Pathways to Reconciliation: Between Theory and Practice by Cleo Fleming

Author:Cleo Fleming [Fleming, Cleo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138254343
Google: xa8cvgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 32832552
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Memory Projects and Memory Sites

Within the post-TRC climate of dissent and affirmation and in the name of ‘transformation’, the government instituted extensive policy units and invested hefty sums in highly visible commemorative projects. Foremost sites include the District Six Museum in Cape Town and Robben Island; the Apartheid Museum and the Women’s Gaol, both in Johannesburg; and the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum in Soweto. Other projects include the creation of ‘hero’ statues dedicated to inspirational leaders like Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and Mahatma Ghandi, as well as monuments to comrade-victims like the Guguletu Seven and the Cradock Four and numerous community memorials, some the source of local pride, others publicly disputed.7 These sites carry on the ‘reconciliation through truth’ project initiated by the TRC, which sought to acknowledge the struggle and suffering of the past through the creation of a common history intended to rectify divisions, unify the nation and effect closure.8 They commemorate the Struggle, pay tribute to its heroes, reference and transform sites of suffering and resistance, and cultivate a common national memory archive to signal the politics of the new nation. In articulating hitherto untold stories, museums and memorial sites embed the historical experience of a previously excluded citizenry into new narratives of nation.9 They have a redemptive mission aimed at closing off the past for the sake of national unity. Driven by political necessities, the new sites of memorialization highlight some features of the Struggle, while occluding others, to homogenize a heterogeneous past and support new ideologies and political hierarchies. These projects can be fraught with difficulties. When developed through a ‘top-down’ approach to carry out an ideological agenda, they can undermine peace-building initiatives ‘at the risk of further marginalizing already vulnerable groups’ (Naidu 2006, 2). In choosing who will be remembered and who forgotten, they ‘sanitize’ history and create a new national consciousness, while also establishing personality cults through a new genealogy of heroes that can function to reduce a complex historical experience (Marschall 2006, 176–93).

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