Difference between revisions of "History After Apartheid"

Revision as of 06:09, 19 February 2017

History After Apartheid explores how cultural and historical institutions fared in South Africa after the nation’s first democratic elections in 1994, and Coombes discusses many of the challenges faced by these institutions. This text explores ideas of home, nation, and community as well as the shared and often debated history of South Africa. The text closely examines how various approaches to creating public spaces for historical interpretation are negotiated among key stakeholders and it examines many examples within South Africa’s public domain; the specific examples discussed include a monument, a museum, a historical site, and fine art and their relationship to the overarching theme of belonging to a shared community.

The beginning chapter covers the Voortrekker Monument, which is a monument that was created and inaugurated in the mid twentieth century to commemorate key Afrikaner nationalists and the pioneer nature of South Africa. At the time of apartheid’s end, some argued for the demolition of this symbolic monument, but it was not destroyed. Coombes argues that the monument is meaningful for all South Africans in its legacy as both a mass display of Afrikaner power but also as a rallying point for opposing factions that arguably helped to end apartheid. While its original purpose or intent was to further the Afrikaner nationalist narrative, it has proved to provide a physical space from which those ideas can be challenged and from which new ideas and narratives can be launched.

The second chapter examines Robben Island, an island off the coast of South Africa, that houses a prison in which Nelson Mandela was famously held captive for 18 years. The historical site is open for visitors, and Coombes discusses its increased commercialization. She even includes an image of a tourist photograph in Mandela’s cell, which seems to state that the pronounced gravity of the site and its meaning has been lost through its monetary and limited focus. Robben Island’s primary focus on Mandela’s experience detracts from the overall experience of other prisoners and other parties involved in the resistance. Coombes uses this site as an example that represents the resistance struggle of the anti-apartheid movements, but because of the pressures of international tourism, it ultimately leaves behind more nuanced accounts of historical experience by only focusing on Mandela’s story.

District Six is an inner-city area of Cape Town’s downtown area, and it is where, during the apartheid, there were forced removals of tens of thousands of residents. This site is the focus of Coombes’ third chapter, and it in particular embodies the struggle of the separation of individuals from their own communities and histories. The District Six Museum receives minimal funding compared to the two previously discussed historical entities, but it is still widely popular among tourists. The site is unique as it includes the input, stories, and even some possessions of former residents of the area, and in that former residents helped to found the museum. The site uses nostalgia through its recreated and staged rooms and residences, but it tries not to rely on that feeling too heavily; the goal is not to glorify the past in any way, but rather, to remember it as it was. This site is especially important through its inclusion of diverse narratives and in its willingness to expose contradictions and nonlinear information.

Coombes’ fourth chapter is centered upon the museological strategies born out of conversations happening in the late twentieth century in South Africa. These discussions addressed issues like “truth” and history, diversity or unity, and analyses of South Africa’s legacy of political involvement in museums. One of the first challenges discussed in the chapter is land. South Africa is often represented as a landscape with little humans but ample space and wild animals. This depiction and the resulting eco-tourism is troubling in that it completely leaves out all people, other than affluent and most often white tourists. Using the natural environment as a distraction from its known history and racial inequality, land also brings up questions of land ownership. An additional challenge discussed is labor because it is an important part of the country’s wealth in gold mining. Gold Reef City is a popular tourist attraction that operates as a working gold mine that allows visitors. Coombes says this site, while informative, is problematic in that it is putting an acceptable face on a complicated history that included a migrant labor system and segregation. Another concern in properly depicting historical imbalances is the issue of slavery, which has been suppressed. While there are many working to build those narratives and create walking tours and other interpretive experiences, some within South Africa see working to make the slave experience more widely know as counter-unity. Museums involved in these conversations on strategies to more adequately represent all of South Africa and its history are still being met with the apartheid legacy and its challenges, even as progress is made.

“Ethnicity in New South Africa” is the fifth chapter and in it, Coombes discusses ideas of racial purity and superiority, casting of the indigenous Khoisan people, and an exhibition of photographs entitled “Miscast.” The Khoisans were treated as subhuman and were subjected to biological and genetic studies with the creation of casts replicating them and highlighting any unique physical attributes. The “Miscast” displayed images from these studies and included casts of body parts, images from medical journals; all of these representations showed that the Khoisan in a derogatory light. Coombes argues that the “Miscast” exhibit was a reflection on a painful and traumatic history and meant to be self-reflexive in nature, although it was not received well by all.

Coombes ends the book with a chapter “New Subjectivities for the Nation,” which focuses on the movement of South Africans “from repression to expression” (243). The Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Mandate emphasized giving dignity back to those from whom it had been taken. Coombes argues that fine art was an area in which inequalities and inadequacies of representation of all kinds of South Africans should also be addressed. Coombes focuses in this chapter on diverse artists who include some kind of relationship, often conflicted, between past histories and current experiences in their work.

Coombes’ work is an important foundational text in the study of cultural representation and historical interpretation in post-apartheid South Africa. Her work provides key historical information on the apartheid and the country’s challenges post-apartheid, particularly in cultural and historical realms. Her argument on the necessity to include systematically suppressed experiences and narratives can be a valuable take-away for all who are in the position to provide some historical interpretation for a racially unequal and extremely complicated past.