About KwaMuhle Museum
Standing at 130 Bram Fischer Road, the KwaMuhle Museum occupies the former headquarters of Durban's Native Administration Department – once the very engine room of the city's system of labour control. Visitors are welcomed beneath an elegant, arch-lined veranda and through a pair of sturdy, copper-clad entrance doors before stepping into a space that now invites reflection rather than control.
Rather than presenting a single version of events, the museum encourages guests to consider Durban's growth – and the experiences of the people who built and inhabited it – from a range of different viewpoints.
Exhibitions:
The museum's flagship exhibition, The Durban System, unpacks the municipal monopoly once held over the brewing and sale of Zulu beer – a system that funded segregated housing and gave rise to the city's beer halls, and which shaped the daily lives of thousands of Durban's African residents.
One of the museum's changing exhibition displays.
In the Mkhumbane Gallery, a powerful collection of photographs taken by SB Bourquin traces the forced removal of residents from Mkhumbane and the subsequent development of the township – documenting a pivotal, and often painful, chapter of Durban's urban history.
Out in the courtyard, the sculpture "Shadows of the Past" by artist Ledelle Moe commemorates the city's migrant workers; the bare, unprotected forms of the figures speak to the vulnerability these workers faced far from home.
A community mural, painted in 1998, captures the lived experience of African male workers under the Municipal Native Affairs Department, while a small muti garden on site grows indigenous plants such as Agapanthus and Wild Dagga, connecting the museum's history to traditional healing practices.