South African Hip Hop Museum is back up and running

They were excited when they opened the first phase in 2019. It was a museum like no other and it paid tribute to South African Hip Hop stars.
Then lockdown came and months later, there was a break-in and it was vandalized and precious pieces of history were damaged.
Now the South African Hip Hop Museum is back and running, this time with backing from the minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa, and MEC of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation Mbali Hlophe
After the break-in, the Newton museum owner, from the ritual Media Group who is also one of the pioneers of South African hip-hop culture and movement Osmic Menoe, and his team worked hard to rebuild the space. They wanted to do everything possible to preserve hip-hop history.
On Thursday, the Minister, MEC, Ritual Media Group, and Museum Africa held a media briefing to announce the partnership between the independent group behind the hip-hop museum and the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture at Museum Africa in Newtown.
The launch was to explain the partnership and the parties involved in making the hip-hop space more conducive, generating money, and job creation.
This gathering kicked off with the tour to show the newly refurbished space that was vandalized during a break-in, in November 2020.

Osmic has been sharing the progress of the revamp on his social media.
In this announcement, they also mention how the museum will serve as an enabling environment to drive education and empowerment through workshops, film industry editing, and music recording services provided to the creatives.
MEC Mbali says this partnership will finally solidify the movement because hip-hop has changed so many lives by giving young people a medium to express themselves.
"Hip hop is like an ocean, it will never die."
Minister Nathi Mthethwa says his department is honoured to be part of this partnership because the hip-hop museum asked for a partnership and didn't come with a begging bone.
“One thing that stuck in my mind and what you made it clear is that you guys own your genre. And you want a partnership that is why we engaged, you didn’t come with a begging bone. You did your work, you did your homework, your research work, and so on, and we are told as minister and government that this is how short we are; can we come to the party? And as we come to the party here, we know that we are coming to the party as SA hip-hop, it is your party and it’s not our party. Ours is to help and when we committed ourselves to assist you, we were persuaded by the vision you have from Osmic to everyone who is involved.”

The minister says they could feel the passion.
“This partnership comes to us at the right time where we are reaching out to the sector  stakeholders to ensure that we have sustainable kind of plan for this economy. We are committed and each time we interact with you we become even more committed because of how you are passionate about this project,” he says.
The minister says they got the budget of R50 million as a department which will be shared between the hip-hop museum and two other initiatives.
“We have raised the issue of this museum that is important, not only for art but for generations to come it is important that it is saved. We sat and we said, hip-hop museum is a thing to go to, we need to put our money where our profit is. In fact, you are not the only beneficiaries this time because it was a big kind of cake we got this time around, it was R50 million, we said District Six should benefit because of who District Six is, and Phansi Museum in Durban, so it is the three of you,” he says.
The minister says this injection to the museum is to ensure that there is job creation where people aged 18-35 with relevant qualifications and experience can be employed in the museum.
Osmic explained that the museum was started with money from the profit made from Back to the City the biggest hip-hop festival in the African continent. He shared that the space will generate income as it will be rented out to creatives at a certain fee.