Supported by Andrew W. Mellon and Ford Foundations and Michigan State University

Note from the Editor

This is the most active year of our project, with a colloquium on Heritage and Education in January at Wits; a major exhibit design workshop held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the South African Museums Association; two internships at Durban Local Museums and the University of Durban-Westville; and the launching of three innovative collaborative learning pilot projects in oral history digitization, traditional arts documentation and design, and the cataloguing of African media through interoperable databases (see the reports on these projects in this issue).  All of these efforts reinforce Professor Kader Asmal’s observation at the January colloquium that “the Heritage Sector’s institutions of public culture are key actors in the education of the nation,” especially as they reduce “over-representation by museums”  that have been guilty of mis-education for so many for so long.  Our training efforts seek to advance such a philosophy, by transforming, instead of merely displacing, museums and other traditional venues for education in heritage.  As I listened to Professor Asmal’s provocative call for a new generation of heritageprofessionals, I thought of the many forms that training and education – which after all is our project’s primary emphasis – can take.  For instance, Kate Wells’s remarkable Siyazama project in KwaZulu Natal, supports rural crafts while promoting HIV/AIDS awareness.  The terrible burden of AIDS transmittal from generation to generation “is already a reality in the rural communities,” she writes; it “is written in the beadwork messages of the Siyazama craftworkers.”  Neo Lekgotla Iaga Ramoupi, a participant in our training institute at Michigan State in July 2000 and who now works as a researcher at Robben Island Museum, points out that through interviews with ex-prisoners, he has learned that a recreation as innocuous as soccer became a means for both physical and political education within the confines of South Africa’s most notorious prison.   We invite you to to read more about these activities at our website, a new form of heritage education that we hope will be an enduring resource for scholars and heritage professionals worldwide.

Using the Robben Island Conversation Plan as a guide, Neo Lekgotla laga Ramouipi’s work in the heritage department at Robben Island in the unit of Prison Precinct, has been innovative and interesting.

Making a Positive Difference – Siyazama
By Kate Wells

The Siyazama Project has used rural crafts to help promote HIV/AIDS awareness among some of South Africa’s most vulnerable people, rural women. A interesting, extensive collection of beaded work has been collected as a result of this flourishing project.

Building Partnerships: Centre for Popular Memory & Matrix Center
By Sean Field

With the partnership between the Centre for Popular Memory and the Matrix Center, the Centre for Popular Memory has to grow considerably in their general aims in training, research, dissemination and archiving.

An Oral History of Resistance of South African Indians
By Vino Reddy, Project Coordinator

The Documentation Centre of the University of Durban-Westville had undertaken a project entitled  “Voices of Resistance” to film, record, and transcribe the significant contribution of this group to the liberation struggle of South Africa.

Saartjie Baartman
By Andrew Lamprecht

With the return of Saartjie Baarman to her homeland, this is an article that briefly outlines her life to commerate this great heritage event.

Coordinated by the Michigan State University Museum and the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the partnership aims to produce an exhibition of South African traditional arts to travel in South Africa and internationally.

Internship Experience
By Ronald Dorris

A personal narrative of Ronald Dorris’s internship in South African with the South Africa Cultural Heritage and Technology Program.

Education and History in the New South Africa
By Professor Kader Asmal, MP, Minister of Education, Republic of South Africa

Professor Kader Asmal’s speech at the January colloquium regarding history and cultural heritage in education today.

South African Collaborative Film and Video Project

A project established to provide worldwide access to the extraordinary heritage of South Africa, the coming of majority of rule in South Africa.

Workshop on Proposal Writing

Education & Heritage Colloquium, January 22-25, 2002