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

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