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Mapping Museum–Community Relations in LwandleBongani Mgijima aa University of the Western CapePublished online: 06 Mar 2007.
To cite this article: Bongani Mgijima (2006) Mapping Museum–Community Relations in Lwandle, Journal of Southern AfricanStudies, 32:4, 795-806, DOI: 10.1080/03057070600995798
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Mapping Museum–Community Relations
in Lwandle*
Bongani Mgijima and Vusi Buthelezi
(University of the Western Cape)
South Africa’s political transition brought both challenges and opportunities for the country’s
museums. Since 1994, many community museums have been formed with the active involvement
of social groups formerly excluded from the management of public spaces. The Lwandle Migrant
Labour Museum is one such community project, which aimed to commemorate migrancy through
displays mounted in a preserved migrant labourers’ hostel. This article explores the relations
between the Lwandle Museum and local communities, examining how the creation of the museum
involved various forms of conflict, including problems created by the lack of alternative
accommodation for some of the hostel dwellers, a lack of funding, tensions between
‘professional’ guides and local experts speaking to their own experience of migrancy,
incomprehension as to the purpose and meanings of different aspects of exhibitions on the part of
locals and tourists, and tensions between preservationism and tourism as alternative museum
goals and strategies. The authors reflect on debates over how to commemorate migrancy and
involve local communities from their own position of active engagement with the museum as
curators, and in the light of their own experiences of managing tensions with the community.
Introduction
The study of ‘Public History’ – which looks at the ways in which knowledge is produced in
museums, monuments, festivals and the like – has gained prominence in South Africa as a
result of the criticism of representations of culture and history in museums around the
country.1 Heritage practitioners and scholars alike started to question once-sacred museum
practices and their relevance in a new era symbolised by the release of Nelson Mandela.2
Both outside and inside museum walls, South Africans began to imagine themselves as the
ISSN 0305-7070 print; 1465-3893 online/06/040795-12q 2006 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies DOI: 10.1080/03057070600995798
* This article is based on research conducted for the ‘Project on Public Pasts’ of the Department of History at theWestern Cape, funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF). Our perspectives on the various conflicts andcontestations over the museum are shaped by our own relationships and roles both in the Lwandle Migrant LabourMuseum itself and in the ‘community’ of Lwandle. Bongani Mgijima partly grew up in Lwandle and was one of thefounders of the museum, as well as its first curator. Vusi Buthelezi worked closely with the museum in his capacityas researcher linked to the Public History Project of the Department of History in the University of the WesternCape. When Mgijima left the museum, Buthelezi became curator in his place. In addition, we have both beeninvolved with township-tour guiding. We have thus been in touch with the community as insiders, as well asthrough our professional roles at the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum.
1 G. Minkley, C. Rassool and L. Witz, ‘Thresholds, Gateways and Spectacles: Journeying through South AfricanHidden Pasts and Histories in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century’ (unpublished paper, presented atUniversity of Western Cape, July 1996). See also L. Witz, G. Minkley and C. Rassool, ‘The Boer War, Museumsand Ratanga Junction, the Wildest Place in Africa: Public History in South Africa in the 1990s’ (unpublishedpaper, presented at the University of Western Cape, July 1999).
2 C. Hamilton, ‘Against the Museum as a Chameleon’, South African Historical Journal (November 1992),pp. 123–337; C. Hamilton, ‘The Poetics and Politics of Public History’, South African Historical Journal(November 1994), pp. 184–90.
Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 32, Number 4, December 2006
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‘rainbow nation’, premised ironically on the very same racial and ethnic categories upon
which apartheid was founded. As museums began to respond to calls for change, community
museums also began to emerge albeit ‘on the fringes’ of centrally driven processes of
transformation.3 Museums such as the South End Museum in Port Elizabeth and the District
Six Museum in Cape Town were formed with the active participation of communities
excluded under apartheid. This article is about one such museum – the Lwandle Migrant
Labour Museum – established in the Helderberg basin near Cape Town.
This article analyses the contestations and contradictions that have characterised
museum–community relations in Lwandle. By unpicking complex, dynamic and sometimes
tense relationships, it seeks to highlight issues that are often overlooked or taken for granted in
museum management and in debates about community involvement in public representations
of their own past. Indeed, until recently, museums have often been silent on the topic of
relations with local communities, or have analysed them in a superficial and uncritical
manner.4 The museum in Lwandle is a new institution and provides fertile ground for a study
of the dynamics and complexities of museum–community relations. As a post-apartheid
initiative, the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum sought to challenge established museums in
their depiction of the history of migrant labour and to rethink the concept of a museum.
The Idea of ‘Community’ in Community Museums
Before turning to the topic of museum–community relations, it is important briefly to
examine the concept of community, both analytically and in relation to debates within
Lwandle.5 The people of Lwandle are in a process of re-imaging themselves as a community,
and are changing their past perceptions of themselves as hostel dwellers. Although they were
brought together by the segregationist laws of apartheid and denied permanent residency in
urban areas, they are now free to reside in any part of the country and share common space as
families rather than as migrant workers. Their identities are also shaped through their
associational life, as members of different churches or schools, yet they do define themselves
broadly as the ‘Lwandle community’. The creation and role of the Lwandle Museum has
become the object of contestation on the part of community members, and as such has
become part of the process through which identities in Lwandle are being redefined.
