From diamonds to beer, Gauteng’s museums offer insight into the core of South Africa, writes Michelle Colman

According to Anthony Paton, Deputy Director: Content Management for the Gauteng Tourism Agency, the following Gauteng museums are ranked most popular in terms of visitor numbers, all of them recording annual visitor numbers of up to or in excess of 100 000:

• Sci Bono Discovery Centre in Braamfontein, Johannesburg
• The Apartheid Museum at Gold Reef City
• Mandela House in Soweto
• The Voortrekker Museum in Pretoria
• Ditsong Museum of Natural History in Pretoria
• The Interpretation Centre Complex (ICC) at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site (COHWHS), north-west of Lanseria

He points out that the Huffington Post recently rated the Apartheid Museum and COHWS (which consists of Maropeng and the Sterkfontein Caves) as two of the six most attractive offerings in South Africa for families with an edutainment orientation. 

Inbound tour operator, Welcome Tourism Services, place both attractions within their selection of must-see museums in the province. They also list – in no particular order -  Liliesleaf, Constitution Hill and the SAB World of Beer in Johannesburg, Mandela House and the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, the Voortrekker Monument and Pretoria Art Museum in the capital city, and the Cullinan Diamond Mine to its north.

Your Africa’s Sales & Marketing Coordinator, Marlise Minnagen, adds the Wits Art Gallery in Braamfontein and the Johannesburg Art Museum to the pot, along with the Mapungubwe Collection at the University of Pretoria, and Kruger House, the original house of one-time President of the Transvaal Boer Republic, Paul Kruger, also in Pretoria.

Museums which attract medium-sized numbers in Gauteng include the James Hall Museum of Transport and the Planetarium in Johannesburg, and Freedom Park in Pretoria. According to Paton, the Planetarium still provides excellent value, whilst the transport museum has benefitted from its inclusion on the hop-on, hop-off City Sightseeing bus route.

The smaller museums of Gauteng tend to be niche-based, like the Origins Centre which looks at the history and culture of Khoi-San people, and the World of Beer- a jewel for those who are fond of hops-based beverages.  

Below, Tourism Update teases out some of the reasons to visit Gauteng’s most impressive facilities.

• The Apartheid Museum

En-route to Soweto, this museum is often combined with a day spent in the sprawling township providing a fitting introduction to its past. Its story is told with film footage, photographs, text panels and 22 individual exhibitions.  It has been criticised for leaving out important chapters in the history, but it will not leave the visitor in any doubt as to the evils of the time.

Says Paton: “The brilliance of the Apartheid Museum is that it presents the historical system which dominated South Africa in the 20th century in clear, graphic and sometimes chilling terms. The experience is made powerful and comprehensible through tremendous thought to the discreet elements which make up the exhibitions, which despite their often horrific content are always clean, clear and audible.”

• ‘Liberation Struggle’ museums

In the heady days of democratic South Africa, a clutch of new museums opened doors in Gauteng, exhibiting aspects of the liberation struggle.  All make use of high-tech exhibits, narrating their stories poignantly.

• The establishment of the Constitutional Court on the site of a former prison gave rise to Constitution Hill. Filled with symbolism of freedom and transparency, the site offers tours of buildings that once held heroes of the struggle captive, and now house the court that ensures human rights for all.
• Liliesleaf, the underground safe-house of ANC activists in the 1960s, was the site of a police raid in 1964 that resulted in the Rivonia Trial, which saw Mandela sentenced to life.
• The Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum in Soweto highlights the 1976 uprising of students, and is named for the first youngster to be killed in the tragedy.  Also in the township, the one-time Orlando West residence of the Mandela family, the matchbox-size Mandela House, is a popular stop which displays much Mandela memorabilia.

• Interpretation Centre Complex, Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site

First stop in this location where early man first stood erect, is Maropeng Visitors Centre, where a series of interactive exhibits are designed for younger visitors.  Says Paton: “

Explaining the success of the COHWHS facilities, Michael Worsnip, Managing Director of Maropeng, comments: “The theme of human development is very attractive because people see it as their own history which interests them more than anything else. Our storyline is the biography of humanity looked at in large. Homo naledi [a recent fossil discovery] was a catalyst for huge renewed interest in the shared origins of humanity in Africa.”

• SAB World of Beer

A museum to the process of beer making, as well as a conference venue, this facility is operated by South African Breweries.  It was voted South Africa’s top tourist attraction in 2009 and 2011, says General Manager, Tony Rubin, and is currently rated second most popular Johannesburg museum on TripAdvisor.

“As a business, World of Beer is evolving all the time,” states Rubin. “In the past 12 months we have improved our offering by doing beer tasting packages, food and beer pairing lunches, Halloween tours, Valentine’s Day packages, rugby packages in partnership with sports marketing companies, Saint Patrick’s Day promotions, a new and improved Tap Room menu, team building packages, the list goes on.”

The museum finds itself in the Newtown cultural precinct, which Johannesburg has punted for the past few years as a hip and happening location, with mixed success.  Besides World of Beer, Newtown hosts a number of museums including Sci-Bono Discovery Centre, Museum Africa and the Workers Museum.  Comments Rubin: “The Newtown Precinct has a vibrant character and is a must visit for everyone visiting Johannesburg, as well as residents of Gauteng. The perception that it is dangerous and squalid is not a true reflection and should be changed.”

• Voortrekker Monument

Despite all the change in the country, and the spate of new museums to visit in Gauteng, the Voortrekker Monument remains firmly placed on the itineraries of international visitors. 

Geraldine Paulsen, Media & Communication Officer for the monument says the fact that the museum continues to tell the undiluted story of a historical chapter is a reason for this.

“I think the Voortrekker Monument is still popular because it highlights a very specific period in our history. The fact the Voortrekkers left the Cape Colony in search of their own freedom and independence resonates with most visitors (even though it was very short-lived).

“The fact that the monument and museum represents and communicates a specific period is part of its DNA. This DNA tells a particular story. Most museums in the country have transformed their displays to include our post-1994 history, despite their themes, which often confuses foreigners who are not familiar with the detail of our country’s transformation.”

Paulsen points out that the facility is the only Afrikaans monument to have been awarded Grade 1 National Heritage Site status post-1994.  It is one of but a few remaining examples of Art Deco architecture, houses what is believed to be one of the longest marble friezes in the world as well as one of the six largest historical tapestries in Africa.

The monument features Mandarin captions at all its exhibitions, along with QR-codes, enabling visitors with smart phones to do without the services of a guide. “We also have a large Facebook following and we do extensive electronic social media marketing,” says Paulsen.

Paton says the monument has continued to get good reviews from tourists, including Japanese and Chinese visitors “who seem to respond to the facility on a largely aesthetic level and often show little concern for its ideological implications.  It is also a very well run and very well marketed facility.“

Ditsong Museum of Natural History

Visitors to this museum, which records 50 000 visitors a year, will notice some of its star attractions in the grounds – namely the skeleton of a whale fin and dinosaur models.

Its human evolution display is a favourite for international visitors, who also take advantage of a behind-the-scenes tour of the Broom Room, named after Dr Robert Broom who discovered Mrs Ples. The room houses many of the most important fossils of early hominids in the world.   The Austin Roberts bird hall is also popular, displaying over 870 Southern African bird species.

The museum is located in central Pretoria, two blocks away from the Gautrain and Metrorail train station.

• Pretoria Art Museum

Specialising in South African art, the Pretoria Art Museum located in the suburb of Arcadia offers international visitors a good idea of all the different genres, cultures and media of choice on the local art scene.

It has five different galleries in which exhibitions change often.  An ongoing exhibition is titled ‘A Story of South African Art’ and paintings are selected from the museum’s own collection, including works by early 20th century painters, the Resistance artists of the 1980s, and artists of the 21st century.

Set tours of an hour run Tuesdays to Fridays between 10h00 and 13h00.

• Cullinan Diamond Mine

The village of Cullinan with its quaint old sandstone miners’ cottages now hosting eateries, galleries and boutiques deserves a lot more credit than it gets.  Both underground and surface tours of the mine, which has its own Big Hole, can be experienced.  Participants can view diamond cutting and polishing too in the two hours or so that it takes to tour the site. 

In Oak Street, a short walk away, there’s and open air mining museum with old-time machinery to view, and not much further on, McHardy House Museum, a homestead left much the way it was when the mine’s first General Manager, William McHardy, lived there at the time the famous Cullinan diamond was discovered.

• Wits Art Museum

Going by the apt acronym of WAM, this museum is one of the attractions in the regenerating area of Braamfontein, which boasts much student life being part of the Wits University Cultural Precinct.  Its design incorporates Guggenheim-type features, and it houses an extraordinary collection of African art, including contemporary and historical art from South, West and Central Africa.  Its rotating temporary exhibitions are reasons to keep returning.