Posted on April 14, 2010
Take Fatima Meer's death recently, for example. The importance of her role in the fight against apartheid is inaugurated by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's proposal that her house be turned into a heritage monument. It certainly doesn't get better than a Madikizela-Mandela stamp-of-approval for one to be elevated to the status of a struggle hero!
But it is her death that instantiates this possibility.
Death as a process suggests a kind of closure; the withdrawal of the subject from public life, only to emerge within the architecture of the Archive. Achille Mbembe (2002) goes to suggest that:'Assigning them [the dead] to this place makes it possible to establish an unquestionable authority over them and to tame the violence and cruelty of which the 'remains' are capable, especially when these are abandoned to their own devices.'
What are the consequences of death for the project of historical memory?
Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to go watch a play by Greg Latter titled Death of a Colonialist at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. This is a powerful play starring Jamie Bartlett (the former soap star of Isidingo and most recently Rhythm City). The play is set in the Eastern Cape town of Grahamstown. It is about a history teacher who is deeply passionate about his subject. He gets into trouble with the principal for insisting on teaching the same history, that of the Eastern Cape Frontier in the 19th century, culminating in the killing of Hintsa. In-between this story we are told of his own life. His daughter and son have both left South Africa for Canada and Australia respectively.
When we enter the theatre, Madosini's Xhosa bow music is playing while a blackboard with a map of the Eastern Cape stands in front of the stage. The interface between the two is undeniable and quite effective in setting the scene for the play. But when the play begins the Xhosa music is silenced—never to be heard during the play itself. During the play we hear fragments of music composed in the Western Classical style.
The main character tells the story of the war quite vividly and in detail, making vociferous claims about amaXhosa and their culture. We are being told a 'Xhosa history' and yet the Xhosa does not feature in the play itself. Even in the characters, there are no Xhosa to tell that history. There is a student in the class called Matshoba (it is implied that he is Xhosa), he is asked questions and we assume he responds, but even his voice is never heard. We only get a glimpse of him through the speech of the main protagonist himself.
This establishes an interesting interplay in the play where at once, it makes a claim to tell the history of amaXhosa but it in fact tells a story of a contemporary white family. In other words, it is a story on whiteness; capturing the anxieties of belonging and of finding a legitimate white identity in South Africa today. Situated in Grahamstown, the main character sees himself as originating from a settler colonial ancestry.
In this sense, Madosini's music plays a very active foregrounding role for the theatre that is to take place. Her presence within the theatre helps to qualify the play as a Xhosa history. While playing an active role, however, great care is taken to ensure that she does not take over the performance. Her presence becomes part of those 'given set of conditions' which allow the play's Xhosa narrative to take place, while, at the same time freeing it from all obligations of being true to the Xhosa.
Madosini's presence, though, is hard to ignore.
Given that she performs in an indigenous style, there is an implication that she forms part of that reality (the past) which once existed and precisely that which the play tries to recall. She emerges as a symbol who traverses history and her music trapped in an atemporal realm of 'culture'. As a stand-in for a people, culture (even a civilization), she becomes a marker of authenticity within the play.
Where are the voices of amaXhosa in Latter's play and why are they not heard?
There is an interesting counterpoint to Greg Latter's play in which the same colonial moment of the 19th century Eastern Cape is recalled against the backdrop of postapartheid present. That is Premesh Lalu's book The deaths of Hintsa (2010). Here, Lalu exposes the recurring elements of that colonial past through the figure of Hintsa. The two projects are similar in that they recall the same Archive of the 19th century colonial history, albeit for different sets of arguments. Secondly, both projects place the event of death at their centre, even though this death is located on different subjects and at different temporalities.
I beleive the Xhosa, as it were in the archive are already dead. Their voices do not exist. For as Lalu himself notes, it is only through the subjection of agency that the native appears in the archive. The native subject appears without agency, except at key moments where her/his recalling is key in legitimizing the 'achievement' of whites.
This is where the Death of a Colonialist slips into the grammar of colonial domination and its modes of evidence. For even when an assumed Xhosa-speaker (Matshoba) is asked questions in the play, he never answers back. It is the main protagonist who tells us what he has said. Therein lies the Archive's reproducibility. Even when we may speak of a new South Africa, its inclusivity is unimaginable within the colonial Archive.
Not even the most democratic reading of the archive can take away this FACT!
In other words, even when we try to speak in the contemporary our terms of speaking are already those governed by this reproducibility. The only solution to the impasse is the complete abolition of the archive itself - a task we are not yet willing to undertake.
It seems, we remain loyal to the task of heritage-making in the hope that all will be revealed in future. Yet, in deferring the death of the Archive, we are left with very little choice but to embrace it as part of our heritage.
While deferring the death of the archive in the hope that something of the native subject can be excavated from it, its dearth remains. And it is this dearth that will remain to hinder us from transcending historical tendencies.
Thokozani Mhlambi is an Archival Platform Correspondent and a lecturer in the Department of Musicology, UNISA. He writes in his personal capacity.