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PEACEFUL MEMORIES: REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN KANGWANE, SOUTH AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2011

Shireen Ally
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Abstract

Despite its manifest, if largely undocumented, histories of menacing violence and perilous politics, the thrust of popular memory in the former apartheid bantustan of KaNgwane insists that it was a peaceful, even apolitical, place. In a contemporary South African memorial culture that idealizes memories of victimization by (and resistance to) apartheid and its political violence, why would some in KaNgwane persistently narrate the past through tropes of peaceful order and disavowals of the political? Are these mnemonic effacements in KaNgwane best conceived of as forms of forgetting? This article challenges such a proposition. First, it recovers the hitherto unrecognized politics and violence in KaNgwane, in part (and paradoxically) out of the very same narratives that deny such histories. Second, it explores the dialectical co-implication of remembering and forgetting, and of memory and history, in KaNgwane's supposed anamnesis. And third, it proposes that the occlusions and assurances of memory in KaNgwane are structured by a localized semiotics in which politics is retrospectively signified by order and restraint, and negated by disorder and revolt. In this ‘memory work’, KaNgwane's past is anaesthetized of violence, and heroism is recovered not from rehearsals of victimization and resistance, but from memories of pacified civility instead.

Résumé

Malgré son passé manifeste (bien que non documenté pour l'essentiel) de violence menaçante et de politique périlleuse, la mémoire populaire de l'ancien bantoustan de KaNgwane sous le régime de l'apartheid insiste, dans ses grandes lignes, sur le caractère paisible et apolitique du lieu. Dans une culture de mémoire sud-africaine contemporaine qui idéalise les mémoires de victimisation par (et de résistance à) l'apartheid et sa violence politique, pourquoi certains à KaNgwane persistent-ils à narrer le passé à travers des tropes d'ordre paisible et de désaveu du politique? Faut-il concevoir ces effacements mnémoniques au KaNgwane comme des formes d'oubli? Cet article conteste une telle proposition. Dans un premier temps, il rétablit la politique et la violence jusqu’à présent non reconnues au KaNgwane, parfois (paradoxalement) à partir des récits qui nient ce passé. Dans un deuxième temps, il explore la co-implication dialectique du souvenir et de l'oubli, et de la mémoire et de l'histoire, dans l'amnésie supposée du KaNgwane. Dans un troisième temps enfin, il propose que les occlusions et les assurances de mémoire au KaNgwane sont structurées par une sémiotique structurée dans laquelle la politique est rétrospectivement signifiée par l'ordre et la retenue, et niée par le désordre et la révolte. Dans ce « travail de mémoire », le passé du KaNgwane est insensibilisé à la violence, et l'héroïsme ressort non pas des énumérations de victimisation et de résistance, mais des souvenirs de civilité pacifiée.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 351 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2011

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