Guests don hard hats to welcome the start of work on a new anti-apartheid museum [Olha Skrypkina]

ISLINGTON will become home to the Europe’s first anti-apartheid museum after work began in Angel.

The chosen site was once home to the African National Congress’s London headquarters and will become a heritage centre promoting black-led history and anti-racism.

The South African high commissioner to the UK, JN Kingsley Mamabolo and London’s deputy mayor Debbie Weekes-Bernard, broke ground at the site in Penton Street on Wed­nes­day, with construc­tion expected to be com­pleted by autumn 2025.

South African high commissioner to the UK, His Excellency JN Mamabolo; and London’s deputy mayor Debbie Weekes-Bernard ‘breaking-ground’ in Penton Street [Olha Skrypkina]

The new museum, The Anti-Apartheid Legacy: Centre of Memory and Learning, will feature a permanent exhibition on anti-apartheid, display archive material and offer a temporary gallery for contemporary issues like migration and inequality.

Dr Weekes-Bernard said that she was “proud” that London would be the home to the first project of this kind.

She said: “For 16 years this site in Islington played a key role in the international opposition to apartheid and it’s important that we honour the work that was done to help change the lives of so many people.

“We must continue to learn from the terrible errors of the past if we are to tackle the racism.”