History and heritage

We the People: Constitution Hill

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South Africa opened its Constitutional Court building in Johannesburg on the site of a 100-year-old former prison complex where the leaders of every major South African liberation group - Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi among them - were once detained.

Constitution Hill does more than tell SA's remarkable story - it takes it forward, and invites the visitor to help it in doing so.

The R492-million Constitution Hill development, built on the 100-acre site of the city's notorious Old Fort prison complex, is South Africa's most ambitious public building project since the country's first democratic elections in 1994.

Constitutional Court was opened on Human Rights Day, 21 March 2004,which was both a tribute to the country's maturing democracy and a celebration of how far Johannesburg's regeneration process has come.

Constitution Hill forms one point of a "cultural arc" that sweeps through Braamfontein - taking in the Civic Centre and Wits University - and across the Nelson Mandela Bridge to Newtown.

Constitution Hill comprises of museums, exhibition spaces, a coffee shop, offices and in the future a hotel - the site is open to visitors, who can walk up the Great African Steps, enter Constitution Square, attend a hearing or view the art gallery at the Constitutional Court, climb the Old Fort Ramparts for panoramic views of Johannesburg, or take part in a number of tours and exhibitions.

Constitution Hill is a mixed-use heritage precinct offering a unique cultural, historical, educational, business and recreational space. It is a place where visitors can experience the story of South Africa's transition to democracy, observe the process by which freedom is now protected, and learn how South Africa is building its future on its past.

'The Robben Island of Johannesburg'

The Old Fort prison complex is the place where more representatives of South Africa's diverse communities were jailed for fighting for freedom than anywhere else in the country.

Nowhere can the story of South Africa's turbulent past and its extraordinary transition to democracy be told as it is at Constitution Hill. To chart the history of the Old Fort - commonly known as Number Four - is to map the history of resistance in South Africa.

For decades, thousands of prisoners streamed through the Old Fort's "delousing" chambers, were made to do the humiliating Tauza dance, were beaten and abused in the notorious Number Four prison for black men, were held for months in dirty, overcrowded conditions in the Awaiting Trial Block, were stripped of their underclothes and their dignity in the Women's Jail.

The Old Fort prison complex saw it all: from rebellious British soldiers who fought with the Boers at the turn of the century to striking mineworkers, Defiance Campaigners, Treason Trialists, and youths caught up in the Soweto Uprisings.

Both the famous and the infamous were incarcerated at the Old Fort: war rebels, political activists, notorious gangsters and criminals. Activists were usually held as awaiting trial prisoners and then sent off to Robben Island or Pretoria to serve jail terms.

Most of those imprisoned at the complex, however, were ordinary people arrested in their droves every day under the apartheid government's Pass Laws restricting the movement of black people.

Brewing beer – an illegal activity if you were black – also landed many women in jail. Still others were arrested for having sex across the colour bar or for homosexual sex. And people lived in dread of Number Four, the prison assigned to black men, with its chilling Ekhulukhuthu (the deep hole) isolation cells.

Constitution Hill exhibitions

Constitution Hill's exhibitions are designed as participatory experiences, with facilities for visitors to record their own memories and response to the exhibitions - so setting down another layer of history for future generations to discover.

Exhibitions and tours currently available include:

Number Four - The journey to Number Four, the dark heart of Constitution Hill, aims to deepen the visitor's understanding of what it means to be placed at the bottom of the racial hierarchy and how the apartheid system made criminals of black men.
The Mandela Cell - View a film documenting Mandela's time at the Old Fort, and his emotional return to Constitution Hill some 40 years later.
The Women's Jail – The grace of this handsome Victorian-style building belies the pain and suffering that occurred within. Currently closed for renovation, the hoarding which protects the building has been transformed into a temporary exhibition honouring the contribution of women to the struggle for freedom in South Africa.

For full visitor information, visit Constitution Hill.

More features on Constitution Hill from the official City of Johannesburg website:

Last updated: October 2010

SAinfo reporter



	Bricks from the demolished Awaiting Trial Block, part of the Old Fort prison complex, were used in the building of SA's new Constitutional Court (Photos: Constitution Hill)



	From Boer rebel General Christiaan de Wet to Defiance Campaign protesters ... to chart the history of the Old Fort and those who were jailed there is to map the history of resistance in SA (Photos: Constitution Hill)



	Nelson Mandela laid one of the first "bricks" in Constitution Hill's We the People wall, a growing record of the impressions of ex-prisoners, ordinary South Africans and visitors to Constitution Hill (Photos: Constitution Hill)