Apartheid Museum

About this place

South Africa's most important museum for understanding apartheid, the system of racial segregation that ruled the country from 1948 to the early 1990s. It opened in 2001 in the south of Johannesburg and tells the country's twentieth-century story from colonial rule to the first democratic elections in 1994. The experience begins at the door: each ticket carries a random classification, white or non-white, so every visitor enters through their designated entrance and passes between cages of racial identity cards, feeling for a moment what millions lived every day. The halls unfold through photographs, films, documents and testimonies: the segregation laws, the forced removals, the resistance, the Soweto uprising, then Mandela's imprisonment, release and the negotiations. Near the end a moving room hangs with nooses, recalling the political prisoners who were executed. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday from 9 am to 5 pm and on most public holidays, per the official site. Allow at least two hours, and note that some exhibits are hard for young children.