CPT museum celebrates LGBTI+ inclusive Africa Day

Cape Town’s Robben Island Museum recently celebrated Africa Day by hosting the LGBTI+ community in a colourful, themed event.

‘Rollbacks, Resilience and Reinvention’ for Africa Day

The Robben Island Museum (RIM) in collaboration with ‘The Other Foundation’, recently celebrated Africa’s colourful diversity on Africa Day by hosting the LGBTI+ community on Robben Island.

The ‘Rollbacks, Risillience and Reinvention themed event, was in part, hosted by The Other Foundation, which is a Southern African regional LGBTI+ community foundation. Every two years, the Foundation hosts a kopano (translated as a family or community gathering to discuss an important issue), of more than 200 LGBTI+ activists and allies from across the 13 Southern African countries in which it works.

CEO of The Other Foundation, Neville Gabriel, touched on what it meant to host the event at the Robben Island Museum.

“We believe that holding this year’s kopano in Cape Town in partnership with Robben Island Museum, which is a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, will further advance the struggle for the freedom, equality, recognition of human dignity, and social inclusion of LGBTI people,” Gabriel said.

Robben Island Museum honours Robert Sobukwe

According to Tourism Update, the Robben Island Museum honoured the start of Africa Month with an incredible tribute exhibition of one of Africa’s most iconic, yet often underrated, freedom fighters, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.

Called, ‘Remember Africa, Remember Sobukwe’, the exhibition was launched at the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island on 3 May, with a reflection on the life and times of Robert Sobukwe on Robben Island.  

Robben Island Museum CEO, Abigail Thulare, said that the museum aims to be accessible and inclusive to South Africans.

“Part of our revised business model is rooted in making RIM more accessible and inclusive to South Africans and, by extension, to all Africans. Our resilience has been tested and in reinventing our offering, a collaboration with the LGBTI community breathes colour into that commitment of inclusivity and diversity in the experiences we create,” she said.

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