Poisoned Pasts exhibition shows horror of apartheid SA’s Project Coast
YOU may take it for granted that when you have a sip of beer or drop a teaspoon of sugar into your tea, it is not laced with a deadly substance that could arrange an early meeting for you with your maker. But for many of the victims of SA’s chemical and biological warfare programme, Project Coast‚ which developed poisonous weapons hidden in plain sight‚ that is precisely what happened. Their stories will go on exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg on Thursday, in the Poisoned Pasts exhibition. The project is a collaboration between the Foundation and the Institute of Security Studies (ISS)‚ which brings alive archives documenting the development of chemical weapons in SA. Court documents‚ beer bottles‚ bags of sugar and drums for discarding toxic waste are some of the objects visual artist Kathryn Smith has used to lift the story off the pages of history books. The exhibition’s first display includes photographs of scenes from the Marikana massacre and the Fees...
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