Human Wrongs … Human Rights

Saturday morning we visited the Slave Lodge Museum.  There, you are introduced to the history of slavery in Cape Town.  Built in the late 1600s, the original Slave Lodge was used for 200 years to house several thousand slaves owned by the Dutch East India company.  Most of us were surprised to learn that the slaves in Cape Town were not part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade; most Cape slaves came from India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.

Being a slave meant being held captive for life, only “released” during working hours.  With no windows (except tiny slits with bars) and a stream running beneath, the quarters the slaves were kept in would have been dark and damp.  More than twenty percent died each year.  Adding to the sadness, the slave lodge was also the local brothel.  What was interesting to me is that its “hour” of operation was 8 to 9 p.m. every evening.  

Desmond Tutu -
Archbishop from 1986-1996

The church was decorated with palms for
Palm Sunday

Today, the Slave Lodge Museum stands next to St. George’s Church, a beautiful large Anglican Church, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu served as spiritual leader to an all white congregation at the height of Apartheid.

I thought his dream of a “rainbow nation of equality” made a fitting bookend to the nightmarish era of total enslavement.