South African Defence Force veterans’ modes of remembering and the ethics of post-apartheid nostalgia

Abstract

South African Defence Force veterans frequently evince nostalgia for their service in the apartheid army. This has invited censure as commentators regard it as self-evident that nostalgia for the oppressive apartheid regime is ethically dubious. However, such assumptions fail to employ the resources of moral philosophy to buttress and nuance their pronouncements. In this article, we argue that nostalgia can be understood as a bittersweet longing for irretrievable personal pasts, a yearning for times when South African Defence Force veterans felt a sense of belonging to a brotherhood in arms and to the imaginary white nation. However, this is not necessarily synonymous with a desire to reinstitute apartheid. We then offer a brief survey of significant difficulties posed by three prominent camps within moral philosophy (deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics) for evaluating this post-apartheid nostalgia as a moral or ethical problem. We find that the emphasis on voluntary or deliberate action entrenched in mainstream moral thinking constitute substantial obstacles to arriving at sound judgements regarding the nature of nostalgia. We argue that nostalgia, properly understood, cannot fulfil commonplace theoretical and intuitive requirements for moral relevance. We therefore challenge the notion that definitive ethical judgements can usefully be made about post-apartheid nostalgia.

Keywords

collective memory ethics of nostalgia mnemonic communities narratives post-apartheid nostalgia SADF veterans South African Defence Force

Nostalgia is not innocent – least of all, perhaps, when indulged by those who have benefitted from past structures of oppression; yet it can be shown to reside equally strongly in the minds of those who have been oppressed.

Walden, 2011: 18

It should come as no surprise that there have been manifestations of nostalgia for apartheid among White South Africans. But, it might surprise one to learn that Black South Africans who were previously discriminated against and oppressed have expressed similar sentiments. In fact, the view that life was better under apartheid is not uncommon in Black communities. One of the country’s leading Black public intellectuals, Jacob Dlamini (2009), published a book called Native Nostalgia in which he insisted that political correctness had been taken too far and that Black people should be allowed to cherish fond memories of their lives under apartheid as their entire existence was not governed by the system of apartheid. Dlamini takes exception to the ruling party’s efforts to discount the everyday experience of ordinary people and frame narratives of Black lives in terms of the ‘master narrative’ of the liberation struggle. He does not suggest that life was better for Blacks under apartheid but that viewing life through a nostalgic frame does not necessarily countenance the evils of the system. Thus, apartheid created ‘a world of moral ambivalence and ambiguity’ (p. 156), in which Black subjects did not experience life as unmitigated oppression. Accordingly, Dlamini is not persuaded that it is unethical to long for aspects of life under apartheid (Coullie, 2014). His proposition was castigated as ‘retrogressive’ by commentators not inclined to accept that nostalgia can be trans-ideological, that it is not necessarily conservative in its praxis (Hutcheon, 1998).

Following Svetlana Boym (2001), Dlamini distinguished between ‘reflective’ and ‘restorative’ nostalgia where the former ‘dwells on the ambivalences of human longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradictions of modernity’ and the latter ‘does not think of itself as nostalgia, but rather as truth and tradition’. ‘Reflective’ nostalgics are well aware of the partial, fragmentary nature of history and dwell on their sense of loss, whereas ‘restorative’ nostalgics seek to restore the past, as in nationalist movements that invent traditions and construct myths. We regard it as unhelpful to attach too much weight to this evaluative reflective/restorative distinction. Instead, it makes more sense to follow Pickering and Keightley (2006) who hold that there are different modalities of nostalgia, that it has a multifaceted character. However, we should not ignore the warning issued by Angé and Berliner (2014: 5) that nostalgia has become a catch-all notion that refers to an array of memory discourses and practices that sometimes share few commonalities. Thus, we should heed William Bissell’s (2014) advice that ‘[h]istoricizing nostalgia entails envisioning it as a plural practice [and discourse?] with a multiplicity of meanings that have to be carefully explored in specific sociocultural contexts’ (p. 218).

In the case of White South Africans, post-apartheid nostalgia has been ascribed to a sense of personal and collective loss experienced by those who previously enjoyed positions of power and privilege. Thus, the establishment of majority rule in 1994 initiated an experience of ‘cultural trauma’ or ‘identity crisis’ for Whites who were confronted with their loss of political power and cultural hegemony (Steyn, 2001; Steyn and Forster, 2008; Verwey and Quayle, 2012). This explanation suggests that nostalgia serves as a form of compensation so as ‘to create a sense of cultural security during a loss of political, and possibly cultural power’ (Nauright, 1997: 165). And, so there is a tendency to dismiss a yearning for the past among White South Africans as racist, reactionary and recidivist, or to reduce nostalgia to ‘history without guilt’ (Kammen, 1991: 688). However, we hold that is not the apartheid system per se that is longed for but particular personal recollections that happen to be embedded in the apartheid past. Thus, post-apartheid nostalgia amounts to selectively recalling certain aspects of life under apartheid. We do not believe that nostalgia evinced by White South Africans is inherently conservative in the sense that they want to keep things as they were or, more probably, as they are imagined to have been. Post-apartheid nostalgia need not have any political valence whatsoever.

