June 12, 2002
By Thomas Thale
KLIPTOWN, one of Soweto's historic sites, is set to get its first museum, exhibiting pictures and artefacts celebrating its rich political and social history. Kliptown was the site of the 1955 signing of the Freedom Charter, when a mass gathering of anti-apartheid organisations set out a series of demands to the apartheid government.
Kliptown has had a makeshift museum for the past two years, housed at the Kliptown Community Centre, a building previously been used by the municipality as a storage for building materials.
The Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) has now committed R1,8-million to the refurbishment and extension of the building. According to Ursula Ntsubane, the JDA project administrator for Kliptown, the project will be fast-tracked to make it ready for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. It is earmarked to be one of the key tourist attractions during the summit.
Henry Paine, the project architect, says that the building will be upgraded and extended to include an exhibition hall, a media centre, a restaurant specialising in local cuisine and a shop selling mementoes. "This project has to be complete within two months, he says, "We will also come up with a different way of exhibiting to make the place a lot more appealing," Local artists will be given space to create and sell their arts and crafts from the renovated venue.
The exhibition tells the social and political history of Kliptown using the medium of photography. It criss-crosses the social landscape of the township, inventing in the process, a sense of a community steeped in history. "It presents the history of the home of the Freedom Charter, its recent evolution, challenges and problems of urban renewal. " says Gene Duiker, the CEO of the "Kliptown Our Town Trust," the organisation which initiated the exhibition. Pictures of sports personalities hang side by side with those of beauty contests, sangomas share space with local socialites and ordinary people. These are images which give Kliptown its character as a "cosmopolitan town," in the words of Duiker, "not just a township".
The exhibition displays black and white photographs dating back to the 1930s and more colourful portraits of the present. Many of the pictures on display are works by Benoit Allanic, a former photographer of The Star, and Ruphin Coudyzer, a well-known specialist in photographing the arts. Local amateur photographers are also represented. Framed photos are placed on the wall, while photographic images hang loosely from the ceiling.
On display at the museum: pictures recreating the social scene of Kliptown
Placed on the floor are artefacts bringing back to memory the social history of Kliptown. A brazier, a primus stove, a three-legged pot and a stove iron invoke the days when locals had to make do without electricity. Visitors can also see a borehole pump dating back to the days when the area had no running water. Duiker said that most of the artefacts were donated by members of the community.
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