Pointing to the Dead: Victims, Martyrs and Public Memory in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on South Africa during the early 1990s, a crucial time of transition, when fundamental political changes were imminent and different stakeholders among the former liberation movements prepared themselves for representation in the emergent post-apartheid dispensation. In this context, both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), whose history of rivalry and ideological differences extends to the present day, erected a public memorial for their respective fallen cadres in Mamelodi township outside Pretoria. By extending the discussion to the Sharpeville memorial, built roughly a decade later to commemorate the victims of the infamous 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, this article argues that institutionalised commemoration through memorials, monuments and heritage sites plays an important and ongoing role in the competitive process of laying claim to key icons of the ‘Struggle for Liberation’, demonstrating ownership of significant events, and strategically appropriating selected dead heroes, fallen comrades or scores of victims. By pointing to the dead, by erecting official, lasting memorials, both the ANC and the PAC shape public memory, legitimate their contribution to the freedom struggle and their role in the post-apartheid dispensation.