Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Museum in the former town hall

The Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum in Lwandle in Somerset West , South Africa , was established in 2000 as Migration Museum with its focus on the migrant workers conditions of blacks at the time of apartheid opened.

The township Lwandle with its hostels based on the model of the compound system to accommodate single migrant workers for companies in the Helderberg region, mainly in the fruit and canned processing, was founded in 1958. The museum also commemorates the application of the passport laws , which controlled and influenced migrant work in an inhumane way. The hostels offered very simple accommodation for six men in each separate room. With the relief of immigration in the 1980s, the hostels became even more crowded. After the democratization and desegregation in South Africa, these accommodation options were increasingly used for families. The wheat and wine-growing farmers of the western Cape region had been using migrant workers since at least 1870. There were recruits in the areas of Ciskei , Transkei , Mozambique and in southwest Africa .

In 2000 the museum opened in the former parish hall of Lwandle and later Hostel 33 was added as an exhibition space in order to maintain such a hostel and make it accessible to the public. It is reminded of the excruciating conditions during the apartheid regime and the available black labor with consistently low wages in South Africa. The conversion of hostel 33 into family accommodation and the later conflicts during the conversion into a museum are also discussed.

further reading

  • Noëleen Murray, Leslie Witz: Hostels, Homes, Museum: Memorializing Migrant Labor Pasts in Lwandle, South Africa . In: Kronos, No. 42 (Nov. 2016) pp. 250-252, University of the Western Cape , Cape Town 2016. ISSN 0259-0190
  • Noëleen Murray, Leslie Witz: Hostels, homes, musem: memorializing migrant labor pasts in Lwandle, South Africa . UCT Press, Cape Town 2014. ISBN 1-322-06312-5
  • Francis Wilson , Gottfried Wellmer, Ulrich Weyl, Harold Wolpe et al .: Migrant work in southern Africa. A reader . (issa - Wissenschaftliche Reihe 5) Informationsstelle Südliches Afrika , Bonn 1976

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum: Contact us . accessed December 15, 2019
  2. ^ Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum: Welcome to the Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum . Museum website, accessed December 13, 2019.
  3. ↑ Peter Randall : South Africa's Future. Christians show new ways . Final report of the SPROCAS. Working group of Protestant churches in Germany (overseas services), Southern Africa information center . Bonn, Stuttgart 1974, p. 36
  4. ↑ Wilson, Wellmer, Weyl, Wolpe et al., 1976, p. 26
  5. ^ Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum: Hostel 33 . accessed December 13, 2019.
  6. ↑ JSTOR: bibliographic evidence . (English)
  7. ↑ JISC: bibliographic evidence . (English)

Coordinates: 34 ° 7 ′ 7.5 ″  S , 18 ° 51 ′ 54.4 ″  E