Abstract
Launched in 2001 by Thabo Mbeki as a presidential memorial project, Freedom Park was originally conceived as an authentic African and postcolonial monument based on the values of humanism and freedom and dedicated to the victims of conflict during the colonial epoch in South Africa. This conception was subsequently expanded to embrace the entire natural, social, political and cultural history of South Africa from the emergence of rudimentary organic cells some 3.6 billion years ago, through the emergence of modern humans rights and up to the present by positing the country as a place of origins. This article draws on the genealogical ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault as well on Frantz Fanon's theory of the role national culture in anti-colonial struggles and Steve Biko's conception of African culture and humanism to critically examine the monumental, antiquarian and critical uses of history in the construction of post-Apartheid public memorials and national monuments as manifest in Freedom Park.
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