gordon Pirie of Cities in
Transition (VLIR), Postdoctoral fellow Anis Daraghma, and Postgraduate researchers Charlene Houston,
Asaniel, Dmitri and Heather for ongoing discussion and inspiration, and Professor Colin Divall of York
University and York Transport Museum for his input. Also, thank you to Jane Smidt, Janine and Noorunnisa
for UWC administrative support.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Benedict. 1983 (Revised 1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism. New York, London: Verso.
Appadurai, Arjun 1991. Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and queries for a transnational anthropology. In:
Richard Fox (ed.) Recapturing Anthropology: working in the present. Santa Fe, Cal: SAR Press
Appadurai, Arjun 1995. The Production of Locality. In: Richard Fardon (ed.) Counterworks. London:
Routledge

Ash, Amin 2002. Spatialities of Globalisation. In: Environment and Planning A. 2002, Vol 34, pg 385-
399
Ash, Amin 2002b. Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with diversity. Environment and Planning
A. 2002. Vol 34, pg 959-980
Bank, Andrew and Minkley, Gary 1999. Genealogies of Space and Identity in Cape Town. No 25. Pre-
Millenium Issue. 1998/1999 Editorial
Beckmann, J. 2001. ‘Automobility’: A social problem and theoretical concept. Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space 19 (2001) 593-607
Bennett, Bonita, Chrischene Julius and Crain Soudien 2008. City. Site. Museum. Reviewing Memory
Practices at the District Six Museum. Pub. District Six Museum. Cape Town.
Bhabha, H. K. Nation and Narration, (London, New York: Routledge, 1990)
Biron, Rebecca (Ed.) 2009. City/Art: The Urban Scene in Latin America. Duke University Press, USA
Bissell, David. 2009. Visualising Everyday Geographies: Practices and vision through travel-time. Trans.
Inst. Br. Geogr. NS 34; 42-60; 2009
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline for a Theory of Practice. London: Cambridge University Press.
Bridge, Gary and Sophie Watson, 2004 (eds.). A Companion to the City. Blackwell Publishing.
Cameron, Fiona and Sarah Mengler 2009. Complexity, Transdisciplinary and Museum Collection
Documentation: Emergent metaphors for a complex world. Journal of Material Culture 2009; 14; 189
Cinar, Alev and Thomas Bender 2007. Urban Imaginaries: Locating the Modern City. University of
Minnesota Press. Minneapolis. London.
Clark, Jennifer. 2010. The ‘Rough and Tumble’: Displaying complexity in the motor museum. Museum
Management and Curatorship. 25: 2, 219-274.
Divall, Colin 2003. Transport Museums: Another kind of historiography. The Journal of Transport
History 3 rd Ser. 24,2 (Sep 2003) pp 259-65
Divall, Colin 2008. The London Transport Museum: Exhibit Review. In: Technology and Culture. Oct
2008. Vol. 49. Pp1010-1017
Divall, Colin and Andrew Scott 2001. Making histories in Transport Museums. Leicester University
Press.
Field, Sean, R Meyer and F Swanson. Imagining the City: Memories and cultures in Cape Town. Human
Sciences Research Council.
Gibson, N Jade. 2009. Making Art, Making Identity: Moving beyond racialised perceptions of identity
through collaborative exhibition in the New South Africa. South African Historical Journal. Vol 61. No.3.
Sept 2009. 594-620.
Hall, Martin and Pia Bombardella 2005. Las Vegas in Africa. Journal Social Archaelogy. 2005. 5:5
34

Hall, Stuart 1990. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In: Jonathan Rutherford (ed.). 1990. Identity:
Community, Culture, Difference. Lawrence and Wishart.
Henning, Michelle 2006. Museums, Media and Cultural Theory. Open University Press 2006.
Horrell, Muriel et al. 1946-present. A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa/South African Institute of
Race Relations Annual Reports. South Africa.
Karim, Quarrisha Abdool and Salim S Abdool Karim 2002. The Evolving HIV epidemic in South Africa.
International Journal of Epidemiology 2002: 31: 37-40
Khosa, Meshack M. 1991. Routes, Ranks and Rebels; Feuding in the taxi revolution. Journal of Southern
African Studies. Vol. 18. No 1. March 1991/2, 232-251
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 1991. Objects of Ethnography. In: Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (Eds)
Exhbiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 2004. The Museum – A Refuge for Utopian Thought. (Appeared in
German translation in Die Unruhe der Kutlure: Potentiale des Utopischen, eds. Jorn Rusen, Michael Fehr
and Annelie Ramsbrack (Velbruch Wissenschaft 2004)
Kratz, Cory (forthcoming 2011). Rhetorics of Value: Constituting worth and meaning through cultural
display. Visual Anthropology Review. Vol. 27. No 1.
Legassick, Martin and Ciraj Rassool 2000. Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African musuems and the
trade in human remains; 1907-1917. South Africa Museum.
Lubar, Steven 2004. The Making of ‘America on the Move’ at the National Museum of American
History. Curator. The Museum Journal 2004 Vol. 47(1) 19-51
Martin, Dennis-Constant. 1999. Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town: Past and Present. Cape Town:
David Phillip.
Mesthrie, Uma 2000. Dispossession and Memory: The Black River Community of Cape Town. Oral
History, Vol. 28. No2. Memory and Place (Autumn 2000) pp35-43
Miraftab, Faranak. (2007) Governing Post Apartheid Spatiality: Implementing City Improvement
Districts in Cape Town. Antipode 39:4, 602–626
Mitchell, W T J. 1998. The Last Dinosaur Book. Chicago University Press.
Morris, S S 1969. Cape Town: Metropolis in the Making: A Decade of Development. The Town Planning
Revew, Vol 40, No 2 (Jul 1969)
Parenzee, Donald (compiling ed.) Words in the House of Sound: The writer’s floor of the Distric Six
Museum. 2000
Pile, Steve 2005. Real Cities: Modernity, Space and the Phantasmagorias of City Life. Sage Pubs:
London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi.
35

