Abstract
Sabine Marschall, Landscape of Memory: Commemorative Monuments, Memorials and Public Statuary in post-Apartheid South Africa. Leiden: Brill. Xiv + 407pp. Afrika-Studiecentrum series no. 15. 2010. ISBN 9789004178564
During the past 30 or so years, there has been a marked increase of academic interest in memory, often linked to matters of personal or group identity. In the intellectual world, the starting-point for this debate was probably the work of the French historian Pierre Nora, as Sabine Marschall notes in her introduction to this insightful but rather long book, but a further reason has been the increasing economic importance of heritage for the tourist industry.
South Africa is a good location for a study of public memorialization since tourism is thriving there and the country has a government that is intent on using public works to assert particular aspects of a complex national history. Landscape of Memory takes the form of an extended theoretical discussion grounded in an empirical study of particular projects undertaken in South Africa, such as Freedom Park in Tshwane, the new name for the former Pretoria. Freedom Park is not only the most important element of the ruling African National Congress (ANC)’s National Legacy Project, but also contests a well-known feature of the Pretoria skyline, the massive Voortrekker Monument. This was perhaps the most important of all the monuments created by the National Party, the ANC’s predecessor, during the years when it presided over the introduction and eventual dissolution of apartheid.
What perhaps emerges most strongly from Professor Marschall’s book is the degree to which the ambiguity of the government’s policy on memorialization mirrors a fundamental political dilemma facing South Africa in general. For while many South Africans, especially ANC supporters, may be tempted to destroy all the statues and other monuments erected in a past dominated by colonialism, racism and apartheid, such iconoclasm is politically unacceptable, as a small but important minority of the population regards these artefacts as an important aspect of its own heritage. Thus, a statue of the old Boer general Louis Smuts continues to dominate the entrance to the South African parliament in Cape Town. Meanwhile, with regard to the new artefacts being put in place to memorialize the liberation struggle, this seems to be a determinedly bureaucratic activity, despite all the expressed intentions to solicit popular opinion and participation. Perhaps this is just what happens everywhere when a political party aspires to mark its own ascent to power.