3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/45
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item The historical development of the commemoration of the June 16, 1976 Soweto students' uprisings: a study of re-representation, commemoration and collective memory(2015-09-02) Hlongwane, Ali KhangelaSouth Africa’s post-apartheid era has, in a space of nearly two decades, experienced a massive memory boom manifest in a plethora of new memorials, monuments, museums and the renaming of streets, parks, dams and buildings. This memorialisation process is intrinsically linked to questions of power, struggles and contestation in the making and remaking of the South African nation. The questions of power, struggle and contestation manifest as a wave of debates on the place of history, collective memory, identity and social cohesion in the inception as well as the functioning of the various memorialisation projects in society. This thesis concludes that debates concerning the meaning(s) as well as the way in which the June 16, 1976 uprisings have been memorialized, has been ongoing for the last three decades, and will continue into the future. This, as the findings bear out, is because the wider contextual situating of collective memory in its intangible and tangible form is intrinsically linked to complex experiences of the past; to ongoing experiments of a “nation” in the making, as well as pressing contemporary social challenges. The thesis also concludes that questions of power, struggle and contestation also manifest as a quest for relevant idioms and aesthetics of re-representation and memorialisation. Further, the thesis makes observations on the politics behind the assembling and the assembled archive as a toolkit in the fashioning of pasts and the making of collective memory. It reflects on the processes of re-thinking and remaking of the June 16, 1976 archive. These conclusions have been arrived at through an investigation of how the memory and meaning of the June 16, 1976 uprisings have been re-constructed, re-represented and fashioned over the last three decades. This was done by tracking and analysing the complex, diverse forms and character of its memorialisation. In the process, the study arrives at a conclusion that the memorialisation of the June 16, 1976 uprisings is characterised by the multiplicity of tangible and intangible features. The intangible features are characterised by forgetting, at one level, and are, on another level, animated through rituals of commemoration, counter- commemoration and memorial debate. The memorial debate on the uprisings is that of unity and diversity, division, contestation and counter-commemoration and essentially irresolvable, as history and memory are tools to address contemporary challenges.Item Negotiating memory and nation building in new South African drama(2010-11-19) Mekusi, BusutiABSTRACT This thesis examines the representation of trauma and memory in six post-Apartheid plays. The topic is explored through a treatment of the tropes of racial segregation, different forms of dispossession as well as violence. The thesis draws its inspiration from the critical and self-reflexive engagements with which South African playwrights depict the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The dramatists are concerned with the contested nature of the TRC as an experiential and historical archive. Others explore the idea of disputed and seemingly elusive notions of truth (from the embodied to the forensic). Through the unpacking of the TRC, as reflected in three of the plays, the thesis argues that apart from the idea of an absolute or forensic truth, the TRC is also characterised by the repression of truth. Furthermore, there is a consideration of debates around amnesty, justice, and reparations. Underpinning the politics and representations of trauma and memory, the thesis also interrogates the concomitant explorations and implications of identity and citizenship in the dramas. In the experience of violence, subjugation and exile, the characters in the dramas wrestle with the physical and psychological implications of their lived experiences. This creates anxieties around notions of self and community whether at home or in exile and such representations foreground the centrality of memory in identity construction. All these complex personal and social challenges are further exacerbated by the presence of endemic violence against women and children as well as that of rampart crime. The thesis, therefore, explores the negotiation of memory and identity in relation to how trauma could be mitigated or healing could be attained. The thesis substantially blurs the orthodox lines of differentiation between race and class, but emphasises the centrality of the individual or self in recent post-Apartheid engagements.Item Somaliland: post-war nation-building and international relations, 1991-2006.(2008-06-09T09:01:20Z) Jhazbhay, M. Iqbal D.Abstract This thesis is intended to explore the international relations of emerging nation-building in the Somali coast, with particular reference to the un-recognised Republic of Somaliland in the north-western Horn of Africa region. This study focuses on the international relations of Somaliland’s international quest for recognition, linked to its own culturally-rooted internal reconciliatory post-war nation-building efforts. Informed by written as well as first-hand research interviews, particular focus is placed in this study on the interplay of internal and external forces in shaping a strategy by Somaliland’s elites for acquiring international recognition and national selfdetermination. These are placed within the broader regional and international context of attempts to resuscitate the Somali state, an endeavour offering a fitting assessment of different modalities of African nation-building within the greater Somali environment. In relative analytic terms, the competitive international relations of nation-building in Somaliland and state reconstitution in southern Somalia informs the underlying hypothesis of this thesis: Somaliland’s example as a study in the efficacy of the internally-driven, culturally-rooted ‘bottom-up’ approach to post-war nation-building and regional stability, and the implications this holds for prioritising reconciliation between indigenous traditions and modernity in achieving stability in nation-building. By contrast, the internationally-backed ‘top-down’ approach to reconstituting a Mogadishu-based Somali state remains elusive. Yet, the international status quo regarding the affording of diplomatic recognition to what are normally considered secessionist ‘break-away’ regions of internationally recognised states, complicates Somaliland’s culturally rooted ‘bottom-up’ modalities. It also challenges the African Union (AU) during the ‘good governance’ era of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a context within which Somaliland fits comfortably as a good citizen of the international community. The international relations of the Somaliland nation-building enterprise is approached from a ‘quadrilateral framework’ of interactive elements to the Somaliland experience: Reconciliation, Reconstruction, Religion and Recognition. This framework informs the four core chapters of the thesis.