Visual Community Autoethnography and Heritage: Selected Cairns in South Africa

Abstract

Cultural heritage practitioners and activists in South Africa engage in community autoethnography both in process and in the product. We spent over seven years collaborating with post-conflict museums that include community autoethnographic products in their tours and/or exhibits. This collaborative research focused on oral storytelling as adopted by the museum guides. This storytelling includes community visual autoethnographic products that engage the viewer in a performative manner. One example of such products is cairns. These sacred sites are similar in structure to those found in the landscapes across the world, including in South Africa, and are mostly linked to the indigenous hunter-gatherers or the early herders or farmers. However, the cairns focused upon in this paper memorialize three historical eras in the South African history of conflict and reconciliation: colonial conflict between the Voortrekkers and the British and the isiZulu-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1800s; forced removals in Cape Town in the 1960s to 1980s; and the dawn of democracy in the 1990s after the release of President Nelson Mandela. The research identifies some of the elements of cairns that give them global relevance, and posits guidelines for post- and present-conflict communities on how cairns as community autoethnographic heritage sites can still evolve and stimulate sustainable community relevance and engagement.