Posted on December 12, 2012
How do descendents of perpetrators of violent acts honour their ancestors? The outrage expressed by James Mbhele and Mehlwemamba Ntuli in Musa Hlatshwayo's story about the representation of their ancestors as having feasted on people contrasts with the legend of Moshoeshoe's treatment of the cannibals who are said to have devoured his grandfather, Peete. While the latter is clearly a story that portrays Moshoeshoe as wise and heroic, what it leaves me wondering is how the descendents of the cannibals who ate Peete remember this episode in the history of their families. How do they remember their ancestors who became the graves of Moshoeshoe's grandfather?

I am also reminded of Chinua Achebe's recently published memoir, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. What happens long after conflict situations like the Biafran War of 1967-1970 in Nigeria and the Rwandan genocide of 1994? How will the descendents of people who were perpetrators remember their ancestors? Can one be proud of a mass-murderer ancestor?

Achebe's book has created a firestorm of debate in Nigeria. There have been many angry rebuttals of Achebe's understanding of the role in the deaths of approximately three million people of certain once prominent military leaders, some of whom have died in recent months. So, what happens generally then is that debate rages about what some people did; after some conflicts, some get indicted by courts within their countries or by the International Criminal Court, tried and (usually) jailed. But what happens in the families of these people? How are they commemorated after they have gone? How are they remembered down the generations?

Closer to home, the scars of conflicts going back almost two hundred years continue to fester in different parts of South Africa. The Anglo-Boer (or South African) War remains deeply ingrained in some people whose ancestors were placed in concentration camps by the British, for instance. How then do those whose ancestors were the leaders of the war remember them? Moreover, there are monuments and memorials to those who were victims in the war and monuments celebrating war heroes. But what is the place of collaborators and defectors in memories and commemorations of the war?

Elsewhere, there are plenty of grievances among groups whose chiefdoms were conquered by the Zulu under Shaka kaSenzangakhona. There are even reconciliation ceremonies being discussed among groups whose ancestors that fought one another prior to the rise of the Zulu. Many people are sore about what befell their ancestors. The soreness is made worse by the celebration of some of the people responsible for the murder and displacement of their ancestors as heroes.

How do we make sense of past conflicts once we bring the ancestors into view?

Mbongiseni Buthelezi is the Deputy Director of the Archival Platform