Friday, 25 April 1986: National Police Museum Highlights Crime-Fighting Tactics

Monday morning, 4/28/86, Hillcrest Community, Halfway House, South Africa

Last Friday, I was in Pretoria and had about two hours to kill in the afternoon.  My guidebook listed a police museum close by.  The description mentioned “police and terrorist weapons, uniforms and reconstructions of celebrated criminal cases.”  I thought it would be particularly interesting to see how the national police portrayed terrorists.  It was indeed.

In the terrorist section of the museum were hokey dioramas of “Terrorist on Guard at Hide-Out” and “Underground Terrorist Hide-Out.”  These displays included nasty-looking plaster of Paris black men poised for the kill.  There were, however, some more interesting displays.  One dealt with the Bloody Friday (5/20/83) car bomb explosion on Church Street in Pretoria which killed 18.  In addition to photos of the damage and newspaper reports, pieces of victims’ clothes, wallets, and other personal items were included.  There was a reconstruction of the Silverton Bank Siege of 1980 in which two were killed in addition to the terrorist attackers who were “eliminated.”  There was an outline of a victim’s body on a blood-stained tile floor.  I also viewed a display of various land mines.

A re-creation of an early 20^th Century police station is featured at the South African Police Museum.  Source: https://www.trip.com/travel-guide/attraction/cape-town/saps-south-african-police-museum-58343129/

At the end of the terrorism area was a little room devoted to COMMUNISM.  It evoked memories of the old J. Edgar Hoover days when we expected to find a Red lurking under every bed.  There was a display entitled, “Communism is…”  It was illustrated with 1930-50 vintage photos to show that communism equals “famine + poverty”, “slavery”, “sorrow”, and “murder”.  Under the latter category were included pics of victims from Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s. 

The communism display should provide inspiration to South Africa’s future black leaders, assuming blacks someday take power.  I can imagine a display in their new politically-correct national museum which reads, “Apartheid is…famine, etc.”  All they would have to do is substitute photos from the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, black prisoners being tortured by white prison guards, etc. while using the same display.  Instead of Mao’s Little Red Book which was conspicuously placed at the front of the display (behind glass, of course, so no school children could be corrupted by commie propaganda), the new display could show copies of all the racial legislation enacted by white government since 1948.  They would need a much larger space to display the voluminous material dealing with proscribed political, economic, and social behavior of Whites, Coloureds, Indians, and Blacks.  

Also included in the museum was a large display of local, provincial, and national police uniforms and regalia in use over the past couple hundred years.  There were examples of counterfeit money and forged documents.  In the area in which various murders were reconstructed, there was a model of a guy electrocuting himself as the police were about to arrest him for murdering his wife.  Since I don’t watch cop shows on TV anymore, I suppose it was helpful for me to visit the Police Museum in order to be reminded that crime does not pay.  And neither does communism, I must add!

After leaving the museum, I made my way across Church Square to catch a bus for the apartment building where I was staying.  Just after passing Paul Kruger’s statue, which was covered with pigeons and pigeon shit, I was approached by a smartly-dressed white man who handed me some literature about AIDS.  I immediately turned to the inside front cover to see who had produced this timely brochure.  Sure enough, it was the Watchtower Society!  Made me feel right at home to know that Jehovah’s Witnesses are saving souls here.  I learned that there are 39,000 J.W.s in South Africa spreading God’s word door-to-door to heathens like me.  Fills me with the Spirit of the Lord just to think about it.  Be gone from South Africa, Satan!