Annie E. Coombes

History after apartheid : visual culture and public memory in a democratic South Africa

The democratic election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1994 marked the demise of apartheid and the beginning of a new struggle to define the nation’s past. History after Apartheid analyzes how, in the midst of the momentous shift to an inclusive democracy, South Africa’s visual and material culture represented the past while at the same time contributing to the process of social transformation. Considering attempts to invent and recover historical icons and narratives, art historian Annie E. Coombes examines how strategies for embodying different models of historical knowledge and experience are negotiated in public culture—in monuments, museums, and contemporary fine art. History after Apartheid explores the dilemmas posed by a wide range of visual and material culture including key South African heritage sites. How prominent should Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress be in the museum at the infamous political prison on Robben Island? How should the postapartheid government deal with the Voortrekker Monument mythologizing the Boer Trek of 1838? Coombes highlights the contradictory investment in these sites among competing constituencies and the tensions involved in the rush to produce new histories for the “new” South Africa. She reveals how artists and museum officials struggled to adequately represent painful and difficult histories ignored or disavowed under apartheid, including slavery, homelessness, and the attempted destruction of KhoiSan hunter-gatherers. Describing how contemporary South African artists address historical memory and the ambiguities uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Coombes illuminates a body of work dedicated to the struggle to simultaneously remember the past and move forward into the future.

Monumental Histories: Commemorating Mau Mau with the Statue of Dedan Kimathi

This article is a meditation on the nature of commemoration in a period of renewed interest in the concept of ‘national history’ in Kenya just prior to and during the 2007 election campaigns and the violence which erupted in its wake.1 I am interested in the extent to which commemorative initiatives, while often promoted (as in this case) as inclusive nation-building exercises, ultimately highlight the intractability of certain divisions. The article focuses on the commissioning of the first statue to a Mau Mau leader since President Mwai Kibakis unbanning, in September 2003, of the guerrilla movement, which many historians consider to be a major force responsible for the countrys liberation from the clutches of British colonialism. I want to suggest that the statue of Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi Wachiuri, unveiled on 18 February 2007, on the 50th anniversary of his execution by the British, becomes the conduit for the circulation of competing debates around the nature of history writing, the concept of national memory, the ideal of patriotism and the establishment of criteria to identify heroes and heroines as role models for the next generation. The commission is at the centre of a fraught discussion in the media concerning the question of who might merit the title of national hero or heroine and emerges at a time when the figure of Kimathi for one reason or another is susceptible to appropriation by a number of competing and often incompatible causes.

The International Handbooks of Museum Studies

An edited collection of nearly 30 essays by international scholars, curators and designers on the role of media in museums and the relationship between museums and different kinds of media.