Symbols of power

Abstract

No abstract. The following is the author's introduction:

So wrote Oscar Wilde in The picture of Dorian Gray in 1890, emphasising that creative works primarily reflect the perspective of the person who created them [Wilde, 1890], rather than those that they are representing. It is widely accepted that the same can be said of museum displays, which invariably reflect the attitudes and political conscious of their creators. This is clearly illustrated in the museums of southern Africa, an area which over the last fifty years, has been politically turned on its head. Indigenous African peoples have been treated in the same way in the museums of their homelands as they were in the ethnographic displays of the same period in other continents. While pre-colonial African society was presented as primitive and static, Europeans were commended for their civilisation, conquests, innovations and discoveries. In separating displays about the people of Europe, and the people of Africa, museums have been guilty of enhancing a feeling of otherness through misrepresentation, misunderstanding, and depicting little more than western racial stereotypes

The period of white minority rule has largely come to an end in southern Africa. With the breakdown of colonialism, many museums picked up political history at the point where colonial history left off; replacing displays about the old rulers with new nationalist displays of the independence struggle, as politically motivated and government endorsing as the displays of old. This tradition has left many museums in southern Africa in the very difficult position of having to decide where they will go from here

For the purpose of this dissertation I have chosen to concentrate on the museums of Namibia and South Africa, of which I have more experience, drawing comparisons with museums in Botswana and Zimbabwe. Each country is at a different stage in its political development, Botswana, for example, gained independence almost thirty years ago; as opposed to Namibia's five years of independence from South Africa. The museums of each country have many similarities in terms of origin, and development. They are all in a sense products of colonialism. The modern museum is a western phenomena, and museums are alien to the pre-colonial culture of southern Africa

When considering the way forward for museums in southern Africa, the fact that museums are in many ways regarded as symbols of the old colonial era must be bome in mind. For this reason, response to political and social change is of paramount importance if museums are to be regarded as relevant enough to survive well into the next millennium