Freedom Park: Telling the real African story

Freedom Park: Telling the real African story

But this is not another apartheid museum. Nor is it the Hector Peterson Museum, or the Sharpville or Boipatong Monument. It is not Rhobben Island Museum, or the Kliptown Monument. It is much deeper. It goes back 3.6 billion years in history to tell an African story.//hapo attempts to tell an African story that has been distorted, suppressed and silenced. The story is divided into seven epochs.1.Earth - dealing with the creation of the universe. 2. Ancestors - exploring the concept of ancestors from physical to spiritual perspectives. 3. Peopling - showcasing Africa's pre-conquest societies from Timbuktu to Mapungubwe. 4. Resistance and Colonisation - recounting the major historical forces that gave birth to modern South Africa. 5. Industrialisation and Ubarnisation - dealing with exploration of minerals and its impacts on our lives. 6. Nationalisation and Struggle - stories from the tyrannical rule of colonisation and apartheid to a new South Africa.

Touring //hapo after a short welcome reception, which involves beating of drums and singing, and before a presentation on the first epoch, a quote from the opening of Thabo Mbeki's monumental speech, "I am an African," a speech which I think inspired Freedom Park, is plastered on the wall: "I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land."

We are told that this speech actually informs all what //hapo is. I was there as a guest of South African Tourism, and I made a mental note to re-read the speech. We were then taken through the African story of creation of the universe. In the beginning, the story begins, there was uMvelingaqangi (the Creator). Then came the figure of uNomkhubulwane (the female water God). With uNomkhubulwane by his side, uMvelingaqangi became inspired and created first the rock, then fire, followed by water. Rock, fire and water mixed and crashed, and from the eruption was formed the endlessness universe. From the fire came the sun, and in a dark night sky, the moon and the stars. Earth came from the rock while water produced the oceans and the rivers. After Water and Earth, life began. Humans came later from the reeds and multiplied. There is no mention of Genesis or Adam and Eve in this account.

And this is how death came into being. uMvelingaqangi instructed the chameleon to send a message that the people would live on earth forever. But the chameleon stopped on the way to eat some berries and took long to arrive. This got the Creator angry. He then sent the lizard to tell people that they would instead die. The lithe lizard moved fast and delivered the message of death to the people before the chameleon, busy with berries, could reach the destination. It is said when chameleon finally arrived, people rejected his message of eternal life as they felt he had acted irresponsibly by putting personal appetite above duty. I am astonished that this story having been told to us innumerable times over, most people have stuck to the Bible version of death. I remember one outing with the boys in the bush when went on a killing spree of both chameleons and lizards after hearing this story.Said the curator of Freedom Park ,Sipho Mdanda: "We don't just state the previously distorted facts. //hapo is a living interpretive centre, one with which every South African will identify personally." But when we left //hapo for the next part of the park, my fascination was with its presentation of African (black) indigenous knowledge. There is a feeling that //hapo was meant to also crush the egos of those who claimed they were 'a superior God's chosen race'.

The next part is the Mveladzo, a Tshivenda word meaning spiral paths. The paths link all the park elements and are meant to take visitors on a "contemplative and painstaking hike symbolising the tough journey that South Africa went through". Visitors are then allowed rest at Uistpanplek, an Afrikaans word meaning resting place. The main memorial is named S'khumbuto (siSwati for memorial) and is a testimony to eight conflicts that have shaped the South Africa of today. These are Pre-Colonial Wars, Slavery, Genocide, Wars of Resistance, the South African War (formerly known as Anglo-Boer War), The First and the Second World War and the Struggle for Liberation. Skhumbuto comprises eight elements, each one with its own symbolism and meaning, namely, Wall of Names (with over 75,000 names of peopled that died in all South African conflicts), Amphitheatre, Sanctuary, Eternal Flame (that pays tribute to the unsung heroes and heroines who died without their names being recorded in history), Reeds, President's Tree (fittingly planted by Thabo Mbeki), Moshate (VIP suite) and Gallery of Leaders.

The Gallery of Leaders is said to showcase those leaders whose contributions stand out in human memory and history. It aims to inspire visitors to emulate the sacrificial and heroic lives of these commemorated leaders. The leaders that Freedom Park urges us to emulate as role models are Argentina's Che Guavara, Angola 's Argostinho Neto, Ghana's Kwame Nkurumah, Tanzania's Julius Nyerere and South Africans, O. R. Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko, Lillian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph, the latter two being the only women in the gallery.The fifth major element of Freedom Park is Isivivane (Nguni word for scared space). This is the spiritual resting place for those who played a part in the freedom and liberation of South Africa. Isivivane has four key components; Lesaka and its boulders, Lekgotla, water and trees called Umlahlankosi.

Prior to the opening of the park, cleansing and healing and Return of Spirits ceremonies were performed throughout the areas of conflict in South Africa and internationally. We hear that soil from these conflict areas was brought to Lesaka as part of laying the spirits to rest. Each of the nine South African provinces provided a boulder from a place of importance to construct Lesaka. These nine boulders plus two others representing South Africa's national government and the international community form the circular face of Lesaka.I removed my shoes, in accordance with the requirement for visitors who enter Isivivane to pay homage to thousands of 'my people' who perished in these conflicts. I circled around Lesaka touching each boulder and silently uttering salutations to the thousands of spirits resting here.And this is how we do it in Africa. Mbeki observed in 1996: "Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again." Like the water bowels that our society keeps at the entrance of homesteads during funerals, water points are stationed at the exit of Isivivane for visitors to wash their hands when leaving this sacred place. I obliged accordingly and felt good to be African, now that there is a place where an African story is told by an African voice.

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Freedom Park: Telling the real African story