Articulations of national heritages through recognisable material spaces that speak to the colonial history, as well as identities portrayed in images and artefacts housed in these spaces, are contested terrains of collective memory.
This contestation implies that contemporary researchers, academics, historians, artists and communities need reconfigure these architectural sculptures (buildings) as revelatory spaces for truths that haunt that present from the past.
And when such spaces are devoid of historical details often omitted on purpose, any construction of memory through omitted details within a historical narrative can only happen through deliberate asymmetry between these collections and the audiences they inform.
That is why most black museum visitors feel alienated by exhibitions of foreign realities that stock many of these clinical, stale heritage preservation spaces with visual priorities of the colonial vantage point.
Museums often exhibit decorated lies that black people loved their servitude, that their labor can be labelled as leisurely acceptance of their superiors’ wishes, and overlook contemporary realities fraught with racial histories of mistreated communities.
Examining archives and investigating modes of remembering as expressed by dominant white cultures, there is a penchant for dwelling on happy and jovial moments of momentary triumphs and their “perfect” familial dynamics, but how true are these representations in the face of the absence of “servants as witnesses” who could also be witnessed?
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Narratives worth remembering seem to be constructed through institutional establishments such as the many museums who are funded to purposefully exhibit only imagined archives and histories that cannot be unearthed today.
The immateriality of missing details also hampers memory, the stories around the loss of these details also have narrative worth.
And to destabilise conventions of these spaces by bringing alternate techniques of history construction and preservation also means including those persons whose histories have been omitted and erased.
In light of obvious insufficiencies of discourse when it come to issues to addressing past injustices, what if IMAGES, artefacts, monuments, plaques and sketches can assist minds leap out of the confines of framed histories, the box of constructed memory, where reality is viewed as though through windows of a moving vehicle?
What if this is the reality definition necessary for articulating narratives of the forgotten, the invisible, degenerates of a material world?
Are we haunted by the past or are those in the present haunting the dead, mirroring their regrets and pains with the paradoxical aim of not repeating the same regrettable occurrences?
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There has been efforts to rename so-called sites of historical importance, stripping them of names of colonial personages they represent or after whom they were named,
In the names of wars the waged among themselves and against black people, there now are hundred of concentration camp sites that pepper this country, all devised by the machinations of colonial authorities and their brands of atrocity.
These site of tyranny are often preserved by people who have an intolerable sense of self-righteousness, in the name of their “love for country and culture’, yet, this often happens at the expense of all other facts gathered around those often sinister myths of cultures being preserved.
Today there are even art collectors and gallerists who disconcertingly collect all colonial decorum of elitist art, and express a collective resilience of memory of how black artists were often overlooked by white establishments that commissioned them to make the artworks that adorn their chambers of power.
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Will restoring these mausoleums of past hateful epochs be mixed with ideological conceit - a protest where the past keeps its redoubtable landmarks and problematic narratives based on colonial traumas and misrepresentations?
And as museums are vital guide into what had been relics of colonial gratification of their tyrannical murder of people in the name of expanding their culture and preserving their own, museums are maps into the history.
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What interplay exists between contemporary mind and these architectural spaces?
A profound contemplation of delicate harmonies that exist between various experiences of history, those flawless statues and replications of historical persons, the conditions that shaped those persons’ individual and collective identities, these come into sharp focus when viewed from the lens of heritage preservationist.
How can present generation weave a multitude of possible strands from history’s unexposed tapestry without speculating on the unsavoury parts of the re-imagined past?
The permeability of history and its political demarcations of peoples who are characters in history’s play, is evident in how various people interface with artefacts and museum content. Others find pride in walking into Paul Kruger’s Office Museum while other feel trepidation and a loathing for the man who sought the oppression of black people at all cost.
Within contemporary discourse there seems to exists a scarcity of details which always seems to require speculation to fill the gaps, but that scarcity tells of a concerted censure, where the coloniser is constantly hankering after glories of wars.
Museums and heritage in contemporary South Africa sustain that lust for retelling of refreshed myths disguised as recent discoveries, but on the other hand they legitimise symbols of white supremacy, sculptures of self-serving general venerated like gospels turned dogma.
An astute social commentator, Molefi Ndlovu, once questioned the importance of these monuments in South Africa, asking whether colonial structures of heritage reservation are actual ‘rhetorical spurs or passive reminder of our country’s ‘sticky history’?
This succinct question could be perceived as an act of aggression towards falsified memorials, where monument of tyrants take precedence over the lives destroyed, with their triumphant poses and sketches of their stories are etched on walls with the good of victims.
And there are those willing to defend the mayhem their kith and kin meted on black people, in high-spirited sermons and self-glorifying speeches at Voortrekker Monument, but seldom acknowledge the black men who died building that monument of tyranny.
But does present preservationist activism consider the permanent implication of sustaining falsities through to eternity without any attempt to correct them as told by victors not the victims, to re-evaluate collections and paraphernalia of exploitation that legitimised the victor as the maker and recorder of history?
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The history of how a racist and colonial past has been received and refreshed in the present through social hierarchies that determines the presence or absence of certain details in art, artefacts and museum collections has a role in sustaining falsifications and selective truths displayed in many of these museums.
And history as process of evaluating facts from fiction in the lives of figures of social importance can be a daunting task when executed as a form of radicalised discourse, but does that mean these monuments of antique oppressors and their deed spur renewed and critical discussions about their validity?
Those voices that remain in those remnants of the past, though belonging to different moments in history are brought together in these museums, where today is that tomorrow when their laments would be avenged.
Perception is often the basis for interpreting and reading history, and the incremental value of viewers from a wide range of cultural influences suggests and expansive constellation of truths that defy individualistic notions.
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Connecting colonial histories with human and cultural movements that fought colonial exploits, requires a new kind of questioning histories and their representations through art, curriculum and economic trends.
The cue is taken from migratory experiences of dispossessed populations, their choice of settlements and how those settlements grew into organic communities that can extract more histories from their locations.
This extraction of new histories from immediate phenomena that affect those dispersed cultures continue to inspire the need for those narratives of life to renew themselves while flowing beyond the confines traditional education systems.
Through exploration of museums and archives, contemporary artists must excavate and uncover the immaterial, overlooked and contentious histories, in a form of re-rooting, reclaiming agency over these histories and cultural experiences of those misrepresented by these histories.
And through sharing those strands of heritage with people from other experiences, those whose lands were colonially exploited and annexed, in a manner that translates communal and collective experiences, knowledge and practices; a renewed approach to defining history and lessons can be unveiled for future generations.
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Images captured at The Klerksdorp Museum.
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