Places I Visited in Cape Town to Learn About Apartheid

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Maybe one day, it would no longer be so. But today, barely a generation since the struggle against apartheid was won, it’s hard to think about South Africa without also thinking about apartheid, and how that struggle roused the conscience of the newly-empowered post-war working public¹, and carried its momentum since.

Nor has it already stopped being relevant. For in December 2023, South Africa invoked the history of its apartheid struggle to gather the moral courage to file an intervention on behalf of Palestine².

It was no small thing, for a developing country to challenge a rogue country backed by the sole global hegemon. Highly risky, in fact. So much so, that apartheid came up in my mind from just a factoid of history I knew as general knowledge, to an important event in the collective human history that I felt I needed to understand.

And that was why I went to South Africa the following year.

What is apartheid?

One of the things that surprised me about apartheid, was how relatively recent it actually was. I mean the segregation laws, which was the subject of global popular consciousness.

Of course, I had no reason to think about it before. But I think I sort of assumed that it followed right after the abolition of slavery.

In a way, I wasn’t entirely wrong. The racially defined class distinctions in South African society had its beginnings during the slavery period. The structural discrimination lingered on, long after slavery was formally abolished. But there was a century between the abolition of slavery in South Africa in the early 19th century, and the first native disenfranchisement laws³ under the Union of South Africa⁴.

Despite the wars going on during that interval period, people did people things. Living in proximity meant mixed families happened sometimes. University education was possible for blacks. And there were black teachers and professors.

Before 1948, there was still the possibility that the vestigial structures of segregation could diminish with time, and gradually dwindle away⁵.

However, after fighting on the side that defeated Nazi Germany, South Africa’s own white supremacist⁶ party came to power in 1948⁷. Modelling it after Canada’s Indian Act⁸, the Nationalist Party enacted the apartheid laws we normally think of. The laws outlawing mixed marriages between whites and non-whites, pass laws, segregated neighbourhoods, “townships” and evictions, were all passed in the immediate years after WW2.

These laws would last until 1991. The period between the Nationalist Party coming into power, and when it eventually released Nelson Mandela and repealed these laws, is typically what people refer to as the apartheid era.

Hot tip: To get a foundational context of South Africa’s early history, which informs the apartheid era, visit the Camissa Museum inside the Castle of Good Hope.

Where to go in Cape Town for apartheid history

I had some decisions to make, on my first trip to South Africa. It is a very big country. Normally, I would visit the capital city as part of a maiden visit.

However, surely I had to go to Robben Island, if I wanted to visit locations related to apartheid. It’s the UNESCO World Heritage Site, after all. That meant going to Cape Town. And while I was there, I might as well tick an item off my bucket list: to see a blooming desert.

I considered going to both Cape Town and Johannesburg. But in the end, I decided it was better to just see one region properly. So I confined myself to a shortlist of apartheid-related sites in Cape Town.

For a nationwide list of sites related to Nelson Mandela, check out this article on In Africa and Beyond.

1. Robben Island

Robben Island is a must-visit location in Cape Town, for apartheid history. The island had been used as a prison since Dutch East India Company times for political exiles from Southeast Asia. During the apartheid era, South Africa imprisoned anti-apartheid leaders there. This famously included Nelson Mandela, who was to become South Africa’s first president in post-apartheid South Africa.

Getting to Robben Island requires a ferry ride from the V&A Waterfront. You can buy a ticket there, or on its official website. Alternatively, you can also book a tour. Either way, book early as tickets are limited and can get booked out easily.

The ferry for Robben Island has its own pier near the Cape Town Diamond Museum. The tickets are by time slot, which is the ferry time. After half an hour, you reach the island and split into waiting buses, each with a tour guide.

The tour will visit several spots on the island. The guide will explain the apartheid history, how they used the prison to break the prisoners, but also how – paradoxically – being imprisoned together led to exchanges that made it possible to have a stable post-apartheid South Africa.

Don’t miss: Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island

The Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island is a building at the pier for the Robben Island ferry. This is where you wait for the ferry. However, the building itself is also a museum for apartheid history. Make sure you arrive early enough to browse the exhibits in the waiting area.

