A brand new exhibition on the Apartheid Museum titled: ‘Grave Injustice: The Unfinished Enterprise of the TRC’, will open to the general public on 24 September and highlights the continued wrestle for justice and reparations for the reason that conclusion of the Reality and Reconciliation Fee (TRC) in 2003. Curated by the Apartheid Museum in partnership with the Basis for Human Rights, the exhibition sheds mild on the enduring legacy of impunity and the pressing want for fact by sharing the highly effective tales of the households and survivors who’ve led this decades-long battle for accountability.
In January 2025, twenty-five households of apartheid-era victims filed a lawsuit in opposition to the South African authorities, in search of R167 million in constitutional damages for its failure to pursue justice after the TRC led to 2003. Additionally they urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to ascertain a fee of inquiry into longstanding allegations of political interference in these circumstances.
Apartheid Museum
The lawsuit and name for a fee observe over 20 years of wrestle by households and survivors in search of accountability and closure for the lack of their family members within the battle for democracy.
In Might 2025, President Ramaphosa introduced the formation of an unbiased judicial fee of inquiry, led by former Constitutional Courtroom Choose Sisi Kamphepe, to research alleged political obstruction of apartheid-era prosecutions handed to the NPA since 2003.
The Fee of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption within the Legal Justice System will start its hearings later this 12 months, and is to finish its work in six months. Survivors, households and civil society organisations have welcomed the institution of the fee, expressing hope that it’ll lastly uncover who was accountable – and why – for obstructing investigations and prosecutions associated to TRC circumstances.
“The exhibition brings renewed consideration to this ongoing wrestle for justice. It exposes the democratic state’s failure to carry perpetrators liable for atrocities dedicated throughout the apartheid period. Via the testimonies of survivors and their households, it acknowledges and honours the anguish of the various households who’ve been concerned in a wrestle for justice over greater than 20 years,” says Emilia Potenza, curator of Grave Injustice: The Unfinished Enterprise of the TRC.
The contract that households and victims entered into to permit for the creation of South Africa’s much-hailed TRC was primarily based on an understanding that perpetrators would obtain amnesty for apartheid-era crimes in the event that they had been discovered to have made full disclosure and demonstrated political motivation for his or her actions. In these circumstances the place amnesty was denied or perpetrators failed to use for amnesty from the TRC, perpetrators can be topic to prosecution.
As an alternative, from 2003, households of victims discovered themselves in a nightmare of inaction, bureaucratic machinations, and little motion on the a part of the democratic authorities to honour the guarantees made to them.
Although the NPA has just lately introduced the reopening of a number of new inquests and the establishment of a handful of prosecutions, for a lot of households the numerous period of time that has elapsed since 2003 has made any probability of actual justice or significant closure nearly unattainable.
Grave Injustice traces the lengthy wrestle for justice, closure, and reparations by victims and their households – from the guarantees of the TRC to the damaged commitments of the democratic period. It highlights the state’s poor file on prosecutions and reparations for the reason that TRC’s last report was handed to President Mbeki in 2003.
Drawing on the testimonies of survivors and households, the historic file, and allegations made in relation to political interference, the exhibition presents a complete overview of the constitutional and ethical disaster that the failure to ship justice and reparations has created for households of victims, and the nation as a complete.
The exhibition options hanging visuals, video archives, household interviews, a timeline of key occasions, and daring new artworks by Lusanda Ndita. Collectively, these parts deliver to life a narrative too typically sidelined in post-apartheid discourse.
“Because the Fee of Inquiry begins to unpack the tangled net of probably damning allegations of political interference, Grave Injustice: The Unfinished Enterprise of the TRCoffers a elementary introduction to the problems at stake. It additionally demonstrates that the wrestle for justice, closure, and reparations for apartheid-era victims and their households is ongoing and important to therapeutic the violent, long-reaching wounds of the previous, and securing a extra peaceable future for South Africa,” says Zaid Kimmie, Government Director, Basis for Human Rights.
____________________________________________________________________________________
“We anticipated {that a} new post-apartheid authorities would stand with us, and maintain the perpetrators to account. We had been flawed. Successive post-apartheid governments discovered methods to defend perpetrators from justice. This betrayal minimize the deepest.” Thembi Simelane, sister of Nokuthula Simelane, who disappeared in 1983 after being kidnapped and tortured
“The failure by the post-apartheid dispensation to prosecute apartheid atrocities is a deep injustice that solely the households of the victims can comprehend. The establishments which can be constitutionally obliged to guard our elementary rights have handled us with utter contempt. We’re mere pawns of their political recreation.” Kim Turner, daughter of Rick Turner, assassinated in 1978 in his Durban residence
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Grave Injustice: The Unfinished Enterprise of the TRC opens on Heritage Day, 24 September 2025 and shall be on show on the Apartheid Museum till 31 March 2026.
ABOUT THE APARTHEID MUSEUM:
The Apartheid Museum opened in 2001 and is acknowledged because the pre-eminent museum on the earth coping with twentieth century South Africa, on the coronary heart of which is the apartheid story.
The Apartheid Museum, the primary of its sort, illustrates the rise and fall of apartheid.
An architectural consortium, comprising a number of main architectural corporations, conceptualised the design of the constructing on a seven-hectare stand. The museum is an outstanding instance of design, house, and panorama providing each the native and worldwide neighborhood a novel South African expertise.
The reveals have been assembled and organised by a multi-disciplinary group of curators, filmmakers, historians, and designers. They embrace highly effective movie footage, images, textual content panels and artefacts illustrating the occasions and human tales which can be a part of the darkest interval in our historical past, often called apartheid.
The Apartheid Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, and public holidays 9h00 to 17h00
Seek the advice of our web site for additional particulars www.apartheidmuseum.org
Fb: @ApartheidMuseumSA Instagram: S.A. Apartheid Museum
