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 in one of the exhibits in the Red Location Museum in New Brighton.

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 women had had enough and burned the beer hall down after which it stood as an burned out shell for many years.  A group of women, most who was involved in the burning of the beer hall, wanted to create a better future for themselves and approached the municipality for funding to turn the building into an useful place.  With the development of the Red Location Museum and surrounding precinct next door the municipality agreed and the women formed themselves into a co-op and started working.  At this stage the Lodge accommodates mostly school groups but they hope that in future they would become a popular spot for international backpacker travellers as well.

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.

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 and systematically gunned down by the Apartheid State.

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 revealed only on entry with the experience in each box being a total one.  The spaces between the boxes are spaces of reflection where one can ponder on everything you see in the museum.

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 them and the idea is to have a nomination process in the future whereby these hero's will be replaced annually to celebrate others.

Red Location Museum

The Red Location Museum in New Brighton was the first purpose built museum in a township in South Africa and is a tribute to the liberation struggle, specially in the Port Elizabeth townships.  There are lots of new developments in the Red Location Museum Precinct which included the opening of the new Red Location Backpackers.  I briefly visited New Brighton for a tree planting ceremony last week and really need to make a plan to get back there soon and have a look around the place again.

Memory Boxes

One of the main components at the Red Location Museum in New Brighton are the 12 Memory Boxes. Each of the Memory Boxes consist of a corrugated iron room 6 meters by 6 meters by 12 meters high. Each box has a different exhibit which is only revealed once visitors enter it. Each exhibit is an experience all on its own, and while each can stand on its own, they are all bound together. If you get what I mean.

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.

Red Location Museum

The Red Location Museum has a number of excellent exhibits depicting the struggle during the apartheid years in and around Port Elizabeth. One of the main features of the museum is the Hall of Columns. It consists of 15 columns dedicated to local heroes of the struggle. Heroic icons are selected annually through a nomination process by the community. Some of the well known names represented on the columns include Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba.

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 old Mill on the land overlooking the Baakens River"

In 1839 Mill Property belonged to Hougham, and the Government rented it, with the old mill and a small shanty house, as the Baakens River Leper Institution. By 1846 the Government had decided to move all the lepers and paupers to the leper colony on Robben Island.

The first areas to develop in Port Elizabeth were Central and Richmond Hill, Central being where the settlers who arrived in 1820 began building their homes, and part of Richmond Hill being set aside as the "Location for Native Strangers". We have dealt with this in previous posts.

As the town grew and more labourers were required to work on the development of roads and infrastructure, as well as the thriving port, the space in Richmond Hill became too small. By 1863 the Mill Farm was owned by a Town Councillor Mr T. W. Gubb, and he applied for permission to have Xhosa workers build huts on his land. It became home to around 800 squatters, and became known as "Gubb's Location". Gubb sold the land in 1867, but the name stuck.

Eleanor Lorimer, in her book Panorama of Port Elizabeth, describes conditions in the Location as "unsightly and verminous. There were no roads, no drains, no lights of course, and water and sanitary arrangements were primitive. "

This led to an outbreak of Bubonic Plague, and the location, by then owned by the Mill Park Estate and Land Company, was closed by the Plague Board in 1903, and the residents re-located to Red Location.

In the early 1900s the area was subdivided, and large houses were built, like the Old Mill House, shown above.

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 was under the basements of these shacks where the underground leaders of the freedom movement held meetings and hid from the Apartheid Police.

Here is a phototaken by Max last year,

and these were taken last week showing the degree of damage that has taken place.

A lame attempt has been made to fence off two of the remaining ones, but the fence has already been pulled down. How sad that selfish individuals have so little pride in the accomplishment of this community in bringing about the downfall of the repressive Apartheid system.

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 chilling reading, but many families who lost loved ones in horrible circumstances were able to achieve some form of closure through this process.

Red Location

As promised in our post on Sunday, 30 December here is a picture of some of the original houses that were built in what became known as the Red Location. Believe it or not people still live in some of these houses.


The Red Location was established around 1903, when the black residents of the Strangers Location and at Coopers Kloof (Albany Road) were moved from Port Elizabeth.

The name of the Red Location comes from the corrugated iron barracks, brought down from a defunct concentration camp at Uitenhage and the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at de Aar; that had been used in the South African War of 1899 - 1902. In time, these sheds eventually rusted and turned deep red - hence the name Red Location.

Today the area is an eclectic mix of old and new, boasting the award winning Red Location Museum, which is surrounded by the original houses, new modern homes and a selection of wood and iron shacks.