An exhibition on Walter Sisulu, with an animated Virtual Reality experience based on the sound
recordings of the Rivonia Trial (1963 – 1964) will open at the Apartheid Museum on Friday 22
November 2019 at 19h00 and will run until the end of March 2020.
This is the first Virtual Reality exhibition to be hosted by the Apartheid Museum – a partnership
between the Apartheid Museum, La Générale de Production (a Paris-based film production
company), the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the French Embassy & the French Institute of South
Africa (IFAS).
This exhibition is a ‘Reality Check’ not only because it makes use of VR technology
but also because it reminds us that, in our haste to acknowledge the extraordinary role played by
Nelson Mandela, we sometimes forget the remarkable individuals around him. Individuals of the likes of Walter Sisulu.
The Virtual Reality (VR) film, directed by Nicolas Champeaux and Gilles Porte, featured at Tribeca’s film festival in New York City last April and has won half a dozen prizes for best linear narrative in prestigious festivals worldwide. It looks at one of these co-defendants in particular: Accused
Number 2, a lesser-known hero of the struggle against apartheid, Mandela’s fellow comrade and mentor, Walter Sisulu.
Its curator Nicolas Champeaux explains: “Our aim was to highlights how a man from a modest, rural background came to take on such a prominent role in the anti-apartheid struggle. Sisulu was the one to first to identify Mandela’s leadership potential.”
Sisulu was ‘the wise man of the struggle’, according to Advocate George Bizos, a member of the
the defence team of the Rivonia Trial, but he was always content.
