Cape Town (Slave Lodge and South African Museum)

Leo and I have been to Cape Town once before, over 15 years ago, for the wedding of a close friend. During that trip, I fell in love with Cape Town and always yearned to go back. In my eyes, Cape Town is one of, if not the, most beautiful place in the world. I love Cape Town for its perfect combination of natural beauty, rich culture, friendly people and tireless struggle to move beyond its difficult history.

We were recommended by a friend to book the Cape Town’s Hop-on Hop-off bus. Those are the two-story red buses that you might see in big cities all over the world. I was keen because I enjoy sightseeing without the burden of navigation and the novelty and convenience of the two-story bus appealed to me.

After breakfast, early the next morning, we took an Uber to downtown Cape Town where we could catch the Hop-on Hop-off bus, that we nicknamed HOHO. The upper level of the bus is where everybody loves to sit because of the higher vantage point and it’s fun. We quickly discovered that it is extremely windy and cold if you sit in the open-air area so some of us moved to the covered area. The best seat on the HOHO is the first row on the upper level with perfect views from the huge front window while still being sheltered from the elements. There is a pre-recorded tour that can be heard through the complimentary earphones that provides historical, geographic and cultural narration throughout the city and all of the stops.

In just over an hour, we rode one entire loop around the city. We discovered some areas and learned a lot of new things that we didn’t know about Cape Town. Of particular interest to the kids was an outdoor public pool complex with four different swimming pools at Sea Point and just beyond, a huge playground area at Green Point. We agreed to return there the next day on EY’s birthday.

We alighted at the downtown stop and proceeded to the two museums that most interested us, Slave Lodge and South African Museum. The Slave Lodge, built in 1679, is one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town. It was built to house the slaves who belonged to the Dutch East India Company. Since then, it has changed names and uses many different times. When the British colonial government turned Slave Lodge into government offices in 1807, there were 283 slaves still living in the building. Some of the slaves were sold and others were housed within Slave Lodge and buildings nearby. In 1828, the 135 slaves who remained were manumitted, that is freed, six years before universal emancipation of slaves in the British Empire.

The Slave Lodge presents a powerful lesson about slavery and injustice. The main hall builds upon the theme of “Human wrongs to human rights.” Even though slavery is widely known to be a vile practice, modern day slavery still exists today. According to the Global Estimates of Modern Day Slavery (2022), it is estimated that nearly 50 million people are victims of forced labor and forced marriage and one-eighth of the victims are children. The Anti-Slavery Society reported in May 2002, “Girls as young as six work as maids in the Philippines, children break rocks in Ghana’s quarries, young boys are abducted from their homes in South Asia and forced to be came jockeys in the United Arab Emirates and girls are forced into prostitution in many areas around the world .” We are responsible for educating ourselves about the atrocity of slavery, in the past and in the present, so we can face history with eyes wide open. If left unchecked, any one of us or our loved ones could find ourselves in the position as a perpetrator or as a victim.

The rest of the museum exhibited a collection of artifacts to allow visitors to better understand the Cape slave trade, the work and lives of slaves, elements of control and examples of resistance. A few exhibits from the museum still linger in my mind.

–       There was a placard in one of the rooms that described a Khoi woman who defied authority and protested by committing suicide, thereby freeing herself from a life of servitude. Her body was put on display for a month as a warning to other slaves not to self-harm because their bodies were considered the property of their owners. Other forms of resistance included working slowly, breaking tools, setting fires, stealing livestock, poisoning food, running away and ultimately, committing suicide. If I were a slave, would I protest and how?
–       Our children were shocked by a diagram of a slave ship, very similar to one that I remember seeing in my history book from high school. The drawing is of the below-deck hold of a slave ship showing how slaves were transported across the ocean. Slaves were forced to lie shoulder to shoulder without any room to move, often in shackles and chained together. There would be very limited food and water. Diseases such as scurvy, small pox and measles were common. Slave traders expected many slaves to die en route, so they would cram as many slaves as possible including men, women and children in order to maximize their profits.
–       Once arriving in the Cape, slaves would be given new names by their owners. Ironically, sometimes the names would be derogatory and sometimes Biblical. Sometimes, they would be named after the month of the year that they arrived. There was an exhibit that showed South Africans who bear the surnames of the months of the years. This is part of the legacy of the slave trade.

After the Slave Lodge, we stepped outside into a sunny and breezy day and watched a group of youth performers singing and dancing. Their harmonic voices were filled with joy and hope and transported us away from the weight and darkness of the past and into the light of the present.  

On the way through the Company’s Gardens, we paused to admire the work of an artist who crafts sculptures of African wildlife using recycled metal from old cars. We all really loved his work and wanted to buy something but we were aware of our luggage constraints. We chatted with Nesbert for a few minutes and then had to move on.

We stopped for lunch at the Eastern Food Bazaar in the downtown area. The Eastern Food Bazaar is a food court offering South Indian, North Indian, Turkish and even Chinese options. We were on the hunt for a dish called Bunny Chow, a local favorite that we learned about on the HOHO recorded tour. Bunny Chow is hollowed out white bread filled with curry. In addition, we ordered some shwarma, dosa and fried noodles.

After lunch, we proceeded to our second museum of the day. The South African Museum is home to a huge collection of everything and anything at the intersection of science, history and South Africa. We explored a few exhibits including one that gives a good perspective of where we are in the universe. Given South Africa’s expansive coastline, we visited an exhibit on marine life. The highlight of our visit was a maze of rooms that displayed taxidermy of mammals and birds of South Africa. Here, we got a close-up view of all of the animals that we saw in Kenya. We all had the impression that the animals looked much bigger in the museum compared to when we saw them on game drives.

During our visit to the South African Museum, we talked about whether we should go back to buy the metal sculptures created by Nesbert. Buying them would generate a lot of hassle because we would need to figure out a way to pack it and transport it back to the US. The kids convinced us that we needed to get a souvenir from South Africa and I agreed. But the person who we really needed to get the thumbs up from was Leo. He would be the one to figure out the packing and the shipping. Once Leo gave the nod, we ran back to find Nesbert. We picked out the pieces that we wanted and probably bought more than we needed. Nesbert was incredibly gracious and told us that we were his biggest customers to date. He couldn’t wait to tell his wife about us because it hasn’t been easy for his family. We were satisfied with our purchase and Nesbert was overjoyed with his sale. Now it was up to Leo to figure out how to get our metal animals packed and shipped to the other side of the world.