There has been no systematic study of post-apartheid nostalgia among White South Africans.¹ We seek to address this lacuna by providing a case study of the manifestation of nostalgia among South African Defence Force (SADF) veterans. We suggest that nostalgic SADF veterans have sought to recover relationships forged during apartheid rather than restore privileges and power exercised in the past. To this end, they have constructed narratives of belonging and loss of two imagined communities: a brotherhood of arms and the white nation. We wish to understand the provenance of these expressions of nostalgia and determine whether they are necessarily ethically or morally suspect. Our approach is informed by two (sub)disciplinary perspectives, those of memory studies and moral philosophy.

Soldiers’ nostalgia: from Swiss mercenaries to SADF soldiers

The term nostalgia was originally coined by a seventeenth-century medical student Johannes Hofer to describe the homesickness of Swiss mercenaries fighting abroad (Boym, 2001: xiii–viv). This apparently manifested in physical symptoms and psychic disorders. According to Davis (1979), nostalgia had been de-medicalised and de-militarised by the nineteenth century (p. 4). By the mid-twentieth century, it had lost all its medical and psychiatric associations and was regarded simply as an emotional reaction. It is not our wish to trace the genealogy of nostalgia,² but to note that certain accounts equate it to what psychiatrists currently define as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Jones, 2013). Soldiers are not necessarily more prone than others to nostalgia and to equate it with PTSD runs the risk of imposing modern terminology upon an age that lacked the medical and scientific lexis to make such a diagnosis (Anderson, 2013: 60). In any event, the changing nature of warfare has engendered new forms of trauma and there is no reason to suppose that nostalgia should be equated with PTSD.³

Still, the manifestation of homesickness and nostalgia among military personnel and formations remains an under-researched subject. Anderson (2010) has undertaken seminal studies of the nostalgia among Union soldiers during and Confederate soldiers after the American Civil War. In the case of the former, displacement from home prompted ‘a conglomeration of memories and senses [that evoked] knowledge and familiarity of locale’ (p. 250). It was a malady accorded medical recognition. In the latter case, soldiers of the defeated Confederate army displayed what Anderson (2013) called ‘lost cause’ nostalgia. Clearly, these are very different modes of remembrance and should not be conflated. Union soldiers’ homesickness appears to have more of a spatial than a temporal dimension; it manifested as a sense of displacement and as longing for home during the war. ‘Lost cause’ nostalgia appears to have been a retrospective yearning for a different time by the soldiers who fought for the Confederate side, an era that was effectively ended by their defeat.

Tanya Petroviċ has described how a generation of men who served in the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija (JNA)) has constructed a narrative of the JNA as the ‘only real army’ that provided proper training and instilled worthwhile lessons in life – unlike the current military formations in the countries that comprise the former federation. Their unease also manifests as an expression of regret for the cessation of mandatory military service. These veterans have idealised an institution and selectively remembered a past that is imbued with qualities and values that are absent in the present. Petroviċ insists that nostalgia towards JNA army days is made possible by an awareness of the irreversibility of that experience. She follows Creed (2010), who argues that the notion of nostalgia only has purchase or resonates ‘when there is no chance of going back’ (Petroviċ, 2010: 64). JNA veterans, like their counterparts in the SADF, do not wish to restore the previous order as they accept the impossibility of a return to the past.

As we shall see, there is considerable anecdotal evidence to suggest that serving SADF citizen force soldiers frequently yearned to return home during their training or operational deployments. Moreover, reminiscences of SADF veterans in the public domain suggest that some retrospectively yearn for a time when they served in the SADF. Cherished memories of service in the SADF are commonly regarded as an inappropriate fondness for a morally bankrupt institution amounting to a ‘nauseous nostalgia’. Such nostalgia arguably permits abdication of personal responsibility for one’s actions through a sanitisation or whitewashing of their conduct as soldiers. Certain commentators have advocated that Whites – and, presumably, by extension SADF veterans – should cultivate remorse or shame rather than nurture nostalgia. But, this presumes that nostalgia is integrated into a system of beliefs or values. It makes no allowance for the fact that nostalgia might be triggered by emotions, that it is affective and non-intentional.

