At a formal ceremony today, a visitor information system was presented to the Apartheid Museum in the South African city of Johannesburg. The system was donated by audio specialist Sennheiser. In the presence of 150 guests of honour, including the German ambassador and Nelson Mandela's human rights lawyer George Bizos, Rolf Meyer, President Marketing and Sales at Sennheiser, presented the museum with one of the new generation of audio information systems. GuidePort will give visitors to the museum a direct and unforgettable experience of the impact of racial segregation.

Meeting in Johannesburg: Nelson Mandela; Rolf Meyer

"During a visit to our South African partner, Sennheiser SA, I went to the Apartheid Museum," says Rolf Meyer, "and I was shocked - but at the same time impressed by how courageously the museum had tackled South Africa's recent history and by how intense the experience was." The idea came to him that a GuidePort system could convey the oppressive history of apartheid and its eventual overthrow even more intensely.

The system provided by Sennheiser consists of a total of 50 receivers with headsets for the visitors. The information and texts relating to the individual rooms and exhibits are stored in eight so-called twin cell transmitters. Concealed mini-transmitters or identifiers are responsible for triggering the information. The system is set up for six different categories of information (for example, different languages). English and German versions of the texts are already available and other languages, such as Afrikaans and French, are planned for the near future.

Meeting in Johannesburg (from left to right): Patrick Goodenough; Konrad Geldenhys; Jeff Woolf (all Sennheiser South Africa); Nelson Mandela; Rolf Meyer; Dr. John Kani, Chairman of the Board of Governers of the Apartheid Museum; Chris Alexander (Sennheiser South Africa)

The Apartheid Museum is home to a wealth of visual and audio information documenting the systematic repression of the non-white population from 1948 onwards. As they enter the museum, visitors can themselves experience racial segregation. Their tickets indicate whether they are "white" or "non-white" and they can only enter the museum through separate turnstiles. Inside the architecturally stunning museum building are disturbing installations, such as 121 nooses that symbolise the political prisoners who were hanged during the apartheid era, and a large wall of monitors showing terrifying images of the suppression of the student uprisings of 1976.

"It is not only important to tell the apartheid story," says museum director Christopher Till, "but it is also important to show the world how we have overcome apartheid. There certainly is a lesson that we can teach other countries and we can do this through the complexity and sheer power of the installations." For this reason, another part of the museum is devoted to the new South Africa. Many areas of the museum are still open to new exhibits. For example, visitors can have their own historical objects put on display or record their memories of apartheid in a recording studio and share them with others.

As one of the world's leading manufacturers of microphones, headphones and wireless transmission systems, the Sennheiser Group with its headquarters in Wedemark near Hanover, Germany, had total sales of over €237 million in 2003. The export share is about 80%. Sennheiser has a total workforce of approx. 1,600 employees, of whom 60% are employed in Germany. Sennheiser is active worldwide and, in addition to other partnerships, has its own sales subsidiaries in France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, China, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and the USA.

For further information about Sennheiser please visit us on the Internet at www.sennheiser.com or contact:

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG  
Pressereferat - Edelgard Marquardt  
Am Labor 1 - 30900 Wedemark   
Fon: +49 (5130) 600-329   
Fax: +49 (5130) 600-295   
e-Mail: marquare@sennheiser.com  

fischerAppelt Kommunikation
Clemens Thoma
Waterloohain 5 - 22769 Hamburg
Fon: +49 (40) 899 699-961
Fax: +49 (40) 899 699-910
e-Mail: ct@fischerappelt.de