Apartheid Laws are now a long gone part of history – but they are still within my living memory. I remember watching the momentous occasion when F.W. De Klerk announced that Nelson Mandela was being released from prison in 1990, and then the removal of Apartheid proper a couple of years after that.
These days, you can only re-live the Apartheid Laws in a museum – the Apartheid Museum, which is located on the outskirts of Johannesburg in South Africa.
The Apartheid Museum has a tonne of great exhibits, newspaper headlines and video footage outlining the history of Apartheid, from it’s introduction in 1948 to when it was dismantled in the 1990s.
Unfortunately, photographs or video are not permitted in the Apartheid Museum. But to get an idea, when you enter, your ticket will send you into either the whites or non-whites entrance. And this is how pretty much everyday life was like in South Africa for the good part of four decades.
There were separate trains, suburbs, beaches, park benches, etc etc, you name it! It was such a insanely systematic system, that it was just crazy! It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like to live in such a system, but the museum is a good history lesson to check out.
The Apartheid Laws Send up!
So what’s funny about Apartheid? Well, nothing, but there was a very good send up of the separation system that brought back some childhood memories for me!
The Apartheid Museum brought me back to a very funny episode of The Goodies when I was growing up. The Goodies was a popular British comedy show in the 1970s that used to poke fun at pretty much everything. They were know for their political incorrectness, but that’s because they were so close to the truth.
The Goodies was one of the few television shows that I loved both as a child and as an adult. That’s because as a child, there was lots of colour and movement and big props. But when I saw them again as an adult, I realised and understood all of the innuendo and jokes that were aimed at adults – which had gone over my head as a kid.
Probably one of the funniest Goodies episodes ever was the one that made fun of Apartheid. Just think of it at the time – Apartheid had been in force for almost 30 years when the episode was made in the 1970s. The general plot was that a racist South African travel agent asks The Goodies to make a commercial to encourage people from Great Britain to visit South Africa.
The travel agent was annoyed that the commercial showed black people, so he forces The Goodies to go to South Africa. When they get there, literally everything that was black, was white. Things like white roads, all white piano keys, white car tyres, you name it. However, the commercial is so successful, that a flood of British toursits blindside authorities which allows all of the black people to escape the country. This, by default, ends Apartheid.
When Apartheid ends, then there is no one to do the work. Then “Apart-height” is brought in – this is where short people are suddenly discriminated against. Especially horse jockeys, and even the shortest Goodie, Bill Oddie! Of course, this episode was banned in South Africa, but it was a great example of social satire that highlighted a social problem using humour.
It was only funny because it was so close to the truth!
Anyway, I found an excerpt of this show! Check it out!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hsfYmpDQqA[/youtube]
Sure South Africa still has it’s problems, but I think the whole country did exceptionally well to not descent into civil war, when you consider it’s past.
I’ve been there five times since 2002, and have loved every single minute that I’ve been there.
shashumga