The ways in which states and societies communicate the past is imbued with meaning and significance. Choices around which events, episodes or historical figures should be commemorated – and how their stories should be told are sensitive and politically-charged, as the recent #RhodesMustFall movement has demonstrated. Memorialisation is also a dynamic, evolving and subjective phenomenon; museum pieces, statues or road names may stand for a version of history to remembered and be proud of for some and at certain times, just as they may stand for a past to be ashamed of and critiqued for others, at other times. What “truths” are remembered, or re-remembered, is often just as significant as those which are forgotten or suppressed. Critical too is the issue of which narratives and discourses the state seeks to memorialise and the extent to which these are challenged – or whether space even exists to challenge them – in private and community-level initiatives and practices.
These issues are arguably particularly acute in post-liberation polities, where the ruling party owes a significant part of its domestic legitimacy to its successful struggle against a past colonial or post-colonial oppressor. Many post-liberation parties in Africa have nevertheless been in power for decades – 37 years in Zimbabwe, 31 in Uganda, 26 in Ethiopia and Eritrea, 23 in South Africa – sometimes under the same leader, and their early popularity has in many cases given way to disillusionment and dissent among populations who have not yet experienced the promised benefits of independence or liberation. Long periods in office have also promoted factionalism and splits within ruling movements. In such circumstances, the struggles that brought these movements to power represent a pivotal point of reference for contemporary state discourses and memorialisation practices but also an important source of contestation in the context of modern debates on the country’s trajectory and the (non-) realisation of liberation era visions of the future.
This paper, which draws on on-going research undertaken as part of a 3-year Newton Fund project, scopes out the different ways in which liberation struggle is communicated and memorialised in the contemporary era, focusing in particular on the cases of South Africa and Uganda. The key questions we address are:
- What forms of communication are used in memorialising struggle, and which audiences are these intended for?
- Which actors and organizations play a role in memorialisation?
- Which “truths” and discourses are commemorated and which are neglected, and why?
In addressing these questions, the paper builds on preliminary fieldwork undertaken in Free State, Eastern Cape and Kampala to distinguish between “formal” and “informal” memorialisation spaces and practices as well as those initiated by state actors versus those outside the state machinery. In doing so, the paper reflects on the different roles that memorialisation practices perform for post-liberation states and societies, and the complex relationships between historical “truth” and contemporary politics.