SADF veteran’s residual militarised identities are closely connected to their ‘whiteness’. But, this has no necessary link to the politics of racial privilege. Whiteness assumes many guises. There is an arrogant (or racist) whiteness that takes pride in what was accomplished under colonial and White minority rule. This is typified by the viewpoint that South Africa owes its relative economic strength and political stability to infrastructure and institutions established before 1994. Conversely, there is an abject whiteness of the kind advocated by philosopher Samantha Vice. She suggests that White South Africans ‘cultivate humility and silence, given their morally compromised position in the continuing racial and economic injustices of the country’ (Vice, 2010: 342). But withdrawal from the public sphere results in the retreat of Whites into private enclaves or discursive laagers. Here, they converse with family members in the home, or with friends around the outdoor ritual of the braai (barbecue), or with White compatriots and expatriates in ‘virtual pubs’ (i.e. Internet forums such as chat rooms). These closed communities simulate a different time and reality and create the space for the performance and rehearsal of nostalgia. For ‘despite its private, sometimes intensely felt personal character [nostalgia] derives from and has continuing implications for our lives as social actors’ (Davis, 1979: vii). Such self-segregated socialisation fosters the construction of a community with an extraordinarily selective collective memory.

SADF veterans as a mnemonic community

Collective memory is a matrix of socially positioned individual memories that intersect and create a pattern or memory field (Sivan and Winter, 1999: 24, 28). Such memories originate in the worlds of individuals who partake in the communal life of the collective, and are perpetuated by being interpersonally and intergenerationally transmitted and publicised. They take the form of narratives that have currency in a group, that originate in the past experiences of members and that are crucial to the group’s conception of its collective identity. These groups that share collective memories constitute mnemonic communities (Kansteiner, 2002; Zerubavel, 2003: 179–197; Wertsch, 2012: 9–20). They include families, professions, generations, ethnic and regional groups, social classes, nations and even those that share communications about the meaning of the past at a transnational level.⁴ And individuals are always part of several, sometimes intersecting and sometimes discrete, mnemonic communities. Such groups might not necessarily have shared experiences but are quite likely to have common cultural assumptions. For collective memory works by subsuming individual experiences under cultural schemes that make them comprehensible and, therefore, meaningful (Kansteiner, 2002: 188–189).

Collective memories do not arise spontaneously nor take shape independently of human agency. They are fashioned by agents, whom we might call ‘memory makers’ or ‘memory bearers’, who include cultural brokers, public intellectuals, teachers and politicians who are instrumental in the public construction of memory. They select, modify, negotiate and reify particular versions of the past. These agents employ the cultural tools of language and narratives to make meaning. These interpretative codes play a significant part in shaping the views of the past and present that bind the members of a mnemonic community together. They comprise two elements: the schemata, the temporal narrative structure in which individuals construe their memory, and the script, which is composed of existing preconceptions and opinions on issues that pertain to the memory in question (Winter and Sivan, 1999: 13). Individuals learn to conventionalise, structure and narrativise their memories in accordance with the dominant social mores and beliefs, which prevail in the individual’s different mnemonic communities (Zerubavel, 1997: 286). They relate to the group’s shared experiences and memories, commonalities from which identities and narratives are constructed that articulate the individual’s self-perception in relation to others. Such constructions are, in turn, contingent upon the reactions of the dominant sociocultural group towards its manifestations (Ryan, 2011: 156). Thus, the construction of collective memory is contingent in two senses of the word: it involves a group and is both an involuntary and deliberative process.

At the interface of formal organisations of civil society and informal networks of family and kin, there exist what Jay Winter (1999) has termed ‘fictive kinships’ such as veteran networks (pp. 40–41, 47–54). The war veteran recalls his own experiences – his autobiographical memories – against a backdrop of social resources such as generational consciousness or the institutional memory of the armed forces. The construction of personal memories entails a negotiation within a field of memory that offers a range of possibilities for the interpretation of private experiences. As Edna Lomsky-Feder (2004) reminds us, the act of remembrance is always performed in the context of the field of memory that is socially framed and bounded (p. 4). This field is not simply a rich fabric of meanings but also an internally ordered field, stratified according to the social prestige that is attached to the different memories. In other words, the field of memory circumscribes the available discursive resources upon which veterans are able to draw to construct their narrative identities.

The cohort of White men conscripted into the SADF between 1968 and 1993 underwent military training during their formative years of adolescence and early adulthood. They have been called the national service generation (NSG). Generation here does not signify the coexistence of similarly aged people as much as it denotes their sense of belonging to a group with a shared historical consciousness (Mannheim, 1952: 286). Generational identities and memories are mutually constitutive, not because of some objective features of social or cultural structure but because of experiential commonalities and resultant similarities in individual memories of historical events (Olick, 1999: 339). Personal narratives fashion the macrobiography of a generation and, conversely, the generational macrobiography produces a shared consciousness that shapes the personal narratives (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009: 1048). Thus, there is mediation between personal memories and those of the generational unit. Although this cohort came from a cross-section of society and does not amount to a homogeneous group, their shared military experience created a sense of belonging that is evident in their collective memories (Schuman and Scott, 1989: 359–360).

