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The Heritage Department of the eThekwini Municipality begins its
programme of commemorating Ten Years of Democracy in South Africa with the
opening of an exhibition entitled ' Frontiere Borders Fronteras'.
Undertaken in association with the Italian Consulate, Durban, the
exhibition is a photographic exposition of involuntary migration and refugee
movement in different parts of the world. The exhibition was photographed and
devised by Giuseppe Lanzi, Director
of the Scalabrini Development Agency in Cape Town. The organisation, part
of an international Scalabrini network,
provides, inter alia, a
multi-faceted, skills-based service to refugee communities. Giuseppe Lanzi's
exhibition provides valuable and penetrating insights into a world-wide
phenomena: the displacement and disappropriation of large numbers of people
around the world. The photographer's appreciation of the subject is clearly in
evidence - The images invoke stories of hardship and adversity but also of
endurance and courage under conditions of extreme difficulty and addresses the
presence of borders at institutional, physical as well as conceptual levels.
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The work presents an opportune moment, as we celebrate 10 years of
democracy in South Africa, to seriously interrogate and engage this subject in
all its complexity. As the escalating
numbers of people from Africa and other parts of the world seeking refuge in
Durban and other South African cities becomes increasingly apparent and as our
nascent democracy attempts to define its responsibilities to these dispossessed
groupings, we need to open up new and more effective channels for communication
and dialogue. The subject should not be
unfamiliar to South Africans - the forced movement of people at a global level
for a variety of reasons, has clear resonances between the internal dislocation
of people during the apartheid era. ' Forced removals', 'Group Areas',' Black
Spots', 'No-go areas' are all still very recognisable terms. The construction
of these borders was instituted through
a variety of legislated controls and dictated almost every aspect of South
African life under apartheid. It is for this reason entirely appropriate that
the exhibition will be installed at Durban's Kwa Muhle Museum - which as
the Native Affairs Department implemented the Durban System, the first
incarnation of urban racial segregation, which arose from the need to control
and monitor the African migrant population, who were crossing the city's
borders as labourers. This system which eventually constituted one of the
cornerstones of apartheid legislation in the form of the Influx Control Act,
effectively created institutional borders around cities to ensure white
privilege and dominance: millions of South Africans were automatically
dispossessed by a single piece of legislation. Similar practices of exclusion, resulting in
xenophobia, prejudice and hostility face refugee communities on a daily basis.
This exhibition provides an ideal vantage point from which to explore the issue
as it confronts us at local level. A discussion forum entitled 'Transcending
Borders' will be held at Kwa Muhle from 10.30 to 11.30 at Kwa Muhle Musuem
also on the 05 February
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