red location

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Red Location Museum – Maduna Road

Maduna Road is one of the road in Langa, Uitenhage, where the Langa massacre took place in 1985.  The Langa massacre took place on the 25th anniversary of the Sharpville massacre of 1960.  The police fired on a group of mourners on their way to a banned funeral, killing 20 people. There was an international outcry following this incident and a Commission of Inquiry (Kannemeyer Commission) was immediately appointed to investigate the cause of the shooting.  The story is told…

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13/02/2013
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The Red Locations Lodge ladies

The Red Location (Backpacker) Lodge in New Brighton has a special story to it.  I don't know all the details so I will give you the short version of it.  The building that the Lodge is situated in used to be a beer hall back in the days.  Beer halls led to many men drinking away all their money and getting violent towards women and children and was also the source of a lot of crime in the townships.  The…

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17/12/2012
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Olof Palme Road

Swedish visitors to the Red Location Museum in New Brighton always stand in amazement at the fact that the street in front of the museum is called Olof Palme Road.  Olof Palme was the Prime Minister of Sweden until his assassination on 28 February 1986 and a big supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa.  The Swedish government has also made a number of investments in upliftment projects in the New Brighton area since the dawn of democracy.

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04/09/2012
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Langa massacre photographic essay

The last in this short series on the Red Location Museum in New Brighton covers "You are my witness", a photo essay dedicated to the mothers, fathers, women, men and children of the Langa massacre, who sacrificed their lives for the liberation struggle of South Africa.  The massacre took place on 21 March 1985 in Langa township in Uitenhage when mourners, peacefully marching in solidarity to a funeral of those who lost their lives while protesting against grave oppressive conditions, were violently massacred…

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18/12/2011
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Memory boxes

Today's post is the second of three posts about the Red Location Museum in New Brighton.  One of the main concepts of the museum are the Memory Boxes.  These boxes were inspired by the boxes that migrant workers used to accommodate their prized possessions when separated from their families.  The Museum has twelve 6 meter by 6 meter and twelve meters tall, rusted boxes offering a set of different memories of struggle in South Africa.  The boxes aren't identified from outside and the contents are…

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17/12/2011
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Hall of Columns

The Red Location Museum in New Brighton was the first museum to be purpose built in a township in South Africa and remembers the struggle era, especially in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage.  Although there is much room for improvement the museum has a number of very good exhibits.  As you enter through the main entrance the Hall of Columns is on your right.  Each of the 15 columns have a different struggle hero from the Nelson Mandela Bay area on…

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16/12/2011
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Mandela manuscrips

On display in the Red Location Museum are manuscripts from Nelson Mandela's diary from the years he spent on Robben Island. These manuscripts are in his own hand writing and is one of the museums most prized exhibits.

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05/12/2009
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Mill Park

Since we recently welcomed anon and arnieo to this blog, both of whom coincidentally live in Houston Texas and used to live in the PE suburb of Mill Park, we thought we'd show a couple of views of this attractive suburb.Mill Park has an interesting history. According the the fascinating "Port Elizabeth in Bygone Days, written in 1947 by JJ Redgrave, "the present Mill Park area derived its name from the fact that there was in the early days an…

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16/02/2009
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such a shame

We have taken you to the fascinating Red Location Museum before. It documents the movement against apartheid, and the red location was one of the significant places in the evolution of the ANC and the struggle for democracy in South Africa. We have written in more detail about this fascinating place on our personal blogs, and lamented the fact that the last few remaining historically significant shacks, built in 1903, are being vandalised and sold to unscrupulous scrap dealers. It…

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03/11/2008
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An exhibit at Red Location Museum

This is an exhibit in the fascinating Red Location museum. It shows anti apartheid posters which were circulated when the restrictions were at their worst, anyone found with one of these would have been in for a very bad time! The books on the little tables are transcripts of the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with the intention of bringing into the open the atrocities committed during the apartheid era. They make very…

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14/01/2008