The power to define what is supposedly true and what is to be accessed and remembered has long been a tool of control. Authoritarian governments such as the Apartheid Government of South Africa (1948-1994) often employ restrictive legal frameworks to curb intellectual freedom, that is, the freedom to access and explore different opinions, and the ability to express oneself. This display examines this bleak period in our history when this power was wielded with deliberate force.
Under the apartheid regime, the state acted as the ultimate censor, policing the inclusion and exclusion of documents and historical subjects to maintain its dominance. The “Jacobsen's index of objectionable literature “contained the titles of more than 26,000 books banned during the period that this law was enforced.
Book banning was not a simple act of removing a few objectionable titles, but it was a concerted, comprehensive, and systematic process designed to control the flow of information, suppress dissent, and shape a national narrative that served a minority in power.
