Ditsong: Museums of South Africa

Ditsong: Museums of South Africa

DITSONG: MUSEUMS OF SOUTH AFRICA is an amalgamation of eight museums, seven in Tshwane and one in Johannesburg. These museums have diverse collections covering the fields of fauna and flora, palaeontology, military history, cultural history, geology, anthropology and archaeology. The target audience for these museums are children, youth, adults, students, tourists, researchers and the public in general.

Mandate of Ditsong

Collection, conservation and safe management of national heritage collections on behalf of the South African nation.

Carry out research and publish such information for the cultural, social and economic use locally and internationally. Render heritage-based service to other museums as well as to individuals and tertiary institutions.

National Museum of Natural History

432 Paul Kruger Street Pretoria
Open daily: 7.30am–4pm
Formerly known as the Transvaal Museum was founded as the Staatsmuseum of the ZAR on the 1st of December 1892.

It has, since then, been acting as the custodian and documentation centre of South Africa’s natural heritage. The Museum’s collections and exhibits include hominid fossils from the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site and associated fauna, including Mrs Ples [the nickname attributed to a fossil skull believed to represent a distant relative of all humankind]; fossils, skeletons, skins, and mounted specimens of amphibians, fish, invertebrates, reptiles and mammals. These collections make up the Museum’s educational programmes.

National Museum of Cultural History

149 Visagie Street Pretoria
Open weekdays: 7.30am–4pm
Explores South Africa’s cultural diversity in various permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Exhibitions include rock paintings and engravings of the San people, thousand-year-old Iron Age figurines from Schroda in the Limpopo Province (described as “the best-known artefacts indicating ritual behaviour in the Early Iron Age”). An exhibition on Marabastad is a true example of a cosmopolitan and fully integrated rainbow nation before apartheid.

Military Museum

Erlswold Way, Saxonwold, Johannesburg
Open daily: 7.30am-4pm
The South African National War Museum officially opened on 29 August 1947 by former Prime Minister of South Africa, Field Marshal J.C. Smuts PC, CM, OM, DTD, KC. At the opening ceremony, Smuts stated the following: “… We are gathered here today to open what may not unfairly be looked upon as a memorial to the greatest united effort our country has been called upon to produce. Memorials, of course, have more than one use. They serve to remind us of what is past, of great deeds of heroism and sacrifice; they also serve as a pointer and sometimes as a warning to the future.

It is in these senses that the South African War Museum may be regarded as a memorial. It will remind us, I hope, not only of the part we played in the recent great struggle to save civilisation, but also of the horrors, the loss of life and the devastation, and serve as a warning to us to create a world in which we shall never have to use again the weapons of mass destruction we see here today, or those dreadful weapons to follow them …”

The Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum

Keuning Street, Silverton, Pretoria
Open daily: 7.30am-4pm
This museum preserves and presents South African agricultural history in a unique manner. The Museum showcases the history of the development of agriculture in South Africa from the Stone Age until 1945.

The Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum is located on the farm Kaalfontein. It can be reached using the old Pretoria-Bronkhorstspruit Road (R104), off the N4 on the Cullinan/Rayton (R515) turnoff. The farm belonged to Ms Miertjie le Roux (née Prinsloo) and three generations of Prinsloo ancestors.

The Kruger Museum

60 WF Nkomo Street West Pretoria
Open daily: 7.30am-4pm
The Kruger Museum and its contents bear witness to the forceful personality of the man who lived there as leader of a small republic in southern Africa, at a stormy and unsettling time of his people’s long struggle against British imperialism.

The Museum consists of the original house in which S.J.P. Kruger, President of the old Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), and his family lived during the last years of the 19th century, as well as two display halls and President Kruger’s State Railway Coach.

The Pioneer Museum

Keuning Street, Silverton, Pretoria
Open daily: 7.30am–4pm
While enjoying a cup of coffee and homemade bread, visitors can experience a way of life that has irrevocably passed. The stories of the Pioneer Museum and 1848 house, and of the people who lived on the farm, Hartebeestpoort, are enacted against the background of the pioneer years in South Africa.

Programmes and curriculum-based educational programmes. Visitors can make use of the picnic and braai facilities. The two lapas and the hall can be rented for family celebrations and work-related functions. A New Year’s Festival is held on 1 January every year.

Sammy Marks Museum

Old Bronkhorstspruit Rd, Donkerhoek, Pretoria
Open Tues–Sun: 7.30am–4pm
Sammy Marks arrived in South Africa with a case of silver knives as his only valuable possession, and became one of the first entrepreneurs, playing a significant role in mining, industrial and agricultural development in the country. Ninety eight percent of the household contents in Sammy Marks Museum originally belonged to the Marks family.

Sammy Marks Museum

Onderstepoort Road (M35), Soshanguve, Pretoria
Open Weekdays: 7.30am-4pm
Weekends: 6am–2pm (including public holidays)
Some 220 000 years ago a blazing stony meteorite the size of half a football field slammed into the earth’s crust. The impact formed a huge crater, 1.4 km in diameter and 200 m deep. This crater is one of the best-preserved meteorite impact craters in the world.

The name “Tswaing” means place of salt in Setswana and refers to a saline lake that covers the crater floor. From 1912 to 1950, an industry producing soda ash and salt operated at the crater.

Major attractions, besides the crater, are an extensive wetland system, the large variety of plant species of the Sourish-Mixed Bushveld, and 240 species of birds.