Field Trip to the Museum of London

23Jun09

The thing that caught my attention the most at the London Museum was the section on the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. This section was smaller and seemed kind of out of place considering all the other exhibits were more of a chronological history of the creation of the city of London. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to this area. I wanted to know why it was included when it really didn’t seem to have much to do with London as a city. The other reason I was drawn to the exhibit was that I wanted to know what apartheid meant since I had never seen that word before.

The word apartheid means “apartness.” This exhibit had to do with the outrageous segregation of the blacks in South Africa and the movements against this that took place from around 1920-1994. Before this exhibit I had always kind of known that there had been some kind of racial unrest in South Africa, but I had no idea the extent of it. I was shocked and saddened by the things I read in this exhibit. I found out that in 1910 South Africa became a part of the commonwealth of England. Segregation already existed in the country and when England took over they not only keep these laws in place but extended them further. They not only discriminated against blacks, but Indians as well causing India to ban trade with South Africa in 1946. The anti-apartheid movements in England and South Africa started up about this time, but were mostly unsuccessful. The movement wanted to break the links between South Africa and Britian so that Britian would not be associated with such a discriminating nation. South Africa was banned from the Olympics in 1964 because of their discrimination and was not allowed back in until 1992. Hundreds of people involved in the anti-apartheid movement were killed or tortured without trial for being a part of it. And in 1976 police officers fired on demonstrating high school students and killed 100 of them! Britian was also a major arms supplier to South Africa, and even though they were banned by the UN to provide weapons to the them, they continued to do it. It wasn’t until 1992 that blacks finally got their rights and were able to vote thanks to the help of Nelson Mandela.

I couldn’t believe how long it took for equality to take place in South Africa. Why are humans so prone to judge and think less of those who look different from them. I know I have my own stereotypes, but how does someone get to the point where they can justify killing a young student just because they want to be treated just like their fellow white students? I was especially surprised to find out that this racial discrimination was going on during my lifetime. I think I like to believe that horrible things like this happened in the past and don’t still continue to go on, but it just isn’t true. Inequality still exists today. Things may have been finally resolved in South Africa but it doesn’t mean that people are still treated fairly everywhere. I think that people really need to to be aware of these events and be careful about the way they think about and treat those that are different from them, because you never know when those discrimating thoughts and actions might turn into something much more.

These are some photos that I took of the exhibit. The first is of some of the apartheid laws and is displayed as part of the anti-apartheid movement to show how hideous the laws were. The second picture is interesting because it shows the address of the anti-apartheid movement which is 89 Charlotte St., just down from where we are staying. The last two picture are of signs and t-shirts for the movement.