INTERNATIONAL MUSEUMS DAY TALK DELIVERED BY BONGANI MGIJIMA , INTERNATIONAL MUSEUMS DAY CELEBRATIONS , JUNE 2011 , DODRECTH COMMUNITY HALL , CHRIS HANI DISTRICT MUUNICIPALITY
It is indeed an honour and a privilege to be asked to be a guest speaker at an important occasion like this. I would like to applaud the local and district municipalities for co-hosting an event of this nature. I am equally happy to see the level of cooperation with the District Office of the Department of Sport , Recreation , Arts and Culture. Indeed I am very happy and wish other municipalities and district offices could learn from this incredible example of good neighbourliness.
I have been told that today’s event marks the district leg of the international Museums Day festivities. International Museums day is marked by all museums and heritage practitioners throughout the world.
The theme for this year is Museums and memory. My talk today will be based on the ICCROM defintion of what a museum is or what it ought to be. I am sure many of you are wondering : what is a museum?
According to the International Council of Museums (ICCROM) which is a body responsible for museums all over the world :
“ a museum is a non profit , permanent institution in the service of society and its development , open to the public , which acquires , conserves , researches , communicates and exhibits the intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education , study and enjoyment”.
Whereas many people think that museums make a lot of money , this is not really true. By their very nature museums are not designed to make profit. The small amount of entrance fees that museums charge are hardly enough to buy cleaning materials let alone to pay the telephone. That is why it is always crucial for museums to receive government funding. At the end of the day museums are public faces of the communities they serve. They represent the history and heritage of the localities they are found in.
While museums by their very nature do not make profit for themselves they do create an environment for local economic development through tourism. For example tourists who visit Dodrecht they want to see its heritage. The very first place they will visit is a museum. After seeing a museum they will eat in a local restaurant, use a local petrol station and even sleep in a local B and B. If it were not for the museum that tourist would have visited another town. Because of the attraction effect that museums have they indirectly contribute to local economic development and employment. The people who work in the petrol station or B and B would otherwise be unemployed were it not for the tourists who have been attracted by the local museum.
The other question you may be asking yourself is how do museums serve society. People who work in museums are referred to as curators. The term “Curator” refers to someone who looks after things that belong to the other person. All the objects that are found in museums the majority of these objects are donated by the community. Sometimes as communities we criticise museums for not showing our own objects in their displays. I am afraid is that in many cases we are our own worst enemies because we do not donate objects to museums but we expect museums to have these objects. The true transformation of museums will only happen the day when communities start to wake up and donate their historical objects to museums. These historical objects may include old passbooks, family albums , letters , beadworks and all the objects that have something to do with family history and culture. We must begin to trust museums that if donated they will indeed take care of these.
In terms of the definition put forward by ICOM museums must be open to the public. This is what explains why museums charge very low entrance fees. I am aware that some museums are even willing to open their doors to the public for free. We must begin to see museums as meeting places for the community. As the community we must reclaim this public place and assert our presence in museums. Instead of our youth going to overcrowded taverns let them overcrowd our museums. An entrance fee to a museum is far more cheaper than a bottle of Carling Black Label. While a bottle of a Carling Battle Label might destroy your health a visit to a museum will stretch your mind and make you a very knowledgeable person among your friends. It will also make you a very happy person.
I have already mentioned how museums acquire objects and how important it is for us to donate objects to museums. Contrary to what people think of museums as dusty placed run by retired white gogos actually working in museums is very cool. Museum work is a very fulfilling career. People who work in museums are very respected by their colleagues especially in universities. Museum work entail conducting research which help to solve some of the problems faced by the country. For example my museum’s areas of research are in the areas of fishes, bees and origins. Some people might think studying fishes and bees is boring. For some of us we only think of fish when we see it tinned or when we buy it from a fast food outlet. However in our museums there are people who are studying fishes. In their studies of fish they can tell you lots of things like whether the river is polluted or whether the price of buying fish is going to increase etc. In museums we also have people who are studying bees. We all know that bees are very good in pollinating flowers especially in fruit trees. The more bees the more number of fruit trees to be pollinated. The more fruit trees pollinated the more fruit we have. We all know that if we have more fruit available the price of buying it also goes down. The opposite is also true. The next time you eat an apple think of all the bees who have helped to produce it and think of all the museum scientists who ensure that there are enough bees.
The other area of museum research I have mentioned deals with our origins. It has always been said that Black people do not have history. At school we are always fed the myth of Jan van Riebeeck and his arrival in 1652. The other poison our learners are forced to imbibe is the Great Trek. The key to saving our kinds from this boring type of history can be found in our museums. Our Museum Archaeologists and palaeontologists literary dig the earth looking for new evidence that our history did not begin in 1652 and that there was nothing great about the so called Great Trek.
In a way the work conducted by our museum researchers has implications for the rewriting of the new school textbooks.
New information discovered by museums also find its way into new museum exhibitions. That is why it is always important to visit museums because by so doing you can be ahead of your peers when it comes to knowledge. Some museums do have outreach programs to schools. A good example of this can be found in the Albany Museum Mobile Museum Service. If you want our Mobile Museum to visit your school please approach Mr Baninzi from the Chris Hani District Office. Museums also have educators who can help learners and teachers to understand museum exhibitions. In museums people get to see the real objects as opposed to pictures that are found in school textbooks. Museum experts are always at hand to assist whenever needed. I would like to encourage teachers and learners to make use of museums as an educational resource.
While museums keep historical objects or tangible heritage they do also help to preserve intangible heritage. Intangible heritage relates to things like iintsomi , amabali , umculo and the like. These things I have mentioned they make up our memory of the past. This memory can be shared within the family and the community at large. I would like to urge you to go to museums and tell these stories to museum people so that they can be preserved. For example our rich heritage is kept in our mind and narrated oral from one generation to another. An example of this is iziduko. Very few of our young people today know iziduko zabo. Iziduko are very important as part of personal identity. If you do not know who you are it is not easy for you to know how to fit into the broader community. The challenge for our museums therefore is to make sure that iziduko zabantu are also documented. People in turn must volunteer and send their iziduko and iminombo to museums so that future generations can go to these museums to find out who they are.
Museums are not only for study purposes. As ICOM says , they are also meant for enjoyment. I am aware that our youth these days spend a lot of time on mxit and facebook as part of their leisure activities. While these things are cool to have they can also be negative. They can create a new generation of antisocial people as it takes away the face to face interaction between people. Museum should be seen as social spaces. As social spaces museum visits can help to reduce social ills such as crime and drinking. Research conducted in the Western Cape indicates that crime happens mainly between people who know each other. Most of the crimes are committed during weekends and around June and December crime increases two folds and most of the crimes happen after hours. From that research it is clear that criminality happens when people are resting and not at work. This means that we must invest more resources on leisure activities. It also means that we must try and keep our museum doors open during these times and that we must encourage people to visit museums during these times in order to keep them busy and away from crime.
The point I am making is that museums are good for social cohesion. The more museums we have the better. The best museums are found in very well governed countries and the worst exist in very badly governed countries. Museums can tell you everything about the communities where they are found. I am sure that some of us saw on Television when there were protests in Egypt. During these protests museum objects were looted. The same can be said when Iraqi was invaded by Americans to topple Saddam Hussein. Museum artefacts were also destroyed. What I am trying to put across is that the existence of a museum in a particular community is an indicative measure of the orderliness of that community.
I am not trying to say that communities that have no museums don’t have order. Museums are by very nature a product of democracy and good citizenship. Good citizens start museums and they also visit them. If you want to be a good citizen , you better start visiting your nearest museum.
Finally , Programme Director, the bible teaches us to love thy neighbour. In the spirit of good neighbourliness , I urge you to visit your museums.
Thank you.