SADF veterans abroad are part of the White South African diaspora. They might well be called ‘transnational troepies’,⁵ as they are a relatively mobile group who have benefitted from the mixed blessings of globalisation in order to travel and sell their (military) skills abroad. Many have migrated and joined expatriate communities in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere. However, many participants in this global great trek are unable to sever the umbilical cord with the homeland and remain emotionally attached thereto. Some experience angst or feel displaced and, yet, insist that they are unable to return and so remain unconnected to the present. Instead of dying to be home, they live out their lives in self-imposed exile. Their stories of home as a place where the prevalence of crime and corruption, as well as the decline of the economy under a Black majority government render a return impossible, only serve to reinforce their attachment to the communities of a bygone era.

Nostalgic memories of individuals may be involuntary but they gain traction among those who comprise a mnemonic community such as SADF veterans. The group provides a close(d) community in which these veterans construct narratives of belonging and loss.

SADF veterans’ narratives of belonging and loss

The hankering after home found expression in many guises during national service, both the initial call-up and the subsequent camps to which national servicemen were subjected. Queues of troepies waiting at telephone boxes to make a call home from their training base during leisure time were commonplace (Thompson, 2006: 43). Letters from home or girlfriends and wives were eagerly anticipated (Thompson, 2006: 44, 144). Such yearning for home was not confined to basic training but those who performed combat duties went to considerable lengths to make contact with their families or loved ones. It was not unusual for national servicemen to hike enormous distances to get home during passes (Thompson, 2006: 145–146). Homesickness was ubiquitous but particularly prevalent among those who spent protracted periods in the bush, which was for city dwellers an alien and remote environment. They may well have acclimatised to the conditions of combat in operational areas but back at base camp every effort was made by soldiers to domesticate their surroundings; to make their living and leisure spaces into a ‘home from home’. Even soldiers who participated in combat seldom dwelled on the fire fights or ‘contacts’ in which they were involved, but instead talked endlessly about when they were going home. They kept close track of the passage of time and counted down the days prior to uitklaar (being demobbed). Those who reached the landmark of 40 days before they were due to klaar out achieved the status of ou manne (old men) as they min dae (few days) left to serve. The return to ‘civvy street’ was cause for celebration (Thompson, 2006: 225–228).

It has come to be regarded as something of a truism that soldiers fight not for their country but for love of one another. The strength of the bonds forged by men fighting together in war has been well attested (Bourke, 1999: 129–130). Such male comradeship was cultivated during the intimacies of military training and (in some cases) combat. Whether called ‘mateship’, ‘the buddy system’ or ‘homo-erotic relationships’, such camaraderie creates a surrogate family for the soldier in a war situation. Consequently, the closeness of relationships established in military training or the thick of battle can outlast a tour of duty or even the life of the institution itself. When soldiers return home, they often find that their comrades are the only ones who ‘really understand’ what they went through, and such friendships can be deeply significant as veterans make the adjustment to civilian life. Indeed, the trust that veterans have in brothers-in-arms is inversely proportional to the distrust of the politicians who sent them to war.

Males who excel at combat may be part of the hegemonic group while in war, but when they return home they sometimes experience a ‘crisis of masculinity’. For gendered practices valued in combat are unlikely to be similarly valued in civilian culture (Boyle, 2015: 165). By avoiding displays of emotion or shedding tears when dealing with the loss of comrades, veterans become reliant on psychic numbing as a coping mechanism. Such behaviour is more likely to cause alienation than elicit sympathy from loved ones. In such cases, the home might not offer a safe emotional space and might, instead, be characterised by tensions on account of an inability to resume intimate relationships with family, friends and partners. In combination with other symptoms, stress and distress may manifest as PTSD. However, not many members of the NSG availed themselves of the services of psychiatrists to seek treatment for PTSD. This was symptomatic of prevalent codes of heteronormative masculinity that regarded the consultation of psychotherapists as ‘unmanly’ and hence a sign of weakness. SADF veterans have only belatedly been able to own up to their trauma following the destigmatisation of PTSD. It is no longer regarded as a mark of failed masculinity but rather a badge of honour of the brave soldier who has been on the frontline (Lembcke, 2013: 18–19). Another corollary of this reconfiguration of masculinity and destigmatisation of PTSD has been that trauma narratives constructed by SADF veterans have served to divert attention from the ethicality of their conduct during the war.

