23 September 2022
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Story Leonie Bolleurs
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Photo Supplied
Public History, Heritage, and Culture in South Africa: The Struggle Continues appeals to scholars and students of heritages studies as well as political and cultural history in South Africa.
In celebration of Heritage Month, the
Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State (UFS) recently hosted a round-table discussion on ‘Public History, Heritage, and Culture’ during an online Engaged Scholarship webinar. According to Prof Chitja Twala, Vice-Dean in the faculty and expert on African history, this platform was created to engage on topics of an academic nature and in the public interest.
He facilitated the event that focused on Public History, Heritage, and Culture in South Africa: The Struggle Continues, a book edited by
Dr Ali Khangela Hlongwane from the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and
Prof Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu from the University of South Africa (UNISA).
In the publication under discussion, the authors examine the memorialisation of South Africa’s liberation struggle in the context of a complex political landscape, and share their insights on public history, historiography, and heritage studies, as well as their experiences as former anti-apartheid activists.
Different voices
In writing Public History, Heritage, and Culture in South Africa: The Struggle Continues, Dr Hlongwane and Prof Ndlovu theorised and problematised public histories. Prof Ndlovu noted: “Our understanding is that public history is an integral part of a diverse narrative of history that tells complex histories of South Africa, the continent, and the world we live in. More important to us is that even 25 years after the advent of democracy, South Africa has a long way to go to reconfigure and reimage its complex identities, research, and to make public its hidden histories.”
“It is important that there should be multiple and diverse voices in telling these histories. We acknowledge that history and memory are contested and that is important; it deepens our democracy, because contestation not always means conflict – it means different voices trying to find their rightful space in the knowledge production of a given society,” says Dr Hlongwane.
He holds the view that history is not only about the past, but equally about the past in the present. The latter helps us to unpack some of the unfinished agendas of the freedom struggle in South Africa – what has been achieved and what not.
Dr Hlongwane, a researcher in the History Workshop at WITS, discussed – with reference to Marabastad – the scale of forced removals of people from their ancestral lands through the processes of colonial conquest, and post-1910 through legislation (the Natives Land Act of 1913, the Native Urban Areas Act of 1923, 1937 and 1945 and more after the National Party took power in 1948). He examines the public history of Marabastad as depicted through material culture, photography, and oral testimonies in an exhibition at the Ditsong Museum, telling the stories of the ordinary people of Marabastad who resisted forced removals.
Death in detention
Prof Ndlovu, a Professor of History at UNISA, presented on Chapter 7 of the book, titled: ‘Death in detention in apartheid South Africa: Commemorations, remembrance and making sense of Isivivane and the Wall of Names at Freedom Park national heritage site’.
In his presentation, he showcased images of the Voortrekker Monument and the Freedom Park Museum as heritage sites, saying that these museums depict two forms of nationalism. The nationalism reflected by the Voortrekker Monument is exclusive and for whites only, while the nationalism projected by Freedom Park is inclusive nationalism, about a non-racial, non-sexist South Africa.
He explains, “Because of the exclusive nature of white nationalism, propagated and celebrated by the Voortrekker Monument, opposing the other form of nationalism of a non-racial democratic South Africa, we had crimes committed against humanity, including deaths in detention.”
He further alludes, “In order for us not to forget, we had to find a way as a country to remember those who fell, who died during detention. At the Freedom Park monument, we remember them through the Wall of Names (including both the oppressor and oppressed) and Isivivane, a structure of intangible heritage where we commemorate those who have passed away.”
He says Isivivane and the Wall of Names really represent the heroes of the struggle. At Isivivane, no one with a grudge is allowed to enter. According to former President Thabo Mbeki, Freedom Park is a place of pilgrimage and healing and human communion, which sets it apart from others, while it seeks to end the divides that has scarred and fractured the national and global human society beyond its boundaries.
Colonial discourse and legacy
Joining the editors of the book as one of the contributors was
Prof Luvuyo Dondolo, Associate Professor in the Department of History at UNISA. He specialises in public history with a specific focus on heritage studies, museology, Pan-Africanist scholarship, identity and racism, and discussed his chapter titled: ‘Colonial representation: Complexities of the Nelson Mandela statue at the Union Buildings precinct’.
Prof Dondolo believes that it is essential to understand and examine the descriptions, meanings, and power associated with the Mandela statue. He says the statue was meant to transform, deracialise, and decolonise the space by giving it a new meaning. He notes, “The sculpture succeeds in deracialising the precinct, but it does not go beyond the surface of colonial discourse and legacy and public gaze, as it fails to decolonialise the space and debunk the colonial geography of the landscape.”
Closing his presentation, he says the Nelson Mandela statue is unsuccessful in decolonising this precinct in a meaningful way, stating that the structural, architectural, and psycho-affective facets of colonial hegemony that dominate this stature are a form of symbolic and aesthetic violence for the majority of the previously conquered people.
He also brought in the notion of Nelson Mandela as ‘father of the nation’, believing this notion is colonial and has its origins in the former colonies of the Americas and Africa.
In providing the closing remarks on the webinar, Dr Bianca Naude from the UFS Qwaqwa Campus emphasised the importance of creating space for such topics and encouraged the faculty to have many such engagements for the purpose of embracing social cohesion.
According to Mabatho Ntsieng in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, the book will help the youth to understand South African history. It also encourages young people to embrace their history and their culture.