Reliving History at Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum

When you book flights to Johannesburg and visit the city’s modern and engaging Apartheid Museum, you can witness this dark period of South Africa’s history and learn about the heroes who lifted the nation out of its difficult times. The Apartheid Museum, only recently opened in 2001, displays in detail the rise and fall of systematic racial prejudice. Buy airline tickets for cheap flights to Johannesburg and see the greatest museum of 20th century South African history.

The Apartheid Museum was created by a special team of curators, historians, filmmakers, and designers, and this is reflected in the interactive multimedia exhibits you’ll see inside. There are 22 separate exhibits. When you arrive at the museum, you’ll be greeted by the first one, the Pillars of the Constitution. These commemorate the writing of South Africa’s new constitution between 1994 and 1996 by the nation’s first democratically chosen parliament. The new document emphasized seven central values, each one memorialized by a pillar: democracy, reconciliation, equality, respect, diversity, responsibility and freedom.

One reason the Apartheid Museum is a favorite for visitors on flights to Johannesburg is the ways in which it attempts to draw guests into the history and make it more personal. Visitors are connected to the story of apartheid right at the entrance gate, where each person is assigned a race and must enter through the door that corresponds to that arbitrary designation. See documents like lists of apartheid laws and identity documents with race statistics, and historic portrayals by apartheid photographer Ernest Cole and other artists. In the sobering Political Executions section, learn about the 131 executions of arrested government opponents. In an exhibit called The Significance of 1976, discover how South Africa’s youth, especially school children in the Soweto Township began to take control of the anti-apartheid movement. ‘Roots of Compromise’ explains the turning point of the movement from 1987 to 1990 and displays a famous speech by South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk. Afterward, watch a video of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and then walk by displays of some of the weapons used in the following violent years before the peace accords, years in which 14,000 South Africans died during the political violence.

The final two exhibits in the Apartheid Museum showcase the miracle election of 1994 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A visit to this historic museum is well worth finding inexpensive flight tickets. At just 20 minutes from Johannesburg’s central business district, the Apartheid Museum is easily accessible. It is closed Mondays, and the opening hours are 10:00am to 5:00pm. If you want to really comprehend apartheid and how it has affected South Africa, find the best airfares for cheap tickets to Johannesburg and see the world-famous Apartheid Museum.