Posted on January 19, 2011
The work of memory is to engage with the past.
Repressed memories haunt us all. We have to deal with them, as individuals and as a society in order to find healing, to achieve freedom. As a nation have a responsibility to engage with our troublesome past in order to build a just society, a better future for us all.
We know that the work of memory has also been advanced through the development of museums and other heritage institutions, including archives through research, exhibitions and by acquiring, research and presenting information previously inaccessible to the public at large and 'new' histories and school curricula have similarly engaged the past, but several of the national projects initiated address past injustices have also dealt broadly with, or been reliant on, issues of memory.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) allowed people to speak their memories. For some the action of telling their stories was cathartic, for others it offered an opportunity to make a plea for justice, reparations, even memorials. Some asked for forgiveness, others offered it. Looking back many ask if this was enough, whether the promise of reconciliation has been fulfilled. There's still a residue of anger, as sense that compensation for past suffering is still due. The business of the TRC is still unfinished.
The National Prosecuting Authority's Missing Persons Task Force was handed over 800 cases when the TRC officially came to an end. This unit has continued to work on tracing the remains of those who fell victim to apartheid brutality. The identification and return of remains, for reburial by relatives, has brought measure of comfort and some peace of mind to many, but it has also reopened old wounds.
Many requests for memorials, permanent markers of memory, were made to the TRC. In some communities this has been taken on board by local government or communities. See the post from Mak (from Makhado) re the memorials in Matlosana. Always though, questions are asked about how decisions are taken; who is remembered and who is forgotten. Freedom Park, government's major legacy project also addresses the issue of memorialisation in a number of ways, although it too has been contentious. While victims live on in the hearts and minds of those who loved and knew them it seems that, as long as there are survivors and descendents, there will be call for public memorials.
Renaming of streets, towns, municipalities, institutions and public other facilities has also taken the project of memory work forward.
The land restitution process provided another opportunity for engaging with the past, and consequences and memory of dispossession. While some have benefitted from the process it may be said that it has not adequately redressed the moral wrong done to victims of forced removals, and has thus failed to make a significant contribution to the national reconciliation process. As Cheryl Walker, one of the authors of the seminal study of the impact of apartheid forced removals, puts it, "There has been a lack of attention by the state to the symbolic, cultural and psychological elements of restitution - only minimal attention has been given to the non-material issues around memory, public recognition and identity that inform many claimants". (Quoted in Roux, T. Land Restitution and Reconciliation in South Africa, undated)
Much has been done too on an individual level too to assist people to engage with their personal pasts in order to find healing, and to break the cycle of violence that plagues our country.
But is this all enough? An unpublished sent to me for comment recently notes that,"Old social fissures remain resilient. New ones are appearing. Social cohesion is proving elusive. Deep-rooted cultures of secrecy are shrouding significant reaches of experience in both the past and in the present. Could it be that our post-apartheid memory work has been too superficial? And that the really difficult memory work remains to be done?"
This is the nettle we need to grasp, the challenge we need to take on!
Jo-Anne Duggan is the Director of the Archival Platform