The notion of ‘community’ implies common residence but does not refer to locality alone.
Communities are imagined through a complex of institutions that guide and shape thought
and behaviour. Although the idea of ‘community’ invokes homogeneity and continuity,
people within ‘communities’ are not homogenous and do not always consider themselves as
such, and their institutions as well as their internal and external relationships are constantly
changing. In the South African context, racial hierarchies were privileged above class in
official definitions of community,6 which was reflected in the content and displays in
museums and other public institutions, and shaped people’s own understandings of
3 G. Corsane, K. Mpumlwana, C. Rassool and J. Pastor-Makhurana, ‘Inclusion and the Power of Representation:South African Museums and the Cultural Politics of Social Transformation’, in R. Sandell, Museum, Society,Inequality (London, Routledge, 2002), p. 9.
4 This is evident in the number of conferences and workshops devoted to museum–community relations, such as,‘The South African Museum and its Public: Negotiating Partnerships’ (1996), ‘South African Migration Project’(2000); ‘Strengthening the Network’ (conference hosted by District Six Museum in August 1999), and SouthAfrican Museums’ Association – Western Cape Conference (20–22 September 2000).
5 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso,1983).
6 B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1987),preface.
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themselves. For migrant workers, such as those of Lwandle, apartheid categories and
legislation meant a lack of rights for workers,7 and dehumanised social interactions through
the lack of privacy, constant surveillance from police and watchmen, and separation from
families. As noted earlier, the legacies of past official racial ascriptions have had a persistence
influence beyond the transition to democracy. Moreover, the legacies of material deprivation
and impoverishment, evidenced in the hardships of hostel life, have also proved intractable
for many families. The hostel system has been one of the sources of family destabilisation
since the introduction of migrant labour system. It is thus essential to track the ways in which
contemporary notions of ‘community’ are shaped by past racial and class divisions as well as
material inequalities; however, currently ideas such as the ‘Rainbow Nation’ or ‘unity in
diversity’ are promoted through official channels under the new dispensation.
In the context of the formation of ‘community’ museums, it is important to question
what exactly constitutes the community of a museum, and who should represent it. Ivan
Karp has warned that there is a risk in delegating the authority to tell a community’s
stories to one community representative. Karp elaborates saying that deploying such
‘community spokespeople’ is just as problematic as ‘allowing the traditional curatorial
class – drawn primarily from white, middle or upper class, college-educated males – to
speak for all the minority cultures represented in the museum’.8 In the South African
context before 1994, the overwhelming majority of museums were directed by white men
in charge of other white staff, with blacks and other non-whites involved in cleaning, tea-
making and general manual labour; moreover, in the past, museum visitors were
overwhelmingly white. The new community museums have made a sustained effort to
transform this, but, as we argue later, the appointment of new professional black curators
with ties to black township communities does not mean that relations with the community
have ceased to be characterised by tensions and challenges, nor that museum-visiting is no
longer considered as a predominantly ‘white’ activity. Museum curators have been torn
between their responsibilities towards different constituencies and communities: in their
professional actions, they have to account to other professionals, to museum boards, to the
audiences of the museum, as well as to the needs of the local community represented in
their displays.
Museums are valued for different reasons by different people. Some treat museums as
places of entertainment, whereas others regard them as centres of learning and visit them to
acquire knowledge about the past. Clifford maintains that museums can be ‘zones of contact’,
which shape understanding of self and others through their juxtaposed representations of
histories and cultures from diverse places.9 They are places where identities are both
produced and contested: in Karp and Wilson’s terms, they are places were people reshape
‘fantasies and visions’ of who they are and what they may be.10
Because of their role in reshaping worldviews and identities, museums are places
where notions of community are defined and produced. Macdonald and Fyfe sum up the
relationship between communities and museums as follows:
Through their displays and their day-to-day operations [museums] inevitably raise questionsabout knowledge and power, about identity and difference and about permanence and transience.
7 R. Omond, The Apartheid Handbook (London, Penguin, 1985), pp. 102–3.8 I. Karp, C.M. Kraemer, S.D. Lavine (eds), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture
(Washington, DC, Smithsonian, 1992), p. 145.9 See J. Clifford, ‘Objects and Selves’, in G.W. Stocking (ed.), Objects and Others (Madison, Wisconsin
University Press, 1985).10 I. Karp and B. Wilson, ‘Constructing the Spectacle of Culture in Museums’, in R. Greenberg, B. Fururson and
S. Nairne (eds), Thinking about Exhibitions (London, Routledge, 1996).
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Precisely because they have become global symbols through which status and community areexpressed, they are subject to appropriation and the struggle for ownership.11
Bearing these ideas in mind, we can now turn to the history of Lwandle and explore the
struggles over the creation and early history of the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum.
