In time, it developed greater systematic organisation and classification similar to the evolutionary models that were prominent in European and American museums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The collection also includes artefacts such as stone tools made by people 120,000 years ago, traditional clothes from the 20th century, and contemporary printed T-shirts.

[8] "Bushmen", referring collectively to San and Khoi indigenous groups, were considered lowest on the evolutionary timescale and as living remnants of "civilised" man's prehistory, akin to the highest form of ape.

The title of Drury's book, Bushman, whale and dinosaur, detailing his 40-year affiliation with the South African Museum, gives some indication of the status these specimens were given.

It was only in the late 1950s that Drury's casts were given any contextualisation in the form of the Bushman Diorama when they were displayed in an invented cultural setting based on an early nineteenth-century painting by Samuel Daniell.

However, the newly revised label once again emphasised the narrative of extinction and lacked any historical contextualisation or information about the Bushmen's individual histories.

The African culture gallery also featured a series of displays of casts or models of "dark-skinned people" (in ethnically defined groups) who "live in rural areas and are located in timeless places such as 'tribes' or 'groups'".

[11] In 1989, in recognition of the ethical and unequal power dimensions involved in the display, the South African Museum took the first steps to mediate the diorama.

[12] Photographs from the casting process were shown and one of the figures was dressed in early twentieth century (instead of hunter-gather) attire to alert viewers to the constructed nature of the diorama.

Bushmen representatives argued that Skotnes could not speak about or for people she "did not understand" and while some consultative protocols were followed with "official groups that were just forming", the general consensus was that these were inadequate.