Pirie, Gordon 1989. Implantation of Racial Ideology: Bus apartheid in Cape Town. Social Dynamics. 15:
1, 61-74.
Pirie, Gordon. 1992. Rolling Segregation into Apartheid: South African Railways, 1948-53. Journal of
Contemporary History, Vol. 27, No.4 (Oct. 1992), pp 671-693
Pirie, Gordon. 1993. Railways and Labour Migration to the Rand Mines: Contraints and significance.
Journal of Southern African Studies. 19 (1993) 713-730.
Pirie, Gordon. 1997. British Bombelas: Trains for migrant gold miners in South Africa c. 1900-1925.
Journal of Transport History 18 (1997), 31-44.
Pirie, Gordon. 2009. Virtuous Mobility: Moralising vs measuring geographical mobility in Africa. Afrika
Focus. Vol 22. Nr. 1. 2009 pp21-35
Pirie, Gordon. 2008. Automobility in Colonial Africa before 1939: Uses, constraints, dependence. Paper
presented at South African and Contemporary history and Humanities Seminar 2008
Pressly, Donwald 2009. South Africa has widest gap between rich and poor: Study finds South Africa
now falls below Brazil. Business Report Sept 28 2009.
Http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5181018 Accessed online 03/10/10
Preziosi, Donald 1996. Brain of the Earth’s Body: Museums and the framing of modernity. In: Paul Duro
(Ed) 1996. The Rhetorics of the Frame: Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork. London: Cambridge
University Press
Rankin, Elizabeth and Leoni Schmidt 2009. The Apartheid Museum: Performing a Spatial Dialectics.
Journal of Visual Culture 2009; 8:76.
Rassool, Ciraj 2006a. Making the District Six Museum in Cape Town. Museum International. Vol. 58;
No 1-2; 2006. 229-230.
Rassool, Ciraj and Witz, Leslie. 1996. South Africa: A World in One Country - Moments in international
tourist encounters with wildlife, the primitive and the modern. Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines,, 143,
XXXXVI-3, 1996: 335-371
Rassool, Ciraj. 2000. The Rise of Heritage and the Reconstitution of History in South Africa. Kronos:
Journal of Cape History. August 2000b. No. 26: 1-21
Rassool, Ciraj. 2006b. Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in South
Africa: Histories, Possibilities and Limits’ in: I Karp, C Kratz et al (eds.). Museum Frictions: Public
Cultures/Global Transformations. Durham Duke University Press. 2006.
Robins, Steven. 2002. At the Limits of Spatial Governmentality: A message from the tip of Africa. Third
World Quarterly, Vol.23, No.4, pp 665-689, 2002.
36
Said, Edward 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon books.
Schneider, Arnd and Christopher Wright. 2006. Contemporary Art and Anthropology. Berg Pubs. Oxford:
NY
Schneider, Arnd and Christopher Wright. 2010. Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary
ethnographic practice. Berg Pubs. Oxford: NY

Sey, James (writer and researcher) 2008. The People Shall Move: A people’s history of public transport.
Transportation Dept., City of Johannesburg.
Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2004. For the City Yet to Come: Changing African life in four cities. Duke
University Press. Durham. London 2004.
Strathern, M. 1990. Artefacts of History: Events and the interpretation of images. In (Ed.) Jukka Siikala.
Culture of History in the Pacific. The Finnish Anthropological Society. TAFAS 27.
Stratton, Michael 1990. Integrating Technological and Social History: Engines of Change at the National
Museum of American History. Technology and Culture: vol. 31, No 2 (Apr 1990) 271-277
Taylor, Jane and David Bunn 1988 (eds.) From South Africa: New writing, photographs and art.
University of Chicago Press.
Vertovec, Steven 2001. Transnationalism and Identity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27:4,
573-582 Oct 2001.
Watson 1998. Planning under Political Transition – Lessons from Cape Town’s Metropolitan Planning
Forum. International Planning Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3. 1998.
Witz, Leslie 2006. Eventless History at the End of Apartheid: The making of the 1988 Dias Festival.
Kronos, 32, November 2006, 164-193.
37