It was here, confronted by the cold chronology of apartheid history, that it came home to me how recent it really was. Not to mention, learning how South Africa’s apartheid struggle was so closely tied to Namibia’s freedom as well. Perhaps that’s why Mandela saw de-colonial freedom as related struggles¹⁰.

2. District Six

District Six is a site related to apartheid history due to the evictions that happened following the Group Areas Act. Previously a multi-racial working class neighbourhood in the middle of Cape Town, it was classified as a “white area” in 1966. The neighbourhood was demolished and its inhabitants forcibly relocated to the Cape Flats township over the next two decades. However, the planned re-development was never completed due to international censure and local pressure.

Today, only a small part of the original neighbourhood remains. Some former residents and their descendants claim the right to return. The District Six Museum was established to commemorate the people who were once there, and grieve what happened to them. It is located at the western end of the old neighbourhood.

Visiting the District Six Museum is easy. As you may guess, the area was classified for whites in the first place because of the great location. It adjoins Company’s Garden, and the Castle of Good Hope.

Inside, you learn about what the community in District Six was like before the evictions, to understand what was permanently lost. There may be a former District Six resident giving a personal description as well, as a sort of human library.

Don’t miss: Homecoming Centre

The District Six Museum has an annex building down the street, the Homecoming Centre. This is a multi-purpose event space that may have art & performance events.

3. Bo-Kaap Museum

Bo-Kaap was another multi-racial neighbourhood in Cape Town prior to apartheid. As it was a predominantly Cape Malay area since the early Dutch period, it was assigned as a ‘Malay Group Area’ under apartheid. However, this still meant forced evictions of their neighbours who were Africans, Cape Indians, and coloured Christians.

The Bo-Kaap Museum along Wale Street is small. It seemed to me that there is little to display to tell the history of the neighbourhood. It was, after all, a history of being a community of exiles and former slaves.

But the museum also had a room for the history of Cape Town’s labour class in general, and their eviction from other neighbourhoods during apartheid to make way for incoming settlers from Europe.

Don’t miss: Community Hub

There is a Community Hub at the back of the main museum. Sometimes, there is a special exhibit there.

At the time of my visit, Israel had not yet completely levelled Rafah¹¹, but much of Gaza was already displaced. The Community Hub was hosting the ‘Displacement‘ exhibit, which was about the eviction of Palestinians from an entire country, to make way for incoming settlers.

4. South African Jewish Museum

I accidentally got a different perspective on apartheid in the South African Jewish Museum. This museum is right along Company’s Garden, housed in Cape Town’s oldest synagogue building. The first Torah scroll brought over in the 1840s by a Jewish migrant from Amsterdam, is still there. You get a pamphlet as you go in. I got the sense that most of their foreign visitors are American, since the greeter seemed to default to the assumption.

The immediate section covers the Jewish religion. But the main part of the museum is about the history of the South African Jewish community, particularly in the Cape. To its credit, the historical display began with the San and Khoi people, the migrations of other African peoples, then the arrival of the Europeans, before themselves – though the people exiled or trafficked by the Dutch into the Cape were absent.

It wasn’t a museum where I expected to learn about apartheid. But I did. During the earlier part of Jewish migration to the Cape, Jews didn’t have rights either. They were among the residents in District Six. Many soon migrated north after the discovery of gold and diamonds on the Witwatersrand. As the community got wealthier, they moved out of District Six and so didn’t get evicted like the other residents during the Group Areas Act era. In any case, Jews were considered “white” under apartheid laws¹².

Consequently, the South African Jewish community faced the unique dilemma of benefiting from apartheid, yet having a recent experience of being on the other side. The museum honestly admitted that most Jews went along with apartheid. That said, many Jews fought against apartheid as well, and many of the “white” anti-apartheid activists were actually Jewish.

Don’t miss: Holocaust & Genocide Centre

There is a Holocaust & Genocide Centre in the same complex as the South African Jewish Museum. The exhibit begins with a Mandela quote¹⁴, and ends with one from Archbishop Desmond Tutu¹⁵.