The History of Lwandle and the Idea of the Museum
Much has been written about the migrant labour system and hostel life in South Africa, but
little has been produced specifically on the history of Lwandle.12 The oral interviews
conducted under the auspices of the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum are the first attempt to
document how histories of migrancy are remembered in the locality.
Lwandle is located next to the N2 road between Somerset West and Sir Lowry’s Pass in the
Western Cape. It is the oldest and only hostel township in the Helderberg area. The nearest
township is Kayamnandi in Stellenbosch. Declared a location and a ‘native’ village by
Government Notice no. 71 of 17 January 1958, Lwandle was established on 19 morgen of
farmland purchased (under threat of expropriation) from C.P.J. van Vuuren by the then
Stellenbosch Divisional Council. The construction of hostels for single male migrant workers on
the site was envisaged as a scheme to mitigate the scarcity of cheap labour in the Helderberg basin.
Before the Lwandle hostels were built in 1958, African people were already working in
various sectors of the Helderberg economy, living in the backyards of their employers,
particularly in Somerset West. One of our interviewees, Robert Molo, arrived in Helderberg in
1952 and worked as a chef:13 he recalled how, after the hostels were built, African men like
himself were evicted from their white employers’ backyards and moved far from their places of
work. The majority of men who came to occupy the Lwandle hostels were from the Eastern Cape
rural areas. As they moved in to the hostels, they were subjected to a double form of racial and
gender segregation, as they were separated not only from permanent (white) residential
developments in the urban areas, but also from their womenfolk and children. The layout of
Lwandle hostels resembles that of other hostels throughout the country and is also similar to that
of prisons, in that they had only one entrance and exit point, which was guarded by security
personnel whose main duty was to prevent trespass by those without permits. Bulelwa – a
Lwandle woman who arrived in 1984 as a teenager when the Pass Laws were still active, recalled,
‘Children were not allowed in Lwandle ... [except during] December holidays, people were not
arrested during December holidays, but ... on the 15 January the arrests started again’.14
In 1986, however, influx control regulations were relaxed and many people flocked to
Lwandle. This relaxation marked a turning point for Lwandle residents, and led to
characteristic overcrowding in the hostels. A space that was initially planned to accommodate
two single males thereafter came to be occupied by two families, which increased the lack of
privacy and produced a culture of violence. Children who lived in the hostels were exposed to
this violence, often associated with drunkenness.15 Local authorities used the overcrowding
11 S. Macdonald and G. Fyfe (eds), Theorising Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World(Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 5.
12 The secondary literature includes an ethnographic study of children and a law thesis: S. Jones, ‘AssaultingChildhood: An Ethnographic Study of the Children’s Experiences of Migrancy in a Western Cape HostelComplex’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1990); J. Sloth-Nielsen, ‘Lwandle: Criminalization of aCommunity’ (LLM thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987).
13 Mr Robert Molo arrived at Lwandle in 1952 and worked as Chef in hotels and is currently living in Desert Sectionin Lwandle.
14 Interview between Bonke Tyhulu and Bulelwa Dunga, 29 August 2002, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, oralhistory project.
15 S. Jones, ‘Assaulting Childhood’.
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after 1986 as an excuse to demolish Lwandle and tried to move its population to Khayelitsha,
as they did not want a ‘black spot’ in their neighbourhood. But the residents of Lwandle,
assisted by employers in Somerset West, protested over the planned move and eventually
retained the right to remain in Lwandle. The population of Lwandle has continued to grow at
an astonishing rate (especially since the initiation of a governmental housing project in 1994)
to the point that Lwandle has become a fully fledged township with basic infrastructure and
public institutions. Hence, the nature of the Lwandle population has also been dramatically
transformed from being dominated by single men to being dominated by families. The lack of
basic infrastructure (clean water, schools, etc) in ‘black’ rural areas was, and remains, an
important factor behind the very rapidly increasing population of Lwandle. Today, Lwandle
residents are not only from the Eastern Cape but from all over southern Africa.
The setting up of the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum occurred in the context of a range
of government initiatives after 1994. Under the Reconstruction and Development Programme
(RDP), plans to upgrade Lwandle housing into family units were put in place. The ‘Hostel to
Homes’ project was initiated by a project team – the Local Negotiation Group (LNG) –
comprising Lwandle community representatives and project managers Liebenberg and
Stander. As the hostel dwellers were to be provided with alternative housing through the
scheme, the site previously occupied by the hostels was to become a community service
centre (including a precinct with a library, new municipality offices, a doctor’s surgery, a taxi
rank, an Arts and Craft Centre and sport fields). An ex-teacher from Somerset West,
Charmian Plummer, played a key role in facilitating the setting up of the museum in one of
the former hostels. She wrote a letter to what was then the Helderberg Municipality urging it
‘to consider keeping one (or even two) of the existing hostels and to keep a memory of what
Lwandle was like before the renovations changed the landscape’.16 In early 1998, the
Executive Committee of the Helderberg Municipality supported the proposal in principle and
the City Librarian Anna-Marie Cloete was given the task of convening a Steering Committee
to investigate the possibility of establishing a museum based on the idea of a preserved hostel.
