Doing Memory in Public: Postapartheid Memorial Space as an Activist Project

Abstract

After decades of white minority rule in South Africa democratization brought with it a wave of commemorative activities to give voice to dissident histories and memories silenced during apartheid. Yet, what happens when an insurgent past is put on display in a museum? Who decides how to represent histories of national conflict, violence, and resistance? What obligations do postconflict memory projects have to museological conventions? What obligations do they have to those they claim to represent? This chapter is about the nature and limits of museums as public spaces where past atrocities are confronted and mobilized to situate, articulate, and authenticate claims about contemporary social life. The democratization of public historical space is as much about the content of the new or revised narratives as it is about how and who produces the content. In examining how these dissident histories become mainstream through new public culture institutions, I expose the activist impulses guiding this process. I look at two projects—one closely tied to the African National Congress (ANC) and the other a more grassroots initiative—that grew out of agitation against the apartheid order and as a result of deliberation on how to grapple with its legacies. The first project is Freedom Park in Pretoria (or Tshwane), a state-legislated memorial project with origins in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).