Honestly, I would probably have experienced it differently had I come 20 years ago rather than in 2024. The Nazi holocaust was so horrifying, and frequently immortalised in museums like this one, in part because of the available documentation. But today, this genocide is no longer the best documented. It’s difficult to go through the exhibit without seeing the current one overlaid; it is almost a perfect match.

The end of the South African Jewish Museum exhibit was about South African zionism. Indeed, South Africa has a significant population of zionist Jews. Many do not believe there is any apartheid in Israel, and see no contradiction between being anti-apartheid and pro-Israel¹⁶.

However, the Genocide Centre is still worth visiting, as it also documents further genocide instances, particularly on the African continent. There was a 1999 film towards the end of the exhibit. I recall the elderly Jewish man, his thick glasses and sensitive face, eyes disturbed by the Rwanda genocide which had happened that same decade, grieving that mankind hasn’t learned. I wondered then, if he were still alive to see worse – and if he would.

5. Desmond & Leah Tutu Foundation

The Desmond & Leah Tutu Foundation was not on my shortlist. It didn’t occur to me to look it up, and I only discovered it when wondering around after visiting the District Six museum.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the first black Anglican bishop (of Johannesburg) and archbishop (of Cape Town) in South Africa. He was also a prominent anti-apartheid voice, well-known for his speeches stressing dialogue for human rights and reconciliation.

I considered popping in, but I had already planned to go to the Jewish Museum and there wasn’t enough time to go to both. However, if you’re making your shortlist of places to visit to learn about apartheid in Cape Town, don’t miss it.

Hot tip: The windows of St George’s Cathedral along Wale Street display several of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s quotes.

Bonus: Simon’s Town Museum

If you have enough time to make a trip outside of Cape Town, then there is another place that I highly recommend for yet another perspective on apartheid history.

The naval town of Simon’s Town lies to the south, along the Cape Peninsula. During colonial times, the British navy was multi-ethnic, and its South African navy was perhaps especially so. Consequently, Simon’s Town was an unusual bubble where racial separation was weaker. After all, even if the naval officers were invariably white, they still lived on the same ship as the crew.

So when the evictions inevitably came to Simon’s Town too, the residents resisted. They were united in their opposition to the Group Areas Act. Alas, they did not anticipate the force that the apartheid government was willing to use.

A museum in Simon’s Town preserved the memory of the town as it once had been, as well as the traumatic history of the evictions. Since Simon’s Town was classified a “white” area (because of the desirable coastal real estate), the museum was originally run by white residents who were left behind. A palpable survivor’s guilt was evident in the exhibit, testifying to the neighbourly love that once existed there.

Recommended reading:

There is a large body of work available on the topic of South Africa’s apartheid struggle. Here are only two, suitable as an introduction.

Footnotes:

1. It’s hard to imagine now, but it was only after the end of World War 2 that there existed such a thing as “popular culture”. In prior human history, the general public – peasantry and labourers – did not have the surplus income to be “consumers”. Whatever the failures of the early communist movements, it did force the normalisation of workers’ rights, which was ironically beneficial for the growth of our current consumerist and popular culture. ↩︎
2. Regional Information Centre for Western Europe. (2024, October 30). South Africa vs Israel: 14 other countries intend to join the ICJ case. United Nations. https://unric.org/en/south-africa-vs-israel-14-other-countries-intend-to-join-the-icj-case/ ↩︎
3. These laws began with the Natives Land Act 1913, which limited possible ownership of land in South Africa by its native people to less than 14%. (Yes, it’s a maximum ownership for natives, not minimum.) The remaining 86% were exclusively reserved for “whites”. I guess, this also meant 0% for all other groups. This, as well as the prohibition of mixed marriages, was intended to ensure minority rule of whites (defined as white “in appearance”), while having access to non-white labour.
   This was when the “bantustan” was created. It was described as “homelands for native Bantu people”, as though it were a mutually agreeable arrangement. However, bantustans were subordinate to the apartheid government and did not have sovereignty.
   As an aside, it’s interesting that they used the Persian suffix -stan. You know, instead of a native term, or even the Anglo/Dutch -land. ↩︎
4. The Union of South Africa followed the end of the Anglo-Boer wars, and was a British dominion. It later obtained independence as the Republic of South Africa in 1961. ↩︎
5. Pogrund, B. 2015. Robert Sobukwe: How Can Man Die Better. Jonathan Ball Publishers. pg 22. ↩︎
6. When I read the parts of apartheid laws that defined the population “groups”, I realised that if you think about “white” not as a race, but as a caste shorthand invented to facilitate settler colonialism, you can understand a lot of related phenomena much more easily. Some examples of articles to understand why it came about when it did (and not before), and why European colonials replaced their “old country” cultures with the generic white identity:
   a. Kenyon-Flatt, B. (2021, March 19). How Scientific Taxonomy Constructed the Myth of Race. Sapiens (archived). https://www.sapiens.org/biology/race-scientific-taxonomy/
   b. Tinsley, M. (2022, July 14). Whiteness is an invented concept that has been used as a tool of oppression. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/whiteness-is-an-invented-concept-that-has-been-used-as-a-tool-of-oppression-183387
   ↩︎
7. That said, in the 1930s and 40s, South Africa also had its own specifically anti-Semitic Nazi party, the South African Gentile National Socialist Movement “Greyshirts”. ↩︎
8. Galloway, G. (2013, December 11. Updated May 11 2018). Chiefs reflect on apartheid and First Nations as Atleo visits Mandela memorial. The Globe and Mail (archived). https://web.archive.org/web/20190502050752/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/chiefs-reflect-on-apartheid-and-first-nations-as-atleo-visits-mandela-memorial/article15902124/ ↩︎
9. Dall, N. (2024, November 30). Robert Sobukwe, the South African leader once as revered as Mandela. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/11/30/robert-sobukwe-the-south-african-leader-once-as-revered-as-mandela ↩︎
10. “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” – Nelson Mandela. (4 December 1997). Address on International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People, Pretoria. http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1997/971204_palestinian.htm ↩︎
11. Sanad Verification Agency & Marsi, F. (2025, July 13). Israel increased Rafah demolition to prepare for Gaza forced transfer plan. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/7/13/israel-increased-rafah-demolition-to-prepare-for-gaza-forced-transfer-plan ↩︎
12. This assimilation into a “white passing” people might have been the result of immigration laws such as the Quota Act and the Aliens Act, which were intended to curtail migration of people from Eastern Europe, Greece, and Palestine, because they were considered “unlikely to assimilate into the European population”. Many migrant Jews came from these regions in the decades preceding, and during, the two World Wars. By the time the race classification law was passed, Jews were counted as “white”. ↩︎
13. Schkolne, M. (2024, December 19). Merle Favis. Jewish Currents. https://jewishcurrents.org/office-hours-merle-favis ↩︎
14. “In the same way that the recollection of apartheid’s inhumanities is helping to heal and reconcile the South African people, so the memory of the Holocaust will strengthen the foundations upon which we are building a nation.” – Nelson Mandela. (1999). On the opening of the Cape Town Holocaust Centre. ↩︎
15. “We learn about the Holocaust so that we can become more human, more gentle, more caring, more compassionate, valuing every person as being of infinite worth so precious that we know such atrocities will never happen again and the world will be a more humane place.” – Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus. (August 1999). ↩︎
16. Shain, M. (2025, October 23). SA’s ‘Zionist problem’ an ominous portent. South African Jewish Report. https://www.sajr.co.za/sas-zionist-problem-an-ominous-portent/ ↩︎
17. Konrad, E. (2021, December 6). What keeps Jewish activists fighting Israeli apartheid. +972 Magazine. https://www.972mag.com/edition/israeli-jewish-activists-apartheid/ ↩︎
18. Note for international readers: the Afrikaans word for “white” (as in “white person”) is blanke; i.e., Mr. Willis employed a pun on the word in his criticism. ↩︎

Carbon offset information to Cape Town, South Africa

A return flight between Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town via Dubai produces carbon emissions of approximately 5,987 lbs CO2e. It costs about $48 to offset this. 

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Have you been to these places? What were your reflections?