I Heart Design

no. 22

SELECTED BYWARREN LEHRERAPARTHEID MUSEUMDESIGNED BYVARIOUS DESIGNERS

Approaching the entrance to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, my wife, our friend Mike Premo, and I are faced with choices. Two signs hang above two prisonlike steel entryways. One says Blankes/Whites. The other, Nie-Blankes/Non-Whites. Judith and I enter through Whites and are given laminated cards that also say White. Mike, who is black, walks through Non-Whites. We can see each other through a chain-linked fence. Mike walks under a row of signs forbidding access to Blacks, Coloreds, and Non-Europeans. On both sides hang large-scale reproductions of the hated identity cards and passbooks, which contain photographs, names, addresses, and designation of race and ...