During the apartheid years in South Africa, hostels and compounds were built to house migrant labourers. One such hostel compound was Lwandle, some 40 kilometres outside Cape Town. Literally translated from isiXhosa as `the sea', Lwandle was built in sight of the Atlantic Ocean. Conceptualised as a temporary labour camp, it was laid out by town planners and engineers in the form of diagonal, parallel blocks of barracks around a central open space. The lives of the labourers who lived there were regulated and policed through apartheid legislation around population influx control, the pass system and the policy of Coloured Labour Preference. In the 1990s, as part of the post-apartheid `Hostels to Homes' scheme, such hostels were reconfigured and refurbished into homes for family accommodation. A steering committee in Lwandle decided to preserve one dormitory, block 6, hostel 33, as a museum. Officially opened in May 2000, the primary purpose of the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum was to serve as a reminder of the system of migrant labour, single-sex hostels and the control of workers through that infamous identity document - the pass book. This book explores the museum's makings, the creation of histories through the oral and the visual and the rehabilitation of structures for the museum, ending with the celebration - and discomfort - of the museum's tenth birthday in 2010. Richly illustrated throughout, the book includes two full colour visual essays by photographers Paul Grendon and Thulani Nxumalo, taken while working with the museum on projects of restoration and collection.

Museums flourished in post-apartheid South Africa. In older museums, there were renovations on the go, and at least fifty new museums opened. Most sought to depict violence and suffering under apartheid and the growth of resistance. These unlikely journeys are tracked as museums became a primary setting for contesting histories. From the renowned Robben Island Museum to the almost unknown Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, the author demonstrates how an institution concerned with the conservation of the past is simultaneously a site for changing history.

Apartheid s Festival highlights the conflicts and debates that surrounded the 1952 celebration of the 300th anniversary of the landing of Jan Van Riebeeck and the founding of Cape Town, South Africa. Taking place at the height of the apartheid era, the festival was viewed by many as an opportunity for the government to promote its nationalist, separatist agenda in grand fashion. Leslie Witz s fine-grained examination of newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, and advertising materials reveals the expectations of the festival planners as well as how the festival was engineered, historical figures were reconstructed, and the ANC and other anti-apartheid organizations mounted opposition to it. While laying open the darker motives of the apartheid regime, Witz shows that the production of local history is part of a global process forged by the struggle between colonialism and resistance. Readers interested in South Africa, representations of nationalism, and the making of public history will find Apartheid s Festival to be an important study of a society in transition."