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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Pointing to the dead: victims, martyrs and public memory in South Africa
Author:Marschall, SabineISNI
Year:2008
Periodical:South African Historical Journal
Volume:60
Issue:1
Pages:103-123
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:monuments
African National Congress (South Africa)
Pan Africanist Congress
memory
anti-apartheid resistance
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582470802287745
Abstract:This article focuses on South Africa during the early 1990s, a crucial time of transition, when fundamental political changes were imminent and different stakeholders among the former liberation movements prepared themselves for representation in the emergent postapartheid dispensation. In this context, both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), whose history of rivalry and ideological differences extends to the present day, erected a public memorial for their respective fallen cadres in Mamelodi township outside Pretoria. By extending the discussion to the Sharpeville memorial, built roughly a decade later to commemorate the victims of the infamous 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, this article argues that institutionalized commemoration through memorials, monuments and heritage sites plays an important and ongoing role in the competitive process of laying claim to key icons of the 'Struggle for Liberation', demonstrating ownership of significant events, and strategically appropriating selected dead heroes, fallen comrades or scores of victims. By pointing to the dead, by erecting official, lasting memorials, both the ANC and the PAC shape public memory, legitimate their contribution to the freedom struggle and their role in the postapartheid dispensation. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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