After several meetings a Steering Committee, chaired by Charmian Plummer, was formed
and met frequently at the Lwandle Library.17 A public workshop was organised with the aim
of gathering public opinion. One outcome of the workshop was the decision to call the project
the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum (in preference to the other competing names),18 to
reflect the aim of commemorating migrancy and hostel life.
On 5 May 1998, after consultations with the Local Negotiation Group, Brett Myrdal
(an architect and co-ordinator of the Hostels to Homes project), announced that ‘the hostel
block which will be set aside as a museum is room 33, generally known as “Hostel 33”’. This
hostel was chosen as it was considered ‘the most typical’, especially ‘because its bucket toilet
area is still original’. In addition, it had ‘excellent parking and access for residents and
visitors’.19 The initiative to conserve the historic Hostel 33 received support from the District
Six Museum, the National Monuments Council, Helderberg Tourism Bureau and the
Helderberg Council.20
Following these decisions, the Museum Steering Committee met with the residents of
Hostel 33 to explain the initiative to convert their hostel into the Lwandle Museum. They
found no objection, and confirmed their approval of the project on 23 October 1998, by
writing a letter to the Steering Committee, stating that:
16 C. Plummer, Letter to the Chief Executive Officer of Helderberg Municipality, 28 February 1998.17 Bongani Mgijima has been involved with the process from the beginning.18 Alternative suggestions included the Cultural Historical Museum and the Hostel Museum.19 Brett Myrdal, Memorandum sent to the LNG executive, Masakhane owners, museum facilitators and Charmian
Plummer.20 Ibid.
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We, hostel number 33 residents hereby approve our unit be converted to the hostel museum aslong as we are still the residents of the hostel and catered for into the hostel to homes project.This idea was clearly explained to us by members of the committee, we are aware that thishas the blessings of the community and we also want to fully support the idea of making historyof our background and we are also proud that our community is developing gradually andeffectively. We also thank you for your care and ambition to make this happen.21
Although this gave the go-ahead for the museum, there were still problems: the museum did
not have a site to use for displays as Hostel 33 was still occupied, and the initial
preservationist aims of the Museum Steering Committee had to be modified in the light of the
need for funding.
Once the Steering Committee had been granted Hostel 33 as a site, they moved on to
secure funding for the project. The Committee submitted a funding proposal to the Western
Cape Tourism Board,
for the development of a museum in Lwandle which we feel could develop into an extremelypopular tourist destination, enhancing the quality of experience for tourists, depicting the life ofthe local people, their past and their present culture; which will be sensitively managed by andinvolve local community when it is up and running.22
The Western Cape Tourist Board granted the museum R20,000 and was convinced that the
museum project, ‘could be a whole African experience for a tourist. An opportunity to see
glimpses of the past, a comparison with the present, dancing, singing, arts and crafts and a
taste of African cuisine and fashion’. This application for funding and early developments
marked a discursive shift in the way the museum was represented, moving away from a
preservationist to tourist rhetoric. This was justifiable, we would argue because, as a new
initiative lacked funds, the museum had to ‘dance to the tune’ of tourism in order to exist.
The Museum Steering Committee’s decision to turn to tourism was pragmatic, in
response to the poverty of Lwandle and its residents. After all the excitement of welcoming
the new venture, the Museum Committee had to create some means of taking the business
forward and ensuring its sustainability. Given the lack of funds within the community, the
museum has had to depend on securing donations and grants from relevant governmental
departments and private donors. The museum project leaders (in particular Bongani Mgijima
and Charmian Plummer) had anticipated problems of funding. To this day, the local and
provincial Departments of Cultural Affairs have done little to support the museum either
financially or technically, while the Tourism Department has maintained consistent support.
The museum is not currently covered by Arts and Culture legislation, and several applications
to declare the museum a ‘government-funded museum’ have been unsuccessful.23 The
current South African museum services legislation still dates from the apartheid era, in the
form of the Museum Ordinance of 1975, which did not anticipate the creation of museums in
black townships. Hence, such museums have no direct access to the national budget. The
survival of the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum has thus depended on tourism, which
cannot be relied upon as a source of funds.
This also made it difficult for the museum to meet its obligatory requirements ‘to stage an
exhibition’ because the provincial government could not fund the museum, as it did not fall
within their scope.
21 Letter to Hostel 33 residents from the Lwandle Museum Committee.22 Proposal sent to Western Cape Tourism Board by the Helderberg Tourism Bureau.23 Bongani Mgijima in his capacity as a museum curator (before leaving for a directorship in the North West
Province) and his successor Vusi Buthelezi, wrote letters to the provincial and national government asking for themuseum to become a recipient of regular funding.
