Original article: http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v10/v10i1a11.htm

History Making and Present Day Politics: The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa .  Hans Erik Stolten, ed. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. 2007. 376 pp.

Volume 10, Issue 1
Spring 2008

This work is an important contribution both to the recent historiography of South Africa and to analysis of the post-apartheid era. It also provides interesting discussions of such practical matters as teaching, designing curricula in a challenging policy environment, and applied history in efforts towards the rectification of social injustices. For these reasons, plus the fact that it is well-written and edited, the volume should appeal to a wide audience of teachers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

The book grew out of a 2002 conference sponsored by the Nordic Africa Institute and the Center for African Studies at the University of Copenhagen. This brought to Denmark more than fifty historians and historically oriented scholars, most of them from South Africa and northern Europe. Students of South African history over the past several decades will recognize many of the names of the scholars present.

The editor, Danish historian Hans Erik Stolten, has divided the volume into three sections. Part I consists of six essays that focus on the “role of history in the creation of a new South Africa .” These include an account of the history of South Africa as a concept (Saul DuBow); an analysis of the concepts used in the description of the democratic “transition” (Thiven Reddy); a discussion of how history is taught in the post-apartheid era (Colin Bundy); a critique of two prominent narratives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Elaine Unterhalter); and descriptions of the role of the researcher in land restitution cases (Anna Bohlin, Martin Legassick). Part II consists of five papers on the theme of “heritage and the popularizing of memory.”  Topics covered here include public history and “heritage” in the post-apartheid era (Gary Baines, Christopher Saunders); the centenary commemoration of the South African War (Albert Grundlingh); how apartheid is depicted in the museum at Gold Reef City (Georgi Verbeeck); and the restructuring of key South African spaces to conform to global consumerism (Martin J. Murray).  Part III consists of six papers that deal with South African historiography. The first three (respectively by Bernhard Makhosezwe Magubane, Christopher Saunders, and Merle Lipton) pay special attention to the debate between “liberal” and “radical” South African historians and its legacy. The fourth paper by Wessel Visser and the fifth by Allison Drew both concern representations of communism. The former is about the production of anti-communist history in Afrikaans and the latter about the role of racism in the Communist Party in the 1920s. The sixth paper by Catherine Burns is rather unique in offering a new vision of the relevance of history for the South Africa of today. The editor has also made available on his website unpublished conference papers.

Due to space limitations, I can mention only a few things about the papers and the issues they bring up for debate. First, Catherine Burns’ paper provides a fresh vision of history’s relevance. It describes how she and her colleagues at the University of Natal, Durban are bringing history to life for a new generation by focusing on health and legal issues. History has a “thirsty audience,” she suggests, but only when it is dressed up in such disguises.  Martin Legassick’s essay is particularly interesting for its personal insights on the role of an academic historian working to identify and foster legitimate land restitution claims in the Northern and Western Cape. This description is nicely supplemented by Bohlin’s paper on land restitution and memory in the small Western Cape community of Kalk Bay. Murray’s paper will be of interest to those concerned with the post-modern simulacra of global capitalism. Here Murray discusses the pseudo-gold mine at Gold Reef City, the pseudo-maritime ambience of Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, and the ostentatious fantasy of the entertainment facility known as “Lost City.”

As mentioned above, the split between so-called liberal and radical South African historians is explicitly addressed by three essays in part III, but it is also an issue that is implicit in a number of others. This debate has essentially been about the relationship between capitalism and apartheid. Debate continues over the causal roles of culture, race, and class. That there are still tender emotions here is revealed Merle Lipton’s paper as she describes the hostile reception her work has faced because it argues that segments of business were in fact instrumental in ending apartheid. From a quite different perspective, Magubane is scathing in his judgment that white South African historians, whether liberal or radical, “never confronted what it meant for black folks to be treated as non-persons in the country of their birth. Or indeed, what it meant to be white and be proclaimed a member of the superior race!” (p. 252).

Even if unduly harsh, Magubane’s critique leaves one wondering how white historians investigating black history under apartheid could overcome the institutional racism of their segregated and economically privileged upbringings. Psychologically, how did they deal with the fact that many could jet off to study in England or the U.S.A. while at the same time research grave issues of poverty and injustice at home? Did they have life changing experiences that led them to history or did history lead to those experiences?

At least in their contributions for this volume, white South African scholars do appear reticent to reflect on the role of race in their work lives. While Saunders provides a nice paper on his four decades of work, he does so in a purely intellectual fashion, not really addressing psychological or identity issues. Furthermore, neither he not anyone else in the volume brings up such issues as translation complexities and the use of research assistants. Why has translation or the use of European languages with non-native speaking informants been such a non-issue for scholars in a country where there are so many languages and dialects? And, if white scholars used black research assistants as translators and collectors of oral history why do they now seem invisible? Unfortunately, there is nothing here to compare with the fascinating account published recently in ASQ by historian Robert Edgar about his research life, the long-term impacts his work has had on the peoples he studied, and the way that he has become personally intertwined in locally produced religious worldviews (Edgar 2007).

Robert Shanafelt
Georgia Southern University