Thread by @GuyEmersonMount

Visit to the Kwa Muhle Museum. One of the few museums to take a truth telling approach BEFORE the referendum of 1992 and the official fall of #Apartheid in 1994. What this means is that it manages to avoid some of the triumphalism and Mandela-centric efforts that followed.

While the attempt to transform the fall of Apartheid into a finish line rather than a starting point (or transition process) IS gaining steam, it is largely kept at bay in public history projects.Erasures & silences on big questions of #colonialism and Apartheid just don't happen

For example, the role of Durban's white public officials in creating some of earliest versions of Apartheid (prior to 1948) and their continued implementation of it through the forced removal of Black people from Cato Manor after 1950 is made very explicit.

The participation of Black and Indian police officers in crushing the resistance was also not swept under the rug. Again, this is very rare for a museum that started its mission while Apartheid was still in place AND resistance movements were crafting their own self-narratives.

More recent harms are also not safe. The ANC's early failure to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, for example, is already being critiqued via the newest exhibition in the museum. There is no compulsion to protect the state or romanticize the ANC for the sake of a narrow nationalism.

For reference, name me one museum in the U.S. today that is critical (from the Left) of Obama's presidency, and treats his failures as a national crisis in need of reparative action. Go ahead. I'll wait. But that's exactly what's happening here to 21st century #SA politics.

Sexual violence against women and the long history of women fighting #patriarchy, racism, and Apartheid were also not swept under the rug but addressed head on.

Even the struggles of #sexworkers (of all genders) in the context of the #HIV epidemic was not something that curators felt the need to shy away from. Anyone remember a U.S. president defending the human rights of gay sex workers? A U.S. museum (not devoted to #LGBTQ issues)?

In closing, South African politics, museums, and public history work have a TON to teach to the world. While all this truth telling, progressive constitution writing, and political rhetoric still needs to solve the underlying question of #reparations and economic justice...

the fact that South Africa is where it is with all the obstacles, internal white resistance, and Western opposition to Black liberation (largely taking the form of a militant neoliberalism constantly trying to buy off the Black elite) is truly a marvel to behold.