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Perhaps the most major problem the museum has faced, however, has been the lack of
progress in the Hostels to Homes project. While the Museum Committee was taking steps to
attract funding to realise its aims, the Hostel to Homes project was moving at snail’s pace. This
has been a major cause of conflict between the museum and the community. For while the
museum requires that the whole of Hostel 33 be reconstructed to reflect historic hostel conditions,
members of the community still need the hostel for accommodation, as they lack alternative
housing. We return to this issue below, but first we discuss how the museum managed to function
through a series of provisional arrangements, giving it access to alternative space for displays.
Contestation over Early Exhibitions in the Community Hall
In order for the museum’s existence to be recognised, the museum urgently needed a space
other than Hostel 33 in which to function (given the ongoing need for hostel residents to live on
the museum site). Thus, in May 1999, the committee decided to mount a temporary exhibition
at the Old Community Hall, entitled ‘Raising the Curtain’; this aimed to popularise the
museum project. Charmian Plummer, chairperson of the Museum Committee, approached
photographers from Somerset West and Strand to photograph scenes in the township and to
donate their works to the museum. This first museum exhibition thus required little more than
the generosity of a few individuals in donating their township photos. Indeed, photographic
exhibitions became the dominant displays in the museum, partly because they were affordable.
This first exhibition was greeted with a mixed reaction. It was really popular only among
children, who viewed the photographs with interest because they knew the people and
surroundings depicted. The older age groups were not amused, for a number of reasons. First,
they needed the exhibition space for other functions such as meetings, discos and church
activities. Secondly, some did not understand the idea behind the display. One woman thought
the exhibition was simply decorative, and was bowled over by the way the ‘hall was decorated
with photographs’. Another elderly woman, whose photograph was on display, was furious
initially because she thought the museum was using her photograph to make money. The
exhibition curator had to explain to her the purpose of the display, to change her attitude: the
woman left the exhibition convinced that the people who had told her that her photograph was
used for profit were jealous because they had not considered her as part and parcel of Lwandle’s
past. Thereafter she visited the exhibition frequently, to show relatives and friends her
photograph. The exhibition was not very successful in terms of attracting tourists, but it did fulfil
the need for a display, which in turn made it possible to create a semi-permanent museum space.
Following the temporary photo exhibition, the Museum Committee wrote a letter to the
Helderberg Municipality asking permission to use Old Community Hall in Lwandle to house
a semi-permanent museum for ‘exhibitions, administration work, storage etc’.24 A
memorandum from the councillors representing Lwandle on the Helderberg Municipality
was attached to the letter and stated that, ‘We as the councillors representing Lwandle hereby
approve that Lwandle Old Community Hall be used in conjunction with Hostel 33 as a
Migrant Labour Museum’.25 The Museum Committee finally leased the old community hall
from the municipality for a ten-year period at a rate of R10 per annum.26 Thereafter the
Museum Committee received a further grant of R15,000 from the Arts and Culture Trust to
24 Letter, Charmian Plummer and Bongani Mgijima to the Chief Executive Officer of the Helderberg Municipality,15 July 1999.
25 Memorandum sent by Lwandle councillors to the Director of Administration, Helderberg Municipality, 28 July1999.
26 Lease agreement signed between Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum and Helderberg Municipality.
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enable them to mount the semi-permanent exhibition. During this time, a Board of Trustees
was put into place to manage the museum funds, consisting mainly of Lwandle residents
nominated by the local people. A bank account was opened in the museum’s name and, for
the first time in its history, the new museum could mount a semi-permanent exhibition.
This first semi-permanent exhibition was entitled ‘Memorising Migrancy’, and was
mounted to coincide with the official launch of the Lwandle Museum on 1 May 2000 –
International Workers’ Day. The exhibition consisted of photographs from the Robben Island
Mayibuye Archive (housed at the University of the Western Cape) and contemporary
photographs from Lwandle, some of which had been used previously in the first exhibition
‘Raising the Curtain’. The Lwandle photographs were placed on panels without any
interpretation or text. The idea being that residents of Lwandle and beyond would be
prompted by these photographs to narrate their experiences of migrancy. However, this
proved to be problematic for the international tourists whom the museum also sought to
attract, as they were not well versed in South African history and therefore needed some
explanation. To counter this problem, the museum fielded guides to help explain the
photographs. This was not, however, the only problem with the exhibition. The photographs
on display were arranged in a way that reproduced apartheid stereotypes. Thus, the lives of
the migrant workers were depicted as moving from a primitive rural lifestyle into a modern
urban setting. In the context of the exhibition, the photographs were treated as a window into
the past, rather than being problematised. Their context and meaning was also lost. Yet some
local visitors liked the photographs, and some thought they offered greater insight into the
past than their own narratives: ‘I was so interested when I saw the pictures on the wall. Those
pictures remind me the past of Lwandle, which is the dark past, and also give me hope with
the future of tomorrow’,27 commented one visitor who seemed to be moved by the
photographs of Lwandle. In general, however, younger visitors tended to prefer the exhibit of
Lwandle photographs, while adult visitors were more interested in the national photographs
obtained from the UWC Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives.
