Apartheid Museum - Another Look

This week, I made my third visit to the Apartheid Museum at Johannesburg. Someday, I could earn a few Rands here as a guide!

This time I accompanied Siddharth. I was keen that he (and Abhishek whom I took on a similar tour last month) developed an understanding – even if an incipient one – of the several things that this experience must teach us human beings. I wanted him to get an idea of how walls built in human minds can shut out rationality and compassion. How we are capable of the cruelest of indignities and worse and have no trouble in justifying the indefensible. How human spirit cannot be broken by incarceration and lashes and bullets. But above all, I was very keen that both the children grasp the marvelous courage that goes into forgiveness and reconciliation. A miracle that was born less than two decades ago, a miracle of Nelson Mandela’s leadership and the bigheartedness of millions of South Africans.

(Siddharth next to one of the images in the museum - the coal miners during apartheid)

For me, this was the best visit of the three. I have just finished reading John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy. The book is a fine snapshot of the history of the years that followed the end of apartheid. It uses the events leading up to the finals of World Cup Rugby as the core around which the fascinating tale of Mandela’s contribution is built. On this visit to the museum I could identify many of the dramatis personae of the story among the documentaries and artifacts. It made my connection with the tale so much more vivid and real.

“I am a Yankee”, he tells the crowd at New York’s Yankee Stadium, much to their obvious delight.

He spars with George Foreman in lighthearted shadow play.

27 years after being locked up in solitariness, breaking stones and other menial labour, he retains his dignity and poise; I watch him on film, travelling in London in an open buggy with the Queen - he looks like the real royalty!

He tells a deeply moved Cameron Diaz “I love you too” in reply to her kiss on his cheek.

He puts President Klerk in his place in a speech in his presence, that feels and sounds like the steel of his resolve.

And, he appears at the World Cup final in the Springbok jersey, sporting on the back (the number of South Africa’s captain Pienar) and electrifies the entire nation; in the eyes of the blacks, the Springbok was, after all, a hated symbol of the apartheid.

Watching those documentaries of Mandela is an experience! His humanity is moving. The experience chokes me up and unless I am worried about others watching me, I do not bother fighting the tears. That is also the reason why I read the book on Mandela in solitariness!