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

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.