There were also mixed responses to other aspects of the exhibition. An enlarged passbook
was displayed on the stage, upon which a ‘Whites only’ sign was placed. In the centre of the
exhibition space, there was an art installation by Gavin Younge: it was entitled ‘Workman’s
Compensation’, and consisted of wheelbarrows filled with migrant workers’ artefacts.
International visitors understood that ‘Workman’s Compensation’ was a work of art, but did
not appreciate the meanings and suffering invoked by the artefacts in the barrow, such as pass
law documents and letters of communication between separated family members. On the
other hand, Lwandle residents knew what the artefacts were all about, but did not understand
that it was an artwork. So, it was up to museum guides to interpret the installation for both
locals and international visitors on different levels.
Aside from the problems regarding local reactions to the exhibition, there were also
potentially tense moments when locals wanted to intervene and interrupt guided tours. Local
community members who claimed to know local history better than anyone else became
critical of the quality of information on display. For museum staff, it was sometimes disruptive
to have these critical locals hanging around the museum during visiting hours, especially
when they tried to take over as guides. Sometimes, locals felt they were justified in taking over
the duties of museum tour guide, and wanted to tell the stories themselves. In some ways, day-
to-day practice in the community museum thus continued to operate in line with mainstream
museum norms, in that the people who were involved in the historical actions represented in
the museum displays were not part of the museum workforce. The college people and museum
27 Lamuel Lindani Ntontela, entry in the visitors book, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, 20 July 2000.
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professionals who studied local histories and cultures as part of their training as curators were
in charge of representing and relating the voices they had collected. The tensions that this
created can be illustrated by the response of an elderly Lwandle community member known as
‘Gqoza’, who frequently interrupted the guided tours at the museum, with the criticism, ‘you
are omitting so many things that took place in this place’.28
Although this indicates the dangers of ‘professionals’ taking over the duty of telling other
people’s stories, handing over museum duties to ordinary residents is also problematic, as
they may tell their own personal stories instead of collective experiences. One of the
objectives of guided tours of the museum is to tell unbiased stories of the experiences of the
people of Lwandle. The museum has tried to incorporate community members into the guided
township tours by including visits to the houses of some of the old hostel community
members to give them an opportunity to relate their personal experiences under the apartheid
migrant labour system.29 Before exploring the issues raised by these tours in detail, however,
it is necessary first to examine the tensions that accompanied the use of Hostel 33.
Contestation over Hostel 33 and Guided Tours
A different set of tensions from those surrounding the exhibitions at the Old Community Hall
accompanied the museum’s use of Hostel 33. On 1 May 2000, Sandile Dikeni, a journalist
and a poet who once lived in Lwandle, officially opened the Lwandle Migrant Labour
Museum. As Ciraj Rassool has argued, South Africa’s ‘special offering to the world’, is that
‘almost every sphere of heritage production has seen complexity, controversy and
contestation’.30 In Lwandle, a major contestation played itself out on the very same day that
the museum opening was supposed to be an event to ‘unchain the past’.31 At the time of the
opening of the museum (and still at the time of writing), people occupying Hostel 33 have not
been provided with alternative accommodation. Those Hostel 33 residents who had earlier
endorsed the museum project32 were disaffected by the time of the opening ceremony two
years later because they had still not been re-housed, and wrote a note which they pinned onto
the hostel door, ‘disagreeing with you that the hostel be used as a museum first give us
accommodation’.33 This raised the question of the ethics of preserving Hostel 33 for the
purposes of a museum in the context of the lack of housing in Lwandle. The Museum Board,
which replaced the Museum Steering Committee, found itself in a double bind. How was it to
begin to intervene in the allocation of housing in Lwandle, which is fraught with its own
problems? The Museum Board had no alternative but to try to intervene and negotiate
alternative accommodation for Hostel 33 residents. However, the damage was already done
to the credibility of the new museum, which sought to position itself as a community museum
on the basis of being the ‘first township-based museum in the Western Cape’.34 After
negotiations with the Hostel to Homes project managers, four of the eight families staying
28 Gqoza, an ex-hostel dweller, deserves to be classified as a friend of the museum. He regularly visits the museumwhen he sees tourists’ cars in the museum car park.
29 One of the popular families on the township walk list is the Molo family. Mr Molo lived in the area during hosteldays. He was active in community development particularly in the establishment of schools. He was also veryactive in the Cape Hostel Dwellers’ Association, which was formed to improve the conditions in hostels.Mrs Molo was married to Mr Molo when women and children were not allowed to enter hostel premises, and wasfrequently held in jail under the Pass Laws for trespassing.
30 C. Rassool, ‘The Rise of Heritage and the Reconstitution of History in South Africa’, Kronos, 2 (August 2000),p. 2.
31 District Mail, 20 May 2000.32 According to a letter written to the museum, cited above.33 This noticed was posted on the door of Hostel 33 on the day the museum was officially launched.34 Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum and Art and Craft Centre, brochure, 2001.
