Space and Symbols: Transforming Parliamentary Buildings in South Africa and Germany

Abstract

This chapter examines two cases — Germany and South Africa — in which existing parliamentary buildings have been part of the efforts to build new inclusive democracies and to come to terms with the past as part of a profound political transformation. Both polities underwent this transformation in the 1990s after extended periods of political turmoil, division and conflict. In both, the parliament and its building — the Reichstag in Germany and the Cape Town Parliament buildings in South Africa — had an important symbolic association with that prior history of conflict and non-democratic rule. But the decision was made, as part of that political transformation, not to build a new legislature for the new democracy but to retain the existing one. And in each case the decision to use the pre-existing building was also accompanied by attempts to refashion the content and symbolic meaning of that building, as part of the creation of a new inclusive representative democracy that would turn its back on a troubled past. This chapter will compare the effectiveness of these efforts in Germany and South Africa in helping to build a new democracy and come to terms with the past.