Monuments And Heritage Sites DECOLONIZED

Monuments And Heritage Sites De-Colonial

There is an unnerving trend towards the erasure of black experiences and presences during many historical events that often are memorialised in museums and heritage sites throughout South Africa.

This censored depiction of the experiences and presence of people of colour has put a veil on many pivotal instances t of blatant brutality against our people, which in turn continues to obscure our nation’s collective confrontation with its colonial past in a constructive manner..

But heritage preservation that has characterised many historical museums, though leaning towards white history and its prominent exposure, there has began a culture that sees the importance of multicultural perspectives necessary for a more holistic view of the past that continues to affects and gaunt the present and future.

The reliance on photographic materials has also become a stumbling block to unlocking many hidden secrets about the role various nation played in the evolution of this nation’s diversity.  

This can however be corrected through concentrated acknowledgement and acquisition, revaluation of artefacts and photographic or pictorial representations and reproductions of black presences during these events.

The presence of black people during The Anglo Boer War, for instance, which has largely being documented, seems to not grace many walls of colonial museums in South Africa, and could this be a concerted effort at censorship of memory to delegitimise various claims for exploitation by the coloniser?

This short piece aims to posit certain possible measures and strategies towards a reclamation of representation of marginalised presences in the historical annals of this diverse country, to reinsert the missing pages torn by censors pent on erasing traces of an entire people’s involvement in the construction of South Africa.

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Towards A New Appreciation Of Heritage Spaces

Over centuries, humanity’s mythologies have been engraved on plaques, carved in sculpture and painted on frescos of ornate architectural sites which still baffle today’s technologically advanced innovations, and these concrete testaments of grotesque tyrants and their opulence, but also as religious and sacred spaces of humanity’s interface with the divine.

Yet, when the names of towns, schools and even the ramshackle rusty bridges that span our dry rivers are being changed through some semantic cleansing of imperial names from all things African, activists need to question sentiments driving this “mass cleansing of foreign pollutants”, as deemed by new political sloganeers.

The histories of submission, oppression and loss are often overlooked when question the validity of such historical monuments, whether they espouse to commonly held ideals of a social construct, or centred around a single perspective that avows dominance of the narrator.

As a documentary filmmaker and heritage activist obsessed with authenticating stories from antiquity, my curiosity led me to begin researching the history of The Voortrekkers and their Groot Trek, from the starting point of one the first settlements they annexed to form a town now known as Potchefstroom.

This journey led me to discover that towards the end of 1838, a considerable number  of Voortrekkers settled along the Mooi River. And in November of that year Potchefstroom was laid out.  An urgent need for a church was soon realised by the initial Voortrekker community, who soon launched an appeal for contributions to a building fund. On the 26th of March 1842, Rev. Daniel Lindley thus established the first congregation in the Transvaal. 

But soon after to the establishment of the first congregation in 1842, a variety of political and social conditions led to internal conflicts with the church, and these conflict lead to factional goops who eventually decided to start their own congregations. 

These theological differences which led to the split are the root of this short inquiry into the origins of The Three Sister Churches. And it was in 1956 that another split rocked the church, when the white congregants felt it not necessary to worship with their black servants and concertante.

Although not initially conducting a socio-anthropological inquiry into the history of the church itself, uncovering the story behind The Three NG Sister Churches and their impact on the ensuing politics of South Africa, provided a pivotal goal of this journey of finding ways of re-imagining historical spaces and their contemporary psycho-social impact.

And having realised how much Dutch and German architecture is in abundance in Potchefstroom, one is left to ask how much does the Germanic Heritage flow within much of the historical heritage attached to communities that evolved in the region around The Moon River.

There are connections to the Dutch and German heritage that are prevalent around the city of Potchefstroom, and this is a connection to European architecture observable in many heritage buildings which derive their various imported styles from these two European cultures.

The Three Sister - A Church Story

When I started to research for a documentary that tells The History Of The Translation Of The Bible Into Afrikaans, it was indelibly synchronised that I encountered some incredibly knowledgable memory-keepers at The Potchefstroom Museum.

  

And as there exists an insatiable compulsion to the unknown that drives every storyteller, this indefatigable urge grows with each leap forward into the archives discovered in museums such as The Totius House Museum and The Potchefstroom Military and Transport Museum, which are meticulously well preserved and located in they city.

The Potchefstroom Museum is a remarkable testament that any concerted means undertaken to preserve history and artefacts from diverse heritages throughout human civilisation, can provide any inquisitive mind a much fulfilling picture of that often misconstrued vision of the past. 

This multifaceted perspective provided by archives that range from images, audio and artworks are essential components of a puzzle that can only be solved and deciphered through tireless dedication.

The Three Sisters - A Church Story, is a documentary film created through resilient patience and guidance from people who provided invaluable insight into the history of the church.

And while the journey’s marvels lie within strides taken and distances covered, it also remains to be confirmed that indeed the path towards the destination also is a place full of history’s marvellous mysteries.

The first of these mysteries encountered is the story of how one of the oldest NG Kerk congregations in South Africa fragmented into Three Sister Churches, over a number of theological and otherwise practical reasons.

And the origins of these three sister churches, namely The Nederduitze Geformeerde Kerk (Cape Synod), The Nederduitze Hervormde Kerk (the state church of Die Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek) and The NG Kerk under Reverend Postman), remains a highly contested chapter in the history of the church.

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There are raging debates in South African politics about the necessity of preserving colonial historical sites, which are viewed as remnants and monuments built on the exploitation of Black communities. Some spheres of society have in fact opted to rename street and building in an effort to correct the censored records of history and while preserving a future identity.

And undeniably there is a narrative absence of experience of Black people in many museums and places of historical importance, the question then becomes, how can this absence take a new shape from contemporary perspective, and become noticeable without erasing the monuments and sites of historical memory?

But the truth is that as a Cultural Activist who recognises the artistic and architectural genius that went into the construction of these sites and monuments, which undeniably represent and legitimise a system of oppression and serve as reminders about our colonisers’s inter-generational tyranny - these sites and monuments need to preserved for posterity.

And this exploration is the initial step towards not only preserving colonial architecture and heritage sites, but to uncover the hidden and erased histories that should also be brought to the fore of contemporary generations.

In order for such a heritage preservation initiative to have socially tangible impact, activists need to become familiar with the art and architectural history of various European cultures and the best methodology would entail explorative excursions to various city’s that still boast incredible historical gems.

These palatable experience of the enormity and grandeur of the human creative spirit, would indelibly translate into a concerted reverence of the sanctity of heritage in any form; not neglecting or erasing emotional scars represented by these artefacts and buildings to various marginalised communities.

These heritage sites are therefore sites of living memory, and what better reverence of the lessons learned from the past than to preserve the scars and beauties borne through these monumental  reminders in sand or stone?

But can all history be favourably and amicably accepted ay its makers, victims and observers?

This indelicately loaded question haunts this journey into a dark carven of a bigoted past, based on racialised discrimination and exploitation under guise of religiosity and piety to a divine force that somehow was selective of its beloved. 

And does history truly repeat itself, or what actually transpires are rudiments, notions carried like habits that define a reinterpretation of the sordid in history? 

Or is humankind just unconsciously prone and wired with imprinted tyrannical instincts that push humanity towards destructive enterprises that decimate all in its path towards a grand utopian dream?

And how does religious fervour fuel this nihilistic propensity for self-annihilation?

Can one speculate on notions of transference of brutal urges, and collective trauma, transmitted as genetic memory markers and the present being a point of intersection between the past and present?

The invisibility of the elderly and their compounded stereotype of being dysfunction has somehow assisted the preservation of oral history, which remains fossilised in minds that require only to be heard.

Therefore, these elders embody a traditional personification of history as it is being injected into new bodies of new generational psychologies, and this inter-generational genetic memory in turn inform possible futures. 

Conflicts within religious sects have haunted and marred devotional instincts in mankind since time immemorial, but it seem these differences and animosities are finding new ways of resurfacing in contemporary ideological discourse.

 

New age morality, altruism and philanthropic efforts to eradicate poverty, and pseudo-environmentalist zeal being observed in the face of damage caused by our species, resulting in global climate catastrophes has made zealots of many, but the truth seem to be that humanity espouses to a vision of a heaven that is beyond earth’s demise. 

It appears believers and a chosen few are toiling to destroy their present home through belief systems that promise another home beyond the stars.

Has religion created a selfish humanism that only sees our presence on this planet as transitory and meaningless, therefore whatever villainous actions of exploiting the earth for our collective gain as not a direly detrimental concern, considering that we have a splendid home tucked in immaculate heaven?

Are South African Colonial Heritage Sites Worth Preserving?

This question had been burning my gut prior the devastating fire that tragically claimed 74 human lives, and gutted a historically infamous NATIVE AFFAIRS (NdabaZabantu) building on 80 Albert Street in the centre of Johannesburg. 

Besides it being another monument of black repression which saw fathers denuded in front of their sons, and black people relegated to influx control measures that were orchestrated by the apartheid regime, the building remains a heritage site and an architectural, material space for a collective memory of apartheid’s draconian policies. 

As this building was allegedly housing predominantly black unrecorded foreigner migrants, there are a variety of sinister sentiments that have surfaced, questioning reasons that brought the residents to their demise.

Issues of how municipal authorities have neglected and mis-managed the maintenance of social infrastructure, and more specifically the majority of vulnerable heritage buildings in most inner-city neighbourhood has now come under spotlight. 

And undeniably, there is a lack of concerted institutional efforts to safeguard such buildings from illegal occupation because municipalities have no sustainable plan for suitably housing a growing population that is rapidly being swallowed by globally devastating economic tsunamis sweeping away and crippling livelihoods.

Yes, the building was allegedly illegally occupied, but there are a vast array of social conditions that simmered to give us this sour brew of tragic events and venomous sentiments. 

And again, it is a building with a sordid history, which today burned with souls of many descendants of those fore-bearers who were once demarcated and deemed illegal squatters on the streets of the majestic metropolis of Johannesburg.

And as we contemplate the loss and mourn the lives lost, there also remains of a swarm of enquiring souls that remain as “the spirits of the place’. 

Those souls of father and mothers who were once granted permits or prison sentences within those corridors, their souls and sweat still linger on the walls, such as those souls that were sacrificed recently, adding to a population of uneasy souls that will haunt the building to eternity.

With this sense of paradoxical sadness and anger, I am reminded of a conversation I had with an official of The Arts And Culture Department of a certain municipal, who expressed the feeling that it would be of no great impact if old “apartheid museums and relics or heritage sites” were burned or just vandalised by illegal squatters who would destroy that  brutal history of the oppressors.

This absurd remark, sadly implied a variety of socially held sentiments about the preservation of heritage sites “inherited from the oppressor”, and many historians and heritage practitioners are grappling with how to navigate such a contested terrain of bones and graves that will remain mute if not uncovered and preserved.

Will restoring and preserving these mausoleums of past hateful epochs be a conceited effort at appeasing ourselves or a genuine endeavour to appease spirits who were once and those recently dehumanised in the most cruelest of manner?

Is it also a form of protest to keep these redoubtable landmarks that legitimised where supremacist oppressive policies; or does our collective disdain for racist policies of the past vindicate any action to damage any remnant of that history in the form of monuments, churches and house museums?

Will sentiments of radicalised bigotry be choreographed into ideas that manifest in  defacements, arson attacks and sheer vandalism of such spaces of historical significance?

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Buildings, artefacts and images are mute yet indelible witnesses of silent lives that thrived or suffered in now derelict and destroyed spaces. This remains one of the motivating ethos of this explorative journey into ruins of museums and galleries guttered by vandalism and negligence.

Large collections of variegated historical art are also autographs of the past that needs to be seen, and not housed in polished collector’s mansions, in order for them to offer a meditation on questions of oppression and racism that continue to jolt us to reconsider historical depictions of righteous missionaries with a noble covenant of spreading their enlightened religion to heathens of a Dark Continent.  

Buildings are indeed a form of story of what a country, a system of power wants to express, they are ridiculously pampered museums that are reminders of tyrannical rulers and their ideologies.

And these buildings often left scars on the minds and souls of those who were exploited muscles that erected their polished testaments of superiority; these building need to be preserved not grandiosity or idolatry of the coloniser, but as a visible reminder of the blood and sweat our black forebears shed while erecting these monuments.