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in Hostel 33 were relocated to renovated family units. The project managers also agreed to
relocate the remaining four families, although at the time of writing they had not done so. By
succeeding in re-housing only four families, the museum continued to face a problem as
museology work could not begin, given the ongoing occupation of the hostel. At the same
time, tourists visiting the museum exhibits in the Old Community Hall insisted on seeing the
‘original historic hostel’.35 The museum negotiated a fragile deal with Hostel 33 to allow
them to bring visitors to the vacant hall of the Hostel as part of a guided tour of the township.
The Hostel thus continued to be ‘contested terrain’, as its residents were concerned with
alternative accommodation, but the museum was only interested in acquiring the Hostel as a
space for their displays.36 The Museum Board faced the problem of how to argue in favour of a
museum to a population that had become suspicious of the institution and did not understand it.
The majority of people in Lwandle had never been to a museum. Those who had done so, had
gone with school groups and their impression of a museum was of a place where stuffed animals
are kept, or a place specially staged for tourists or an encounter with ‘Bushmen’.37 Given this
attitude, it was difficult to agitate convincingly in favour of the Hostel’s preservation.
Aside from the issue of the space of Hostel 33 itself, there were also problems regarding the
collection of artefacts from the Lwandle community for display. The museum at Lwandle
emerged with the aim of preserving a ‘vanishing past’, unlike other post-transition museums such
as District Six, where the museum was linked to issues of ‘memory work conducted in support of
the struggle for restitution of land rights’.38 But collecting things that people are still using in their
daily lives poses ethical dilemmas. It is not easy to borrow important and valued artefacts still in
use from a person who is convinced that a museum is ‘a repository to keep old things’.39 People
who have been excluded from museum practice for a long time have, of course, developed their
own ways of remembering the past, through family photographs displayed in albums and on
walls, or by narrating life stories on special occasions such as funerals and weddings.40 But they
would not consider this as comparable to the work of a museum, and such practices do not assist in
the task of collecting everyday things, and explaining the purpose of doing so.
Assuming that the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum does succeed in collecting objects
relating to migrancy, such as beds, the question of which historical epoch to represent will
also need to be answered. At one stage, single men lived in Hostel 33, but later families lived
there. As the population in the Hostel grew, the bed spaces were divided with curtains first,
and later wood and cardboard. These divisions were put up by the residents in creative
endeavours to construct a sense of privacy in highly dense and congested hostel
compartments. Should the museum take down the cupboards to show the period when Hostel
33 housed single men, or should it recreate the later period? An alternative would be to leave
the hostel empty to show that people who once lived there are no longer there. How should the
Hostel 33 space be used to depict the lives of other hostel dwellers in other blocks? We raise
these questions to demonstrate the complexities behind the preservation of Hostel 33.
One of the main purposes of the new Migrant Labour Museum was to commemorate
migrancy and hostel life. But this is a very broad field. It is not clear that it would be possible
35 Ibid.36 As Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe have argued, museums are ‘contested terrain’, because they are ‘socially
and historically located, and as such, they inevitably bear the imprint of social relations beyond their walls andbeyond the present. Yet museums are never just spaces for the playing out of such social relationships: a museumis a process as well as a structure, it is a creative agency as well as a contested terrain’, Theorising Museums, p. 4.
37 ‘Bushmen’ exhibits were popular, such as the Cape Town South African National Natural History Museum’s‘Bushmen Diorama’ (closed down) and the Owela Museum in Windhoek, Namibia.
38 C. Rassool and S. Prosalendis (eds), Recalling Community in Cape Town: Creating and Curating the District SixMuseum (Cape Town, District Six Museum, 2000), p. xi.
39 Pers. comm., museum visitor.40 This form of knowledge production in the public domain has yet to be studied.
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for the museum to address the migrant labour system as a national phenomenon, or even to
represent it at provincial level. As Williams suggests, the specifics of Lwandle could be
located within the national history of migrancy.41 The museum aims to represent the migrant
labour system on a national scale. However, we believe that this is too broad an area to cover;
even established ‘national’ museums that are well-resourced and well-staffed, have been
accused of having outdated and selective collections, with ‘gaps’ and misrepresentations. The
option of viewing migrancy as a provincial phenomenon is also complex, because the migrant
workers who came to the Western Cape had often also worked in other provinces. Their
narrated life-stories transcend provincial boundaries and other administrative borders. By
focusing on migrancy as a provincial phenomenon, would one not be censoring the very same
memory one hoped to evoke? The final option of positioning Lwandle within the national
history of migrant labour is also not free of problems. Given that the history of migrant labour
has been depicted in ‘bits and pieces’ by established museums, would it not be self-defeating
for Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum to do likewise, representing migrancy in the same
partial ways it had criticised in relation to other exhibits?
