The Heritage Association of South Africa (HASA) is, with growing concern, following reports from heritage preservationists and activists about the crisis unfolding at Museum Africa – in our opinion custodian of one of the finest and most valuable Africana collections in the world.
In short, the crisis stems from critical staff shortages, in some cases, at least, two decades in the making, as important curator, educational, conservation, cleaning, facilities management and security posts have been left vacant.
Simply put, it appears that the City of Johannesburg has failed at that most basic management requirement – skills retention and development.
As a generation of specialist curators have left the museum either through retirement, re-deployment or resignation – no arrangements have been made to ensure the transfer of what amounts to highly specialist skills to a new generation of curators and conservators. To be clear, graduate students – and let's be frank – black humanities graduates are leaving university with little prospect of finding employment in the heritage sector. One would think that the City of Johannesburg would proudly avail its cultural institutions to provide the necessary opportunities for these new job seekers.
We quote from a recent article in the City Press ("MuseuMAfricA's crisis – some positions unfilled for 18 years" by Grethe Koen, City Press, 10 January 2015), "[t]he museum is currently lacking more than eight vital positions, including a costume curator, curator for the traditional black cultural collection, history curator, image curator, conservator, a building manager and educators and...
