Museum to capture apartheid history in Namibia

allAfrica.com reports that the Walvis Bay municipality has started setting up a ‘Contract Labour and Apartheid Museum’ (CLAM). According to the curator, Antoinette Mostert, the CLAM is aimed at preserving the history of the contract labour system.

She told ‘The Namibian’ that Walvis Bay played an important role in the maintenance of the contract labour system, especially by providing work to many workers who came from the North to earn a living in the fishing industry.

“The fishing industry was particularly a big player in contract labour practices then,” said Mostert. “That’s why Walvis Bay would be an ideal location for such a museum.”

She said the idea had been around for some time, and that a technical committee was established to get the ball rolling. Now they are in the process of getting in contact with former contract labourers who resided at the former Walvis Bay workers compound in Kuisebmond from the 1950s to 1989.

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