In 2004, I participated as one of the curators in an important exhibition entitled ‘Democracy X: Marking the Present – Re-Presenting the Past’, held in the Castle galleries of Iziko Museums in Cape Town.

The flagship exhibition formed part of the celebrations to mark a decade of democracy in South Africa. The exhibition covered the long sweep of South African history – from the first traces of human past, in ochre fragments with engraved lines, found at the Blombos caves in the Eastern Cape and dating back 70 000 years to the present. The exhibition used significant objects pertaining to migrancy, documents and other forms of archive that explored the history, politics and culture of South Africa from past to present. Curator Sandra Klopper and I were assigned to source objects and items that best exemplified migrancy and migrant culture. Although it was only a small part of the ‘Democracy X’ exhibition, I discussed with Peter Delius, a historian on the curatorial team, the desirability of staging a comprehensive exhibition about migrant labour. Responsible for multiple transformations wrought in our society over 200 years and across southern and central Africa, the richness of this subject seemed worthy of much more serious interrogation for a future exhibition.

‘Ngezinyawo — Migrant Journeys’ takes that seed of an idea and extends across disciplines to include film, photography, artworks, artefacts from ethnographic collections, archival documents, interviews and other forms, such as performance, music and dance, in ways that explore the rich and diverse ramifications of the migrant labour system that has built South Africa's economy. The exhibition takes place in three levels of the Wits Art Museum at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg: in the Street and Core Galleries on the ground level, the Strip space, which is half way to the basement space, and the Mezzanine, which is the upper level of the Wits Art Museum display areas.

Journey/transformation

The theme of journeying is threaded metaphorically throughout the exhibition, constantly referring to travelling between spaces, on foot originally. The journeys made by men from rural to urban spaces in search of labour were often very long and full of danger and hardships.