Inside Out - The Iziko Slave Lodge as Witness to Slavery

Weinberg, Jonathan

Inside Out - The Iziko Slave Lodge as Witness to Slavery

Thesis / Dissertation

2023

Abstract

The thesis investigates how the Iziko Slave Lodge has witnessed slavery from when it was erected as the VOC SL in 1679 to its current configuration as the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum. It traverses the story of the Lodge both historically and critically through its various iterations over time, in order to understand how the Slave Lodge has occluded, witnessed, and borne witness to the history of slavery in Cape Town. Although the study is framed by the underpinnings of the act of witnessing, it has also been about uncovering and acknowledging the layers of patina of the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum itself as a witness to slavery over time. The modalities of witnessing, testimony, memory, memorialisation and museumization are explored as they pertain to the building and museum. The outcomes of the research are augmented by my own reflexive analysis, having worked at the Slave Lodge in its earlier museum iteration as the South African Cultural History Museum and having witnessed its transformation into the Iziko Slave Lodge in the 1990s. Despite the apparent resilience of the architecture and the Slave Lodge building, I suggest that witnessing should not only be confined to the built environment but should form part of a greater public heritage complex, embracing identity, memory, and socio-political resonance. The practices of witnessing drawn on in this thesis are established as a complex, multidirectional processes. Acts of witnessing, bearing witness, occlusion and illumination may serve as useful frameworks for reflecting on and representing histories and spaces of atrocity beyond this case study example.

Keywords

Conservation of the Built Environment

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