Permanent Exhibitions

Nelson Mandela Exhibition: Prisoner in a Garden

This exhibition documents the time that Mandela spent at Robben Island as well as the Old Fort. The exhibition is housed in the cell that Mandela was held prisoner. The exhibition includes Mandela's communication with the outside world.

Mahatma Gandhi – Prisoner of Conscience

Gandhi was imprisoned four times in South Africa, and the Fort was one of the prisons he was incarcerated. The 'Prisoner of Conscience' exhibition commemorates the life of Gandhi and touches on his experiences while in prison.

Number Four

Life in a Cell
You will learn how prisoners organized themselves into gangs and set up a rigid hierarchy that dictated life in the prison. The exhibition illustrates how the men slept according to their status in the gang.

Who is a Criminal?
This exhibition will engage visitors in the complexity of understanding who was criminalized under different systems of administration that operated at the Fort.

Power and Punishment
Life in the Fort was brutal for prisoners and corporal punishment was often a tool of choice for warders. In this exhibition, ex-prisoners relive their experiences.

Resistance and Resilience
The men found different ways to cope with their imprisonment. Lock up time was at about 16h00, and lights were turned off at 20h00. This exhibition shows some of the ways that these men occupied the hours in between.

Women's Gaol

Isolation Cells (Black Women)
The exhibition touches on the experiences of women such as Albertina Sisulu, Deborah Mashoba and Fatimah Meer who felt the walls closing in on them."The cell was so narrow I could not stretch out my arms between the two long walls", Fatimah Meer.

Map and Memory Exhibition
This exhibition maps the experiences of the women that were imprisoned here can remember. It is a story told by the people that were once prisoners of the Fort.

Isolation Cells (White Women)
Daisy De Melker, the second woman to get a capital punishment in South Africa, Barbara Hogan, Esther Barsel, Violet and Sheila Weinberg knew these walls all too well.

 

To find out more about exhibitions and exhibiting at Constitution Hill please contact:

Ann-young van Wyk

Exhibitions Assistant

avanwyk@constitutionhill.org.za

011 381 3100