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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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The Past without the TRC: New Official and Unofficial Histories in the New South Africa
| Panel |
57. Post-apartheid's social imaginaries
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| Paper ID | 746 |
| Author(s) |
Hyslop, Jonathan
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Academic discussion of the past in the post-1994 South Africa has overwhelmingly focussed on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This paper starts from the premise that academic researchers' fascination with the TRC has diverted attention from other significant forms of political and cultural engagement with the past. It explores some of these other forms. To an intriguing extent, popular culture after 1994 has had a strongly presentist focus; especially amongst young people both consumerism and scepticism has often produced an active turning away from old narratives. The paper considers the possibility that contemporary youth cultures, often dismissed as 'apolitical' have a genuinely creative and egalitatrian dimension in their refusal of an obsession with history. On the other hand, the paper suggests that current political leaders are instrumentalising the past in a way which serves crudely ideological objectives. The ANC is increasingly generating a new official nationalist history which actively rejects the motif of reconciliation. The Freedom Park project is examined as a key example of this. The political difficulties of the state in handling issues such as the centenary of the Boer War and the renaming of towns are explored. But much interest in the past proceeds along paths that do not connect much with either the history of apartheid or of resistance. The paper looks at activity in the fields of family history, museums and even genetics. The paper suggests that the complexity of dealing with the South African past is much greater than a TRC-focussed discourse allows. |
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