Since South Africa’s political transition, a market for military memorabilia and mementoes has developed among SADF veterans. There is a brisk trade in items such as military-issue equipment, medals, DVDs and books. The last-mentioned category includes an assortment of texts: new and reprinted military histories, unit histories, (auto)biographies and memoirs, as well as a number of collections of reminiscences. One prosography compiled by the journalist Jacqui Thompson (2006) called An Unpopular War: Voices of South African National Servicemen proved to be a bestseller. Military aficionado and co-owner of a memorabilia store at the Cape Town CBD, Cameron Blake (2009, 2010), has collated two volumes of reminiscences called Troepie: From Call-Up to Camps and From Soldier to Civvy: Reflections on National Service, respectively. Blake (2011) also compiled Troepie Snapshots: Pictorial Recollections of the South African Border War. Blake’s compunction to preserve the stories and images for posterity was only part of the rationale for this project. His admission that he is a nostalgic (Blake, 2010: 273) suggests that he was also motivated by sentimentality. For their part, publishers have capitalised on the demand for kitsch and sentimentality by packaging and commodifying nostalgia. They have merchandised the past – even deplorable events and dubious military actions – as part of the ‘good old days’.

The collection of amateur photographs that Blake has assembled in Troepie Snapshots amounts to a scrapbook with accompanying text. There are images of national servicemen posing with weapons, in or alongside military vehicles, very often conveying a sense of camaraderie between the subjects. The conscripts are sometimes shown as macho warriors intent on killing ‘the enemy’, while elsewhere they are depicted as engaging in boyish antics and performing for the camera(man). Certain pictures suggest the great lengths that some conscripts went to make the war zone familiar and safe. As an album of memories, the selection of photographs serves as a reminder of how things were and, consequently, how they have changed. Images configured anew in Troepie Snapshots amount to memorabilia of a bygone era. Thus, they are paradigmatic markers of nostalgia.

According to Blake, Troepie Snapshots provides an ‘informal glimpse into the human element’ (p. 8) by which he, presumably, means ‘condition’. The commentary reflects on the fact that national servicemen were young and presumably politically naive and had little choice but to render military service (although there is a brief section on the End Conscription Campaign, which offered an alternative course of action). However, the text is neither devoid of authoring nor innocent of ideology. Viewers can hardly ignore the projection of a macho militaristic ethos in the images. These photographs are signifiers of militarised bodies/identities, when national service was a rite of passage, whereby boys became men. Former national servicemen express regrets but tend to remember the ‘good times’ (Blake, 2010: 236). Some express the view that national service should be reinstated so as to instil discipline in the youths of today, including their own sons (Blake, 2010: 112, 264–265). Others are grateful that their sons have not had to undergo national service. Whether the experience is cherished or not, national service obviously left a deep impression upon SADF veterans who find themselves overwhelmed by memories and emotions, ‘unbidden’ and ‘bittersweet’ (Blake, 2010: 271).

When reflecting on their time in uniform, SADF veterans are inclined to repeat the refrain that ‘they were the best years of my life which I would never wish to repeat’ (Blake, 2010: 41, 217, 260). The ambivalence of this statement captures the mixed feelings evoked by memories of national service. The strong male bonds forged while in uniform are invariably remembered with fondness. One veteran refers to the fact that he ‘enjoyed the camaraderie, the espirit de corps’ of national service (Blake, 2010: 257). The loss of such camaraderie is keenly felt. So, too, is the loss of the white nation that they believed they were defending, although some vehemently deny that they were ‘apartheid soldiers’ (Blake, 2010: 241, 247). Altogether, there appears to be acknowledgment that the experience of serving in the SADF or restoring the system of white supremacy is beyond the realms of possibility, that there is no returning to the apartheid past.

So what should we make of SADF veterans’ post-apartheid nostalgia? Can nostalgia be immoral or unethical? We turn to moral philosophy for insights into these questions.

Moral philosophy and nostalgia

Jeffrey Blustein (2008) has noted that moral philosophers have paid little attention to memory (pp. 1–2). This neglect is even more pronounced in the particular case of nostalgic modes of remembering. Nonetheless, it is not uncommon for scholars who engage with nostalgia – especially nostalgia for apartheid – to comment on what they take to be the phenomenon’s moral implications. Derek Hook (2013) opines that nostalgia for apartheid ‘seems morally dubious’ (p. 171), while Dlamini (2009) anticipated the likely response to his Native Nostalgia by acknowledging that nostalgia is ‘something of a bad word, an affectionate insult at best’, which seems to be ‘worse if [it] is uttered in the same breath as the term apartheid’ (p. 16). In her evaluation of Dlamini’s work, Coullie (2014) states that it seems ‘self-evident that it cannot be ethically defensible to remember life during apartheid nostalgically’ (p. 195). However, we think that this assumed self-evidence requires closer examination. All these comments regarding the ethics or morality of nostalgia neglect to explain how, and according to what sort of moral or ethical framework, a phenomenon like nostalgia can meaningfully be evaluated.

Before proceeding, a note of clarification regarding the distinction between morality and ethics is necessary. While the terms are commonly used interchangeably, Avishai Margalit’s (2002) delineation of the differences between ethics and morality is a useful one. Margalit acknowledges the well-established differentiation between the domains of ethics and morality as being personal and impersonal, respectively, concluding from this that ‘while there is an ethics of memory, there is very little morality of memory’ (p. 7). According to Margalit, ethics tells us how to regulate our personal (he calls these ‘thick’) relations to others, while morality provides rules governing relations that we might call impersonal or ‘thin’; those relationships that exist by default between all human beings (pp. 7–8). Morality thus governs how people ought to treat others even if we do not know and care about them personally – its rules have universal application and therefore lack the flexibility that ethics can allow. For Margalit, ‘the ought of morality … is different from the ought in ethics. Being moral is a required good; being ethical is, in principle, an optional one’ (p. 105). In other words, the obligatory nature of ethical prescriptions apply to interaction with those who are ‘near and dear’, whereas moral obligations govern our behaviour towards abstract communities. We try uphold this distinction and avoid the conflation of ethics with morality common in popular parlance and in scholarship outside the philosophical discipline.

Conceptual imprecision amounting to moralism also seems to characterise the existing scholarship on the ethics of post-apartheid nostalgia. Defining moralism as ‘the disposition to cast judgements of a moral kind on what is unsuitable to be so judged’, Margalit cautions against making moral judgements regarding memory (p. 13). Yet, he charges that ‘nostalgic kitsch’ is ‘morally wrong’ on account of it ‘distort[ing] the past by idealizing it’ (pp. 61–62). Thus, it is worth considering whether what scholars treat as moral or ethical issues might not actually relate to epistemology or even aesthetics. Coullie (2014), for example, mentions that restorative nostalgia conflicts with an ethical obligation to remember the past accurately – a charge, which can be read as conflating what is inaccurate with what is unethical (while also presupposing that there is a definitive version of the past) (p. 200). Similarly, her ultimate defence of Dlamini rests on his reflective nostalgia being ‘ethical … in its search for the truth through a nuanced, carefully articulated assessment of both past and present’ (Coullie, 2014: 202). That this accuracy and nuance is ethically relevant rather than just epistemologically useful or desirable is not obvious from Coullie’s argument. What is obvious, however, is that there are commonplace suspicions that nostalgia for apartheid has ethical implications and is open to ethical evaluation.

The evaluation of nostalgia within mainstream modern moral philosophy is a complex matter that we cannot do justice to here.⁶ Neither of the central categories of modern moral philosophy (deontology and consequentialism) offer clear resources for evaluating nostalgia – indeed nostalgia seems, at least at first glance, to fall outside the parameters of moral relevance designated by both. Modern theories of morality, which have remained central to moral philosophy since the seventeenth century, are differentiated from classical virtue ethics by the former’s primary concern with the provision of rational justifications for public moral principles which can be universally understood and impartially applied, as opposed to private guidelines for how individuals can flourish in their own lives (a distinction which resonates with Margalit’s outlined above) (Schneewind, 2010: 67). Therefore, ‘contemporary moral philosophy … has tended to focus on what is right to do rather than what is good to be’ (Varela, 1999: 3). Both deontology and consequentialism, the two strands into which modern moral theories are typically divided, are centrally concerned with evaluating action – in particular, with how to act in relation to others; how to act in public (Cottingham, 1996: 387).

Because of its focus on that which is public, modern moral philosophy primarily evaluates one’s actions rather than one’s personal feelings or thoughts – nor indeed one’s memories.

How might veterans’ nostalgia for a war that defended the apartheid regime be objectionable according to either of these dominant camps in modern moral philosophy? These theories exclude the evaluation of a person’s own thoughts or feelings as being morally relevant in themselves, by constructing the domain of moral relevance around public action. Nostalgic memory work – remembering aspects of one’s personal past with a bittersweet fondness – does not, therefore, appear to be a phenomenon of moral relevance when considered in accordance with the prevailing parameters of modern moral philosophy. That is to say, the two dominant strands within modern moral theory seem to provide few resources for the evaluation of nostalgia as a moral problem, rather than as something that we might think is merely distasteful or undesirable.

Assessments of nostalgia as unethical may perhaps be prompted by considerations of the implications it could have for a person’s public actions. To return to Davis’ (1979) point mentioned above, nostalgia has public implications despite its primarily private nature (p. 12). For example, nostalgia might take on moral relevance insofar as it affects other people. On a consequentialist model, an expression of nostalgia may be morally condemnable if it has negative consequences for those to whom it is directed. Likewise, in Kantian deontology, an expression of nostalgia may be morally wrong if this expression denigrates human agents by neglecting to treat them as inherently valuable. Neither of these scenarios seem unlikely, particularly when the object of nostalgia relates to apartheid. It remains significant, however, that the nostalgia in and of itself is not what is morally condemnable here, but the expression of that nostalgia so long as that expression brings about negative consequences for other people (on a consequentialist model), or neglects to respect the value of human agents (on a Kantian model).

This insight can be usefully applied to Blustein’s (2008) philosophical exploration of the morality of memory. He provides an implicitly consequentialist argument that forms of memory like nostalgia can serve to protect a person’s identity, which has beneficial personal consequences (p. 11). However, in consequentialist theories, the evaluation of consequences must impartially take into account all parties who are impacted by an act, such that these positive personal consequences would be morally relevant, but by no means decisive. If the protection of one’s own identity via nostalgic memory had negative consequences for the welfare of others (which it obviously might, as we have seen), then it would be morally condemnable – a fact which Blustein acknowledges in his discussion on remembering trauma and past wrongdoing (p. 38). Blustein’s consequentialist argument thus leaves us with no decisive verdict on whether apartheid-related nostalgia is ethical or unethical.⁷ Moreover, it is still not the nostalgia itself, but instead the protection of one’s personal identity, that has either negative or positive consequences (and is thus of consequentialist moral relevance) according to Blustein’s framework. While nostalgia can be used for identity preservation on this model, it is not identical with it, such that the moral relevance of identity preservation does not entail the moral relevance of nostalgia itself; and moral judgements on identity preservation thus do not entail any sort of moral judgements on nostalgia simpliciter.

Evaluating nostalgia within the ambit of modern moral philosophy is clearly more complex than commonplace intuitions (and the assessments of scholars such as Coullie, Dlamini and Hook) might suggest. While nostalgia may clearly become bound up with matters of moral relevance, it seems difficult to provide a definitive verdict regarding the morality of nostalgia itself from within the action-centred, other-directed constraints characteristic of modern moral theory. To resolve this predicament, virtue ethics might be the obvious place to turn. Perhaps even if nostalgia is not of clear moral relevance, its ethical relevance may be easier to establish.

Aristotelian virtue ethics and nostalgia

While modern moral philosophy’s public focus on action causes obstacles for the evaluation of a phenomenon like nostalgia, the central focus of virtue ethics is on character (Rawls, 2000: 1). Primarily associated with the work of Aristotle, the priority in virtue ethics is not on providing norms for how to treat other people rightly. Instead, virtue ethics seeks to guide an individual towards achieving personal flourishing – which happens to require treating others in particular ways so as to achieve a fulfilling social life (Lear, 1988: 154). So, while our behaviour towards other people is still important in virtue ethics, the ethical priority has shifted from the other to the self, from the impersonal to the personal, from the public to the private.

When attempting an ethical evaluation of nostalgia, it may be useful that the Aristotelian emphasis is on virtuous character as opposed to morally right action; that the ultimate ethical judgements in virtue ethics are made not on what is right to do but instead on what is good to be (Varela, 1999: 3). This means that virtue ethics promises to allow for an easier extension of the moral domain from our public actions to our private thoughts and feelings, as these are all part of character. Nonetheless, Aristotelian virtue ethics still evaluates action in its attempts to determine the virtuosity of a person’s character. While it is in the final analysis characters and not actions that are determinants of virtuosity or viciousness on an Aristotelian model, virtuous actions nonetheless flow from virtuous characters and, in turn, a virtuous character will perform virtuous actions (Aristotle, 2000: 37). As such, people’s actions are representative of their characters, which is why (for Aristotle) we habitually praise and blame people on the basis of their actions.

The relevance of this to our evaluation of nostalgia lies in Aristotle’s emphasis on voluntariness. Aristotle argues, by interrogating our usual practices of praise and blame, that only voluntary actions are representative of the virtuosity or viciousness of a person’s character. Indeed, for Aristotle, an action cannot meaningfully be called an action at all unless it is voluntary (Broadie and Rowe, 2000: 38). An action is an action precisely because it is motivated or done with purpose; it is chosen as a consequence of an agent’s deliberation on how to achieve a desired end. Because only voluntary action fitting this description is subject to ethical evaluation in Aristotelian virtue ethics, it is useful to explore how nostalgia might accord with this notion of voluntary action so as to determine how we might bring it within the scope of ethical evaluation.

The emphasis in virtue ethics on voluntariness, which is intended to align with our usual practices of praise and blame (Broadie and Rowe, 2000: 38) means that we typically exempt or excuse people from ethical judgement when they have not done something deliberately. Indeed, it is widely accepted within moral philosophy that we can only be morally judged for those things which we voluntarily or deliberately do (Clarke, 2010: 263). This is well illustrated by the ongoing debate about the implications of causal determinism for our abilities to be morally responsible and thus deserving of condemnation or praise (Audi, 1991: 304).

We have good reason to ask, then, whether the nostalgic experience, or even nostalgic memory work, can meaningfully be called voluntary in this way. If it cannot, then it is arguably not a proper subject of ethical judgements – according to the particular framework of classical virtue ethics, according to prevailing suppositions within moral philosophy generally, or indeed according to our commonsense assumptions as evinced by our usual practices of praise and blame.

Coullie (2014) acknowledges this in her argument that Dlamini’s reflective nostalgia constitutes a form of ethical remembering. ‘How can ethics’, she asks, ‘concepts of right and wrong behaviour … apply to memory which is, for most of us, much of the time, beyond our control?’(p. 195). By way of response, Coullie attempts to demonstrate that memory can be voluntary, and thus that these voluntary forms of memory can fall within the scope of ethical evaluation (p. 199). Following Ricoeur’s (2004) insight that memory can involve actively appropriating traces of the past rather than merely passively allowing them into our minds (p. 56), Coullie says that ‘the ethical implications of memory relate to remembering as act, the purposeful adoption by individuals and communities of strategies to preserve specific memories … and the conscious decision not to rehearse particular past occurrences’ (p. 199). Coullie therefore agrees that only voluntary acts are appropriate targets for ethical evaluation, but argues that memory can be a voluntary act, and that it is thus possible to make ethical judgements regarding Dlamini’s nostalgia for his apartheid past.

The problem with this argument is that nostalgia is particular mode of remembering. While we may agree that we can voluntarily or purposefully remember something instead of forgetting it, it seems less clear that the nostalgic mode of memory can be something that is voluntary in the same way. Nostalgic memories are not necessarily invited, they might well be unprompted. It is far from obvious that the peculiar sort of sentiment involved in nostalgic memory can reasonably be regarded as being deliberate. While we are obviously able to govern our emotions, they are not voluntary in the same way that an action can be said to be voluntary. The triggering of nostalgic modes of remembering cannot be considered voluntarily or deliberately generated – unlike the sharing of nostalgic memory among SADF veterans that can be regarded as an act of memory work. Thus, non-intentional post-apartheid nostalgia remains outside the realm of ethicality.⁸

Earlier, we referred to statements that some scholars have made regarding the prima facie self-evidence that nostalgia for apartheid is immoral or unethical. At first glance, it does indeed appear that nostalgia for one’s apartheid past is, as Hook has said, morally dubious. If a person remembers his or her apartheid past with fondness, even if that fondness is bittersweet, this implies (or so we might think) an endorsement of apartheid itself. Given the unquestionable immorality of the apartheid system, this apparent endorsement must surely be immoral, and so the nostalgia in question is immoral too. Dlamini (2009) has rightly called such lines of thinking ‘lazy’ (p. 13). It is useful to elucidate why this is so.

As Davis (1979) has pointed out, the object of nostalgia is the personally experienced past (p. 8). An individual’s personally experienced past during apartheid is distinct from the apartheid past. As Edward Casey (1987) points out, ‘what we miss in nostalgia … is the past as we … once experienced it, not the cultural, epistemological, metaphysical foundations of that world’ (p. 365). Likewise, Tracy Isaacs (2011) notes that ordinary human limitations on perspective can enable an individual to view his or her actions as being separate from the broader system of collective action in which they might be implicated (p. 6). Thus, there is difference between a history of apartheid and a biography of a life lived during apartheid. In fact, it is quite tenable that the nostalgic veteran can fondly remember his personal actions or experiences during a war that was protecting the apartheid regime while not necessarily attaching the same fond memories to apartheid itself, while not idealising the apartheid past at all. This does not mean that no nostalgic veterans endorsed or continue to endorse apartheid, but rather that the fact of their nostalgia establishes nothing at all about this endorsement; we cannot reasonably infer the endorsement from nostalgia.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding Walden’s claim cited in the epigraph that ‘nostalgia is not innocent’, we have suggested that it may well be until such time as memories are shared or rehearsed, only then do they assume an ideological or moral character. So, it seems clear that evaluating the morality or ethicality of nostalgia is much more difficult than commonsensical understandings or intuitive judgments would seem to suggest. Thus, pronouncements on the suspect nature of nostalgia for one’s apartheid past seem difficult to substantiate – whether that nostalgia is experienced by Black or White South Africans.

Conceiving of post-apartheid nostalgia as a moral or ethical problem amounts to a misunderstanding of this mode of memory, or perhaps a confusion between questions of morality and those of personal taste (or sensibility). While one might find it distasteful or unsettling to learn that people can be nostalgic for their lives under the apartheid system, there does not seem to be any good reason to conclude that this is a moral problem. When the veteran is nostalgic for his experiences in the SADF, this does not imply that he endorses the apartheid regime. Even if he should do so, it is surely this endorsement and not the nostalgia, which is the proper target for ethical judgements.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Gary Baines is a Professor and the Head of Department at Rhodes University. He is the author of South Africa’s ‘Border War’: Contested Narratives and Conflicting Memories (Bloomsbury, 2014) and a co-editor (with Peter Vale) of Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late Cold War Conflicts (Unisa Press, 2008).

Gemma Barkhuizen is a Graduate of Rhodes University and the University of Durham, UK.

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