A chance to speak: Time Travel to the Durban System of Control and the Pass Laws 1952
On 25 November 2014, members of the museum community in KwaZulu-Natal province came together in the centre of Durban for a Time Travel to a normal day of an office of the Durban System in 1952. The Durban system is the name for the control of movement of the so-called non-White people in the coastal city of Durban during apartheid times.
This particular Time Travel preceded the annual conference of the Libraries, Language Services, Archives and Museum Services. That allowed the members of affiliated museums who have not had a chance to experience a Time Travel, to participate in one.
KZN Museum Services worked with the KwaMuhle Museum to put up the emotional Time Travel with the hope to have participants feel and think about how in the 1950s the city administration treated people who came into the city to seek work and eke out a living.
The KwaMuhle Museum, that was the office for the application for Passes and other permits, served as a perfect site for the Time Travel. The more than sixty Time Travel participants experienced the fatigue of waiting on long racially-separated queues, the insults hauled at them by the “native” police, the preferential treatment given to Whites, the uncertainty of their applications for Dom Passes (Identity Documents), the hunger and thirst on the queues, and the physical examination for possible diseases.
Comments: A young woman from one of the Durban Museums, who re-enacted the role of Ms. Dorothy Nyembe, who challenged the authorities on the unjust treatment of people, said that the bad treatment she experienced can surely be nowhere near what the people then experienced. Another young woman from Amazwi Abesifazane Museum near Durban said that the value of the Time Travel lies in the chance to speak about these things.
