ETH/NAMM/0184

The Phansi Museum is a cultural beacon in Durban, occupying 3 floors of one of the few domestic national historical monuments in the city. The stately home situated in 500 Esther Roberts Road was built in 1986 by the parents of Esther Roberts, one of the first female anthropologists in South Africa and was declared a national monument in 1980. In IsiZulu "phansi" means below or beneath, a reference to the basement location where the Phansi Museum began. Fittingly, phansi is traditionally known as the place beneath us, where ancestral spirits dwell. Three floors of the Victorian mansion are packed with Zulu beadwork, earplugs, wire baskets, milk-pails, beer-pots and fertility dolls ; Ndebele blankets and ceremonial items, and artefacts from the eastern Cape, Namibia and Kenya. The most popular exhibit is the life-size marionette room, where thirty life-size puppets are adorned with ceremonial dress from all over Southern Africa. Phansi Museum showcases the art of Africa while educating the present and future generations of where they come from.