New play to highlight plight of Red Location Museum

Two Nelson Mandela Bay arts activists hope to revive the conscience of New Brighton residents so they remember the important role of the troubled Red Location Museum in preserving the heritage of SA.

Through a theatre production based on the life of anti-apartheid activist Singqokwana Ernest Malgas, community arts activists Xolisa Ngubelanga and Xolani Ngesi are set to engage the community on the future of the museum and raise awareness of its cultural value.

The duo will hold rehearsals of the production, Singqokwana’s Dream Deferred, outside the walls of the closed museum and incorporate them with an open theatre workshop for the youth in the Red Location area from February 10 to 15.

This will culminate in an official performances of the play on February 28 and 29.

Ngesi said the state of the museum depicted the deferal of Malgas’s dream for New Brighton to have a museum that would stand as a reminder of the township’s contribution to South African history.

“In a time not so long ago Port Elizabeth was at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid and the mecca of arts; jazz, theatre and painting.

“Unfortunately, this legacy has begun to deteriorate and is being forgotten by those who were meant to inherit it, the current and coming generations,” Ngesi said.

“The journey to democracy was not easy, with many sacrifices made over a long period of time and with New Brighton township at the centre of the struggle against apartheid.

“It’s in this township in 1952 that struggle hero Oom Raymond Mhlaba initiated the Defiance Campaign of 1952, not forgetting the songs and art of the time by George Pemba and Welcome Duru, who pioneered black art,” he said.

He said society had the responsibility to ensure its history was kept alive and never forgotten.

“Communities in the past had riots, today we have museums.

“In New Brighton, however, the museum built to keep our legacy alive has been closed for many years and in that time the community has forgotten its contribution to the national narrative of attaining freedom and democracy,” he said.

The Red Location Museum, which was once one of the township’s most popular tourist attractions and won countless awards for its design after opening in 2006, has now had its doors shut for nearly seven years.

The museum was closed on October 13 2013 due to disgruntled residents’ protests against the building of a multimillion-rand museum while community members struggled to get housing.

The building that once housed artworks, information pamphlets and memory boxes for those who were killed by the apartheid police, among other archives, has now been broken into, looted and vandalised, with the municipality and community members failing to reach consensus regarding the housing debacle for years.

  Rehearsals for Singqokwana’s Dream Deferred will start at 10am and run until 4pm.

The official staging of the play will be at 5pm on February 28 and 3.30pm on February 29.