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Left to right: Msunduzi Municipality Mayor Zanele Hlatshwayo; National Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, Ntombazana Botha; Ambassador Bost; PND Nzimande, Chairperson of the Natal Museum Council
“Separate Is Not Equal” Exhibit Opens at the Natal Museum
November 27, 2007
US Ambassador Eric Bost and National Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, Ntombazana Botha officially opened the “Separate Is Not Equal” exhibit at the Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg on November 6. The multimedia exhibition uses films, photographs, sound recordings, and reconstructions to tell the history of segregation in the United States, the landmark Supreme Court Ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education on 17 May 1954 and the subsequent decades of struggle for racial equality. The exhibit also highlights parallels to the South African experience.
Ambassador Bost, National Deputy Minister Ntobazana Botha, Msunduzi Municipality Mayor Zanele Hlatshwayo and a host of invited VIP Guests were welcomed to Pietermaritzburg and the Natal Museum by a group of children perfoming Zulu dancing from the local Imbali Township.
In his remarks at the opening of the exhibit, Ambassador Bost described his experience when he and his brother integrated the North Carolina Public School System as the first Black children in that state to attend traditionally “white only” schools. He acknowledged the role of his parents in helping him and his brother to understand and accept the challenges they experienced. He added that by the next year, they were no longer the only Black children in their schools!
Among the other VIPs were Professor PND Nzimande, Chairperson of the Natal Museum Council; Mr. Christopher Till, Director, Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and Mr. Rob Haswell, City Manager of Pietermaritzburg, the Capital of the KwaZulu Natal Province. Ambassador Bost was accompanied to the opening ceremony by his wife, Dr. Rosemary Brownridge-Bost, Consul General Eugene Young and staff from the Public Affairs Office at the Consulate in Durban.
This exhibit was produced in 2005 by the Apartheid Museum in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and the Levine Museum of the New South. It orginally opened at the Apartheid Museum and was later showed at the Slave Lodge Museum in Cape Town. The exhibit will be at the Natal Museum until the end of October 2008. Special tours for school groups can be arranged with the Museum’s Education Office.
Natal Museum
Street Address: 237 Jabu Ndlovu Street, Pietermaritzburg
Call: 033 345-1404
Website: http://www.nmsa.org.za/
