scholarly journals National symbols and nation-building in the post-apartheid South Africa

2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elirea Bornman
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 137-161
Author(s):  
Bianca van Laun

Drawing on debates on materiality, this article investigates the lives and multiple afterlives of prison identification photographs of individuals hanged by the apartheid state in South Africa during the 1960s for crimes framed as political. In recent years these photographs have been recovered and repurposed as part of post-apartheid nation-building and memorialization projects. Under the auspices of the Gallows Memorialization Project, bureaucratic records and photographs have been recovered from the apartheid state archives, reinterpreted and placed into different and new ‘presentational circumstances’ that desires to overturn their original oppressive logic. However, as the photographs and documents are used to fix the identities of particular individuals that the project seeks to commemorate, the logic that drives their reproduction in the new configurations and contexts seems to replicate the bureaucratic rationality that produced them.


2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ndwamato G. Mugovhani

This research article argued that the current conflicts between Vhavenda and Vatsonga, two decades and four years later after the first democratic elections for a new South Africa in 1994, are manifestations of the seeds that were sown by the Voortrekkers since their arrival around the Soutpansberg in the northern parts of South Africa in 1836. Makhado (Louis Trichardt), Vuwani and Malamulele have been embroiled in continuous arguments and counterarguments, advocacies and counter advocacies, including protests, and in some instances, destruction of the essential property. Before then, Vhavenda and Vatsonga used to live alongside each other and even together. In their traditional village settings, there was no discrimination based on language or ethnicity. Through review of early scholarly writings, oral resources garnered from elders and the author’s personal experience, a few episodes were highlighted, and the ramifications thereof were discussed.Contribution: This study also postulated that although the promotion of the tribes’ uniqueness was culturally significant, social cohesion and multiculturalism could have been sustained without institutionalising the segregation laws and demarcations, for these decisions have come back to haunt the present democratic South Africa’s ideals of nation building and social cohesion.


Author(s):  
Bongani C Ndhlovu

This chapter analyses the influence of the state in shaping museum narratives, especially in a liberated society such as South Africa. It argues that while the notion of social cohesion and nation building is an ideal that many South African museums should strive for, the technocratisation of museum processes has to a degree led to a disregard of the public sphere as a space of open engagement. Secondly, the chapter also looks at the net-effect of museums professionals and boards in the development of their narrative. It argues that due to the nature of their expertise and interests, and the focus on their areas of specialisation, museums may hardly claim to be representative of the many voices they ought to represent. As such, the chapter explores contestations in museum spaces. It partly does so by exploring the notion “free-spokenness” and its limits in museum spaces. To amplify its argument, the chapter uses some exhibitions that generated critical engagements from Iziko Museums of South Africa.


Author(s):  
John A. Henschke

This chapter addresses the author’s international experience of and involvement in the very essence of exemplifying my conception of the following in various countries around the globe – nation building through andragogy and lifelong learning: on the cutting edge educationally, economically, and governmentally. Although I have been privileged to engage adult learners in research and learning experiences in a dozen countries through andragogical and lifelong learning processes, the chapter presents only a sketch of the author’s personally unique approach of work and learning in what he calls nation building with people in five countries: Brazil, South Africa, Mali, Thailand, and Austria. The purpose is to clearly articulate some of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the most successful facilitation activities of helping adults learn in such a way that any adult educator, who may be disposed and committed to do so, could learn these processes and replicate them with others.


Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 9-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Giliomee

As a historian I have worked on and have been shaped by two great struggles: the one between whites and blacks for control over South Africa and the Afrikaner-English struggle over which white community was dominant. The former struggle was clear-cut, but the latter was ambiguous and took many forms. It was waged over South Africa's relationship with Britain, the national symbols and languages, and the higher moral ground. The first section of the article provides a brief sketch of the latter struggle which influenced my career strongly.


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