CHAPTER 6. COLLECTIONS CAPTURED IN TIME
6.2 Collections during apartheid
the ethnographic collection and the archaeological collection, but after 1930 that division was no longer made (NMAR 1932, 1933-1940).
The amendment of the State-aided Institution Act 23 of 1931 was a professionalisation of the museum sector that strengthened the status of the museum in the Union of South Africa. The museum’s Board of Trustees was in charge of the collection, which was the core of the museum. The board was an extension of the minister’s power, since it was elected by him.
Collection activities were therefore officially undertaken to the government´s liking. More importantly donation was not just regarded as giving to the museum, but as giving to the Union. The act therefore positioned the museum as an instrument at the core of the Union´s cultural activities. There was reciprocity between socio-political developments and the museum, and it was at this time that a real division between White and African material culture was implemented and institutionalised, and not during the colonial period as other researchers have suggested.
Africans. The Msunduzi Museum (VM) collection, drawing on Kopytoff (1986: 70-74, 81), singularised certain objects – meaning that objects showed a collective, shared order and approval of the meaning of the group. Material culture such as bonnets, bibles, rifles, waistcoats and patchwork made up the symbolic manifestation of Afrikanerdom. When activated these symbols created a relationship with the world and became active signifiers of meaning. This was White nationalism, caring for and collecting aspects of a progressing culture and emphasising aspects that set them apart from the rest of the population.
The Du Toit Report (1948: 164) also stressed the importance of having a curator who cared for the collection. This suggests that they would not just collect White heritage, but would carefully preserve it in a framework of professionalised science. The Msunduzi Museum (VM) collection policy fitted the report´s recommendation, but failed in its collection activities (Du Toit 1949:54). This shows that the role of the museums in White nationalism was more multifaced than expected. The Du Toit Report (1949: 164) recognised that White researchers posed a disadvantage when collecting material culture from African groups and called for Africans to train as ethnologists for the museums. This statement deconstructs to a certain extent the post-colonial critique that the museum has been subject to. The collecting activities during that time were made with an awareness of bias within the museum sector to collection issues and collecting policies relating to the other´s material culture. This was not a new phenomenon during Transformation but was an issue that museums had dealt with before. Despite this, no effort was made to employ an African ethnologist to enhance the collection and its representation in the Natal Museum.
The Natal Museum was mostly interested in African material culture, but during the 1950s a collection of Indian weapons and Chinese objects was incorporated in the ethnographic collection (NMAR 1951, 1955). Its incorporation into this collection shows that this material culture was regarded as other. At the same time the museum donated 115 rifles and guns to the National War Museum in Johannesburg (NMAR 1951, 1955). Museums in South Africa started to participate in a nation-building process and the Natal Museum´s donation is part of a joint effort to establish cohesive collections. It also shows that the Natal Museum was not predominantly interested in collecting White heritage.
In the 1960s director John Pringle107 recognised that (White) farming culture had started to disappear in the region. He expressed a need to collect material culture representing this heritage and encouraged older citizens of Pietermaritzburg to record their life stories and hand them in to the museum (NMAR 1960, 1961, 1962). The Annual Reports show that the museum had prepared a list of objects that were needed for the development of the display in the History Hall.108 The call for donations can be noted in a quotation from The Natal Witness at the opening of the display. The administrator of the Natal Museum, Ben Havermann, said that ‘people should avail themselves of the opportunity to make a personal contribution to the unique Hall of Natal History’ (The Natal Witness 1972-10-08). The museum gave Whites an opportunity to immortalise themselves in the museum by donating objects that represented them, their family and their community.
My field research has shown that no material in this collection had been purchased and that the majority of donations were given by women and contained domestic commodities.
Furniture was donated from institutions such as the National Education Department. My informant Sahra (2004-11-15) held that purchased material in the museum was connected to African material culture. This collection shows that the museum continued to regard collections as something that needed to be displayed and not collected for the sake of ‘time- reckoning’. This meant that material culture and its relation to the public in exhibitions as displaying symbols was more important than the collection itself. No similar emphasis was made to collect from other groups, but future collecting activities show similar appeals to Indians. It was only in relation to much later collections of struggle material that Africans were addressed. What is important with the drive of collecting White material culture is that it contributed to the museum being classified as ‘own affairs’ in the 1980s, although according to policy it should have been classified as ‘general affairs’.
Drawing on Pearce (1995: 159), Knell (2004: 20) and Clifford (1999: 60-61) I hold that collections like above are collected to show a controlled common identity. The collection was further a control of the expression of the self, in this case a White anglophile identity. The collection of White heritage in the Natal Museum took place at a time when apartheid segregation laws were consolidated. Material culture could therefore be regarded as nation- building symbols, drawing on Afrikaner nationalism that focused on a disappearing farming
107 Director of the Natal Museum 1953-1976.
108 Also referred to as the Hall of Natal History.
community reconnecting to national romantic ideals of the peasant, manifesting traditional values, and re-establishing them in a changing environment.
Roodt-Coetzee (1966: 4) argued that the Msunduzi Museum (VM) collection was in the past impressive, but in 1966 when he compared it to other collections he found it limited. Nor was he impressed with the classification, and the only thing to his satisfaction was the collection of paper material and books. Roodt-Coetzee´s report was part of an investigation to prepare the Cultural Institutions Act 29 of 1969 that was similar in many ways to the State-aided Institutions Act 23 of 1931. In the new act the council´s main area of responsibility was to receive, hold and preserve collections that were placed under its care and management. In the act the objects are specified as given to the government and the Republic´s inhabitants to benefit them, so that museums at this time clearly functioned as repositories of important objects. The status of the museum in relation to the government cannot be doubted in this case. This must be considered in relation to the fact that Whites were regarded as members of the republic. In this context the objects that were preserved in the museums can be read as benefiting Whites.