Anthropologist Geraldine Morkom has had a front row seat in the study of how a national leadership figure can find joy and resolution in the most humble of community projects — and do their own menial grunt work.
Morkom, director of the East London Museum, who started her career at the museum as a 21-year-old in 1986, 40 years ago, has watched, worked with, and under former ANC MP and city councillor Val Viljoen for 26 years.
What she saw was an inspiration for the museum’s philosophy that it should be a “safe community space in which to interact”.
Viljoen started serving on the museum’s board of trustees, rose to become vice-chair in 2005 and in 2007 was appointed chair, a post she held for five years.
Viljoen was on the retiring end of high ANC politics — an MP in the Nelson Mandela government of 1994 and a Buffalo City councillor for nine years from 2001 to 2010.
She said Viljoen was “tough on fairness, something she learned working in the Black Sash advice office downtown in the brutal 1970s and 1980s, and was “all about justice for people”, a belief she honed in her years of higher political office.
In 2012, she had resigned from the board in protest to an extraordinary situation when then-director Mcebisi Magadla had to leave to serve a prison sentence for the rape of a 17-year-old girl in 2004.
The Dispatch reported that union members were preventing the appointment of the next acting director, who was Morkom.
But Viljoen was soon back on the board as a friend of the museum representative and never really left.
Even when her board membership finished in 2025, Viljoen stayed on as a volunteer in the extraordinary community rescue of the museum’s treasure trove library.
Morkom said Thursdays, when the library volunteers arrived, was a highlight of the week.
It had been punishing having no librarian since 2012, but Viljoen’s team had filled in and worked with a librarian assistant.
Viljoen, an avid reader, realising that many of the books being donated had resale value, had started a second-hand book collection at the museum entrance making great books available at low prices.
Money generated was used to buy new books for the library.
Two days before Viljoen died on April 10, her daughters brought in the last of her collection — hundreds of books in an enormous box. Daughter Julie Huckle said these books were what remained after the daughters had taken books they had wanted. Viljoen had read every single one.
Morkom said the loss of Viljoen was “quite devastating. She was so kind, and the most humble person. She did not like fuss, she just beavered on in the background.”
“She did not do things for recognition. She did it as a service to the public. She wanted no thanks. She ran from the podium.”
Even when she was chair of the museum board, she did all the board’s secretarial work. She would proofread the annual report, she oversaw finance, she was very sharp. When we had an exhibition on the history of the ANC, she insisted on doing all the labels.
“Reading was her passion. She would always be saying ‘I’ve just read this or that’.
“She was always positive and strong. She put her mind to any job she had to do and always did it to the best of her abilities.
“She was very diplomatic and dealt with difficult people in the politest but most sincere way. She was a brilliant listener.
“She brought calmness.”
Meanwhile, the museum is becoming a favourite for passing cruise liners.
Morkom said tourists had made “very positive comments” about the museum and their tour guide, principal natural scientist Kevin Cole.
“He really livens up the museum, makes it come alive, and makes an impact, makes the tours more enjoyable, even visceral.”
Cole recently ran six tours for 600 mostly German tourists whose cruise liner stayed moored for one afternoon.
“They can feel the depth of the story of the Eastern Cape being told.”
She said the museum was the custodian of an extremely rich collection of information and history of Eastern Cape culture and nature.
The beadwork collection is one of the most important representations of AmaXhosa culture and the intimate history of the discovery of the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) — believed to have gone extinct 65 million years ago — by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator in 1938.
She was appointed curator in 1931 at 24 and retired 42 years later.
Tickets cost R30 adult, R20 for a child and R25 for pensioners.
