In South Africa, even those uninterested in actively engaging with history cannot escape it: the past materially surrounds us. As soon as we leave our homes, we are enveloped by the legacies of apartheid-era urban planning—whether in the grandiose colonial architecture of a city centre or the streets of a township on the periphery. As we go about our day, we encounter a dense network of cultural symbols, monuments, names, and narratives that convey to us the memory of what came before. The impact that these ubiquitous sensory experiences in public spaces have on our identities is profound. Yet one must ask: which history is it that we are surrounded by—or rather, whose?

In the thirty-one years since the end of white minority rule in South Africa and the inauguration of the first democratically elected government, the cultural legacy of apartheid and colonialism has been the subject of heated public debate. The Afrikaner monuments, British statues, and racist narratives embedded in heritage sites and museums raise difficult questions: should they be demolished, as was done in major Eastern European cities after the fall of the Soviet Union? Or, if not, what should their place and purpose be in a “new” South Africa? What would meaningful change in the cultural and historical landscape look like?

Debates about how to represent a common, blood-soaked past characterised by violence, pain, and systematic human rights abuses are central to any society undergoing major transition. To build a peaceful and inclusive society, reconciliation must occur not only between former enemies but also between their often-opposing, even mutually exclusive, interpretations of history. The resurgence of white nationalist movements in the past decade makes the issue especially pressing. Groups such as AfriForum, by denying historical injustices and opposing redress measures (Langa & Kiguwa 2025), demonstrate that the “contests unfolding over the South African past” (Rassool 2000, p. 1) are far from over.

Like many other African states, South Africa adopted the African Union’s Transitional Justice Policy in 2019 (African Union 2019). This policy, along with national legal frameworks (IJR 2025), places memorialisation at the heart of societal healing. Drawing from ample experience, the AU developed policy guidelines to help post-conflict societies address the crimes of the past on multiple dimensions and move beyond them. As Tim Murithi (2024, p. 2) notes, the policy recognises the “critical need to move beyond temporary stalemates and ceasefires” and instead intentionally confront “the underlying grievances that have fueled decades of animosity and violence on the continent.” Transitional justice thus encompasses not only criminal prosecution but also commemorative activities, the erection of monuments and symbols, the renaming of public spaces, and the revision of history texts and educational curricula.

Much has indeed been done since 1994 to reshape South Africa’s landscape of national memory and to foster inclusiveness and belonging. New monuments, museums, and memorials have been erected to acknowledge the injustices of apartheid and colonialism, represent the struggles of marginalised communities, and celebrate the diverse cultures of the nation. Yet, despite the successes of government-led heritage reconstruction in satisfying immediate transitional needs of reconciliation (Wells 2019), memorialisation initiatives have also faced growing criticism.

This piece contends that memorialisation is a vital pillar of post-apartheid nation-building, but that without the active participation of communities—especially those historically silenced—efforts to represent South Africa’s past inclusively will remain incomplete.

1. Bringing Truth to the Surface: Beyond the TRC
Recognition and remembrance are essential to victims of systematic injustice. An empirical study found that memorialisation initiatives were regarded as the second most important form of state reparation after financial compensation (Kiza et al. 2006). Bringing individual or communal memories into the collective national consciousness allows marginalised voices to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), through its hearings from 1996 to 1998, unearthed countless cases of extreme political violence and allowed many victims to confront their perpetrators. This process set in motion mourning, forgiveness, and healing. Some regard the TRC’s final report of 1998, rather than the Constitution of 1996, as the true “founding document” of South Africa, for it laid bare the scale and depth of apartheid’s abuses and acknowledged a painful truth necessary for a new beginning (Wilson 2001, p. 212).

Despite its achievements, the TRC had limitations. By focusing on individual acts of violence and the post-1960 period, it downplayed what Patrick Harries (2010, pp. 127-128) calls the “widespread, systemic nature of racism in South Africa.” Education on this broader structural dimension remains insufficient. Moreover, collective memory—even of acute pain—tends to fade over time. A number of studies, concisely summarised in Diawara et al. (2010), show that remembering is never linear or complete; it employs strategies of selection and exclusion. Without deliberate efforts to preserve memory, societies risk falling into strategies of suppression in which the past, though unacknowledged, continues to shape people’s minds and actions. Forgetting, therefore, is not healing—it is repression.

Without historical context, post-apartheid generations run the danger of developing what Diawara et al. (2010, p. 8) term a “presentist mindset,” interpreting inequality, poverty, and violence as present conditions divorced from their historical roots. Disentangling these threads demands lifelong education and engagement with history at all levels of society. Given the inequalities that persist in South African education, heritage sites such as Robben Island and the Nelson Mandela Capture Site play an increasingly critical role. As Ciraj Rassool (2000, p. 21) observes, “the responsibility for the ideological work of national identity formation, and the task of creating ‘good citizens’, are in some ways being shifted away from the schools to heritage institutions and mediums of public culture.” These sites not only educate but also shape national identity, offering narratives of justice, belonging, and reconciliation.

2. History and Heritage during the Apartheid Era
The narratives of South African history have been dramatically reshaped since 1994. During apartheid, the selection of historical events, heroes, and enemies reflected the interests of the ruling Afrikaner elite (Harries 2010). Heritage sites and museums promoted an Afrikaner-centrist narrative that legitimised segregation and white supremacy. Clifton Crais (1992) argues that such discourses achieved dominance not through truth but through institutional power. The National Party, elected in 1948, used history and heritage as tools to assert Afrikaner identity against British cultural influence, symbolised in architecture, naming practices, and social customs. Monuments such as the Voortrekker Monument and annual Great Trek commemorations enshrined Afrikaner nationalism as the foundation of the nation. It became, as Annie Coombes (2003, p. 25) underlines, “the only history available at any level of education.” Non-white groups were depicted only peripherally, as figures in a tale of white progress and civilisation.

This dehumanising narrative was visually reinforced through monuments and museums. As the acclaimed photojournalist Joseph Louw observed upon a visit in 1992, the Voortrekker Monument depicted black people “either killing or kneeling,” epitomising apartheid’s binary portrayal of blackness as either violent or submissive (Coombes 2003, p. 35). Racist depictions of “barbaric” or “primitive” Africans pervaded literature and heritage displays (Davis 2003), sustained by the systematic exclusion of black scholars from academia (Batisai et al. 2022). By erasing or distorting the rich and diverse histories of black, coloured, and Indian communities, apartheid heritage rendered people of European descent as the primary bearers of history, while others were turned into “objects of the histories of others” rather than “subjects of their own histories” (IJR 2017, p. 113).

3. Excursus: The “Prehistorical” Other
A particularly insidious discourse was that of the “prehistorical African”—an imagined figure frozen in time, designed to represent humanity before civilisation (Wells 2019; Harries 2010). This notion located black identity in prehistory, long before the onset of civilised history, denying its historical subjectivity and political agency. Sites such as the Cradle of Humankind and rock art in the Drakensberg Mountains became emblematic of this view. Although these sites are now celebrated for their scientific and touristic value, they once reinforced a racial hierarchy that placed white Europeans at the pinnacle of evolution (Ackermann 2018). National marketing strategies compounded this dichotomy, promoting the natural and “primitive” alongside symbols of white civilisation (Grundlingh 2006)—thus entrenching the association of whiteness with progress and blackness with evolutionary stasis.

The controversial “Bushman Diorama” at the South African Museum,[1] only dismantled in 2001, exemplifies how colonial metaphors and racialised representations continue to shape South Africa’s cultural landscape. The life-sized exhibit depicted indigenous hunter-gatherers in a Stone Age setting, devoid of historical context or reference to the violence that decimated their communities. Patricia Davison (2018, p. 84) observes that such displays depended on “historical amnesia” and excluded the voices and contemporary realities of the Khoisan descendants. These examples reveal how the deconstruction of apartheid-era representations of history and heritage was not only necessary, but urgent—to restore historical agency and dignity to those who had been dehumanised.

4. Outlook: Towards an Inclusive History
Post-1994 memorialisation—through monuments, museums, and revised curricula—has sought to acknowledge injustice and heal division. These initiatives recognise that the history taught during apartheid was not objective fact but a carefully curated “single story,” constructed to support the National Party’s segregationalist policies and worldview. Yet the cultural and psychological imprint of those dehumanising representations endures, shaping identity even among the “born-free” generation. Without appreciating the intergenerational effects of colonial and apartheid ideologies, understanding remains fragmented.

Therefore, memorialisation must be accompanied by programmes that foster historical consciousness within all communities. Developing a critical understanding of history—recognising how identity has been shaped by representation—is essential. History is not static but dynamic, open to critique and reinterpretation. Only by reclaiming one’s own history can individuals and communities engage in meaningful reconciliation.

Bridging the gap between academic historiography and community memory remains challenging, yet projects such as the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation’s dialogue programmes and the District Six Museum in Cape Town offer valuable models. These initiatives co-create historical knowledge with communities, producing narratives that are both authentic and empowering. By bringing diverse accounts into dialogue, they give tangible form to reconciliation—between former enemies, between conflicting interpretations, and between people and their own pasts.

Conclusion
Memorialisation in post-apartheid South Africa is not merely about preserving memory but about reshaping it through inclusion and dialogue. When the descendants of those once silenced are recognised as co-authors of the nation’s story, the wounds of exclusion begin to heal. Reconciliation, therefore, is not a completed event but an ongoing act of remembering—together.

By Katharina Hillermann

 

References

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African Union (2019). ‘Transitional Justice Policy. Adopted February 2019’, Section 2, Paragraph 73.

Batisai, B., Mavhunga, P., Naidoo, K. (2022). ‘Rethinking Inclusion in Higher Education: Lessons for the South African Academic Space’. In: South African Journal of Higher Education 36(6), 210-230.

Coombes, A. E. (2003). History After Apartheid. Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Crais, C. (1992). ‘Representation and the Politics of Identity in South Africa: An Eastern Cape Example’. In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies 25(1), 99-126.

Davis, G. (2003). Voices of Justice and Reason: Apartheid and Beyond in South African Literature. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi.

Davison, P. (2018). ‘The Politics and Poetics of the Bushman Diorama at the South African Museum’. In: ICOFOM Study Series [Online] 46, 81-97.

Diawara, M., Lategan, B., Rüsen, J. (2010). Historical Memory in Africa: Dealing with the Past, Reaching for the Future in an Intercultural Context. New York: Berghahn Books.

Grundlingh, A. (2006). ‘Revisiting the “Old” South Africa: Excursions into South Africa’s Tourist History under Apartheid, 1948–1990’. In: South African Historical Journal 56(1), 103-122.

Harries, P. (2010). ‘From Public History to Private Enterprise. The Politics of Memory in the New South Africa’. In: Diawara, M., Lategan, B., Rüsen, J. (eds.), Historical Memory in Africa: Dealing with the Past, Reaching for the Future in an Intercultural Context. New York: Berghahn Books, 121-143.

Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) (2017). Pathways for Connections. An Emerging Model for Long-Term Reconciliation in Post-Conflict South Africa. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.

Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) (2025). ‘Legal Standing on Memorialization’. Online Resource: https://www.ijr.org.za/2025/02/legal-standing-on-memorialisation/.

Kiza, E., Rathgeber, C., Rohne, H. (2006). ‘Victims of War: An Empirical Study on War-Victimization and Victims’ Attitudes Toward Addressing Atrocities’, cited in: Brett, S. et al. (2007). Memorialization and Democracy: State Policy and Civic Action. Conference Report. ICTJ Online Resource: https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Global-Memorialization-Democracy-2007-English_0.pdf.

Langa, M., Kiguwa, P. (2025). ‘Between White Nostalgia and Apocalypse. White Nationalist Remembrance of the Past and Fear of the Future in Post-Apartheid South Africa’. In: Berghof Foundation (ed.), Global Learning Hub for Transitional Justice and Reconciliation, 1-15.

Murithi, T. (ed.) (2024).  African Union and Transitional Justice: Healing the Past and Restoring Human Dignity. Fanele.

Rassool, C. (2000). ‘The Rise of Heritage and the Reconstitution of History in South Africa’. In: Kronos: Journal of Cape History 26(1), 1-21.

Wells, J. (2019). ‘Public History in South Africa: A Tool for Recovery’. In: Ashton, P., Trapeznik, H. (eds.), What is Public History Globally? Working with the Past in the Present. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Wilson, R. (2001). ‘Justice and Legitimacy in the South African Transition’. In: De Brito, A., González-Enríquez, C., Aguilar, P. (eds.), The Politics of Memory. Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

 

[1]       Today: Iziko South African Museum.