Khanya History Programme

As part of the re-launch of the Workers Museum in Newtown, Johannesburg, a special walk-about through the new permanent exhibition will be offered to the public. The museum is located in one of the few remaining compounds that still exist in the inner city today. Telling the story of the Newtown Municipal Workers Compound and white Managers’ and Artisans’ Cottage, the visitor is shown how central the migrant labour system was in shaping South African society.

While acknowledging and celebrating the contribution migrant workers from all over the region made to building South Africa’s economy and culture, the exhibition shows the rigorous methods of control, exploitation, and segregation that company owners and government based the migrant labour system on. The unwritten history of Johannesburg’s municipal workers and their families is brought to light as well as the ways in which the city adapted the compound system of the mines from the late 19th century onwards.

The exhibition documents the hierarchies of control and the lives of workers by using oral testimonies, archival documents, artefacts, compelling photographic images and archival footage. The interviews with ex-residents of the compound give visitors an insight into the enormous impact that the system of migrant labour had on black family life in South Africa. Many of the workers lament the fact that they were separated from their wives and children for long stretches of time and they reflect on the negative impact this had on their families. This is one of the few places where the voices of these workers is recorded.

The museum also highlights forms of migrant workers’ resistance and mobilisation against the segregationist policies that were put in place by industry and government since the late 19th century: colour bar, influx control and pass laws were only the core of the wide reaching legislative system that restricted workers from settling in town and making a decent life for their families in the city. In particular, the exhibition deals with resistance to the hostel and compound system itself. Further, the extraordinary importance of the rural community and the work of women, either as managers of the homestead or as migrants themselves, is brought to prominence in the exhibition. The question of how and what has changed today, is posed in the first special exhibition “Closed Constructions” that will be shown at the museum from May 2010 onwards.

For more information contact:

Anne-Katrin Bicher
Phone: 084 2002 614
E-mail: wm.project_at_khanyacollege.org.za

www.workersmuseum.org.za