To form a better understanding of this tumultuous and nation defining period, visit the outstanding ApartheidMuseum ( www.apartheidmuseum.org), built a short drive south of the city in 2001.
Founded by Dr Anton Rupert, a tobacco billionaire, conservationist and critic of apartheid who was born in Graaff-Reinet in 1916, the museum is housed in a beautifully restored early 19th-century mission church, with mostly expressionistic and abstract canvases by South African artists, including Irma Stern and Maud Sumner.