update (22 June 2022): South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) has plans to take control of the historic Liliesleaf Farm, currently a private museum, and establish it as a cultural institution. This would enable the DAC to to exercise control over the national heritage site.
update (23 February 2022): The Liliesleaf board of trustees in Rivonia has confirmed that the iconic institution is bankrupt.
One of South Africa's foremost national heritage sites, Liliesleaf in Johannesburg's suburb of Rivonia, has announced its closure. According to the founder and CEO of the Liliesleaf Trust, Nicholas Wolpe, the museum has been forced to close its doors indefinitely until it is able to secure operational funding again. Liliesleaf already faced several years of a funding crisis, which then got compounded and exacerbated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Liliesleaf served as the secret headquarters and nerve centre of the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party (SACP), Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Congress Alliance between 1961 and 1963. It was turned into a museum in 2009 and declared a National Heritage Site in 2016.
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