3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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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 Black consciousness and non-racialism : contradictory or complementary?(2013-01-15) Thompson, Urlridge AshfordThe Black Consciousness philosophy with its focus on black solidarity, the exclusion of whites from the black struggle for liberation, being consciously black and black self-determination, amongst some of the principles espoused by the Black Consciousness philosophy may prima-facie seem to be advocating a parochial politics of race or even a racially exclusionist politics obsessed with cultural authenticity and racial peculiarity. Black Consciousness from such an optic may seem to be more in line with other race centred systems such as apartheid based on white superiority as opposed to a politics that rejects a race centred approach to political life. Certain readings of Black Consciousness reflect the philosophy as espousing a more regressive as opposed to a progressive liberatory politics. Furthermore, Black Consciousness with its focus on race its critics will argue is not in line with a politics of non-racialism which seeks a total rejection of race. However, such an understanding of non-racialism is a very limited and unsophisticated one as it entails a rejection of race without first engaging with the concrete reality of race, while also assuming that a rejection of race entails integration. Indeed, it may be a great goal to attain a society in which race does not matter and in which it is not a determining factor in the life of any individual. Yet, to not see race when race has had and continues to have a profound impact on South African society, especially the poor black majority, may serve to be more regressive than progressive. In a society where inequality manifests along racial lines a hastily sought integration may not serve to attain the desired outcome of a genuine non-racial society. Equality thus becomes a central perquisite to make possible the attainment of a non-racial society unhindered by the limitations of white superiority and black inferiority. With the persistence of inequality accompanied by white domination and acquiescing blacks a non-racial society will serve to be an illusion. Biko, through his articulation of the Black Consciousness philosophy sought the attainment of a radical egalitarianism; this from the Black Consciousness optic being the condition upon which a non-racial politics and society could be forged. Black Consciousness has the ability to create a truly non-racