If there is one thing that I have learned and loved about being in Cape Town, it is how deeply the arts are connected to the city and its culture. Art here in South Africa is closely connected to how people understand their history, express themselves and create opportunities for themselves.
One of the biggest ways I have seen this impact of art is through the way South Africa engages with its history. South Africa has a complicated history shaped by colonialism and apartheid. Colonialism in South Africa began with Dutch settlement in 1652 and later expanded under British rule, with European settlers taking control of African land and establishing systems that favored European settlers. Apartheid was the system of legally enforced racial segregation that governed South Africa from 1948 to 1994, separating people by race and restricting the rights, land, and opportunities of Black South Africans. Places such as Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela, an activist against apartheid who later became South Africa’s first Black president, was imprisoned along with other political prisoners, and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg allow people to learn about this history through the spaces where it actually happened.