As these questions over the content of future displays in Hostel 33 are being decided,
however, the Lwandle Museum has continued to depend on tourism and guided tours. Leslie
Witz has argued that ‘for museums in the townships, like the Lwandle Museum, the question
of how they locate themselves within the international tourist image economy is a very
difficult one’.42 Witz continues to criticise tourism in the Western Cape for casting the
residents of townships in stereotypical roles, and for converting their homes, schools and
social places into tourist sites and ‘living museums’ of township life.43 Lwandle Migrant
Labour Museum, has found it difficult to escape this trap. In order to sustain itself, the
museum has had to find activities attractive to tourists, and thus embarked on a township walk,
a tour ‘starting from the museum, ... meeting the residents, by visiting the Hector Peterson
Library, Hostel 33, the Betheli creche, the town square, the “Eiffel Tower”, the primary
school, shops, homes, the Tavern and finally the Arts and Craft Centre’.44 These tours invite
visitors to ‘experience the hospitality of a true African township’.45
By seeking to attract tourists in this way, most of whom are white, the museum may be
reinforcing the stereotype that museums are essentially for white people and tourists. Kevin
Walsh argues that such ‘heritagisation of space’ may help to ‘maintain an identity of place’,
which can be important as local communities are destroyed and employment may be lacking, yet
there is the ‘danger that only safe and selected images will be preserved, and a history of a place
will be neglected, while heritage, over subsequent generations, helps construct an image of place
which is based on superficialities’.46 Tourism in Lwandle has the advantages of placing the town
on the tourist map, and the tourist gaze, which has been pre-structured to focus on sites of historic
significance, slips almost magically, to include places that are part of daily social life such as the
‘Betheli creche’, ‘the Tavern’ and ‘homes’. Yet the need for Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum to
depend on tourism has made it difficult to reconcile the different and perhaps contradictory aims
of the museum project. On the one hand, it strives to become an institution of public culture and to
preserve and represent histories of migrancy, but on the other hand, circumstances are forcing it to
accommodate to tourist interests and comfortable stereotypes of ‘authenticity’. Whether it can
serve both roles at once, without undermining either of them, remains an open question.
41 E. Williams, ‘Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum’ (unpublished paper, September, 2000).42 L. Witz, ‘Museums on Cape Town’s Township Tours’ (unpublished paper, August 2001).43 Ibid.44 Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum and Arts and Craft Centre, brochure 200145 Ibid.46 K. Walsh, The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in a Postmodern World (London, Routledge,
1992), p. 139.
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The Lwandle community has accepted living with, and has become familiar with, the
gaze of tourists. Tourism in South Africa has been valued for its potential to create jobs, and
in Lwandle there is a high rate of poverty and unemployment. The township itself arose out of
converted hostels and can thus be seen as ‘a model’, for all hostels converted into family units
in South Africa.47 The fact that Lwandle can provide a prime illustration of apartheid legacies
coupled with its need for jobs, has made the industry attractive. The money visitors bring
provided an incentive for the Lwandle community to accept the tourists who now invade their
homes. When the museum brings tourists to Hostel 33, in which people are still living, we
alert them we have arrived ‘with tourists’, and most of the time during the day in week days,
there is only a single woman at home. ‘No problem you can continue with your visit’, Tsidi, a
woman in her mid-30s, always replies.48 People are generally tolerant of the invasion of their
privacy, indicating their acceptance of, and orientation towards tourism, even if it has not met
their own immediate needs for accommodation and has subjected their personal space to
public visits. Moreover, some tourists, both national and international, have helped
community members after their township walk. One example is that of the German visitor
Rita Hirsch, who ‘adopted’ three township children and paid their annual school fees; other
visitors from Britain have sent toys to local creches.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the post-apartheid era has proved an interesting and creative time for museums
and the heritage industry. Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, as a new initiative, provided a
fresh approach to the study and representation of ‘public history’. The museum sought to
become a space in which notions about South Africa’s past are not only reproduced but are also
questioned. In so doing, the museum has not been immune from the conflicts unfolding in other
institutions of public culture around the country. Its early years have shown that nothing can
be taken for granted, from the physical premises in which to operate and funds to mount
exhibitions, to relations with the local community and visitors. The experience of managing
museum–community relations in Lwandle has led the museum management to be both more
aware of community needs, and also to realise its own limitations. The emergence of the
museum was initially an excitement for the community, even though not all have given their
blessing. For those who still need accommodation, the museum has not helped but rather led to
a violation of their privacy, exposing them to the tourist gaze. The contestations that have
characterised museum–community relations have challenged the Lwandle Migrant Labour
Museum to rethink its practices and constantly to re-negotiate its presence. The initiative has
shown that communities need to be more than passive recipients, and should participate
actively in shaping the ways their histories are represented. In this article, we have discussed
the various means through which the museum tried to build a bridge with the local community,
striving to ease tensions, to promote further interactions and to enhance the role of the
community in shaping the future of the museum and representations of their own history.
VUSI BUTHELEZI and BONGANI MGIJIMA
History Department, University of the Western Cape, PB X17, Bellville, Cape Town, South
Africa, 7535. E-mail: [email protected]; and Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, E-mail:
47 Mrs Charmian Plummer regards Lwandle as the ‘model’ for all hostels to be converted into family units in SouthAfrica.
48 Tsidi is the niece of Mr Thole Phinda who is an ex-migrant worker and hostel dweller and who is still awaitinghousing. She stays in Hostel 33 with her uncle and his children.
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