Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore Simon's Town Museum in the Western Cape, an area still scored into by the divistions of forced removals during apartheid South Africa; focussing on their recent work with community groups to record, reclaim and make audible and visible largely silenced histories.

Paper long abstract:

The legacy of apartheid is still keenly felt across South Africa. The legacy of forced removals and segregation during apartheid is still markedly visible in the division of land, distribution of inhabitants across the country, thus the access to services and resources. The Simon's Town museum is a small museum with an array of artefacts and one facing challenges of resource and access. With access to arts, educational, cultural and leisure pursuits still largely and right and purview of White South Africans, the museum as site for education, leisure or culture remains at significant remove from the locals of the Simon's Town museum.

Working with with the activist, educational and archival platform of South African History Online, facilitated by a Global Challenges Research Grant with the University of Glasgow, there has been a recent undertaking to make accessible voices affected by Apartheid and the instigation and mobilisation of oral history community groups gathering material for a newly launched website. Naturally, due to ground up instigation of these research groups in the neighbouring townships, the stories are gathered and edited by locals, both for locals and now also to a global audience. This is the start of longitudinal process with the communities it serves (both local townships and port town), with attention to revealing hidden narratives and voices; allowing for the personal and political to take the fore; undoing whitewashing of complicated archives and revealing the racial complexity of the ‘rainbow nation’ in relation to the communities surrounding this museum.