When I first wrote Create Africa South in the fall of 2006 about traveling to Durban to research their organization, I was told they were making plans to move their Amazi Abesifazane ("Voices of Women") collection into the Roberts House (a Victorian national monument and one of Durban's oldest-standing houses) to join with the Phansi Museum, which holds an inspiring collection of domestic objects representing Southern African cultures. When I got here last year and saw the conditions the Amazwi collection were housed in - a skeletal, empty, multi-story building in humid conditions right next to the Indian Ocean, on a street more known for auto-body shops and after-hours prostitution than anything else - I realized their urgency for the move. It was no place a general public audience would likely travel to view this tremendous collection of thousands of cloths: a decade-long project that has developed a specific process and product along the way.
This Tuesday, with a bit of gruntwork on my part as well other friends of CAS, we will finally be moving the physical collection into a secure, temperature-controlled, storage room at the Phansi Museum. The news of this coming through has made the countless meetings (several of which I have been in attendance) and proposals (the most recent I helped complete in mid-February) worthwhile. Coming at a time like this, when the organization lacks any computer of its own, this news cheers everyone up quite a bit and helps us see a future for the project.
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