Known as Elalini Ebomvu, the museum opens in April and will be one of four township museums in the country.
The tourism concept was pioneered locally by the museum on Robben Island, now a world heritage site.
Prior to the advent of democracy in 1994, the focus of some museums celebrated historic victories and battles of the British and Afrikaners, as exemplified by the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and the Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein.
The Red Location museum, based in the New Brighton area, will focus on the issue of institutionalised racism and the anti-apartheid movement.
"The museum seeks to remember the past in ways that are both familiar and frightening," said architecture professor Jo Noero, whose winning designs are helping transform the museum from a site of corrugated iron into a proper complex.
Red Location derives its name from red sheets of corrugated iron, which were adapted into slum housing from a former army barracks.
A large concrete and brick structure, the museum will include a hall of columns honouring anti-apartheid heroes.
Large-scale, stand-alone "memory boxes" will illustrate the complexities of apartheid and the country's institutionalised forgetfulness of the horrors of racism, Noero said.
"One of the horrors of apartheid was the sense of normalcy, the ability of its perpetrators to shut out from our memory the ghastly consequences of institutionalised racism. And yet, at the same time, the sense of impending terror in the country was undeniable," he said.
The Nelson Mandela metro planned the museum to be more than just a tourist attraction but also an integral part of the surrounding community of New Brighton.
Hundreds of new state-subsidised low-cost houses surround it.
Emerging from surroundings of abject poverty to become one of the city's cultural centres, Red Location is an ideal site to preserve the history of the liberation struggle.
During apartheid, the area was the site of intense political and racial conflicts which resulted in mass unrest and police brutality.
The building will house an art gallery to hang the works of East Cape artists. It will have a centre for creative arts, library, adult literacy centre and a conference centre.
A curator has been appointed.
About R1,4-million will be spent on office equipment, research, the collection of artefacts and photographs. At least R200 000 will be set aside for the grand opening in April.
Eastern Province Herald
Publisher: Eastern Province Herald
Source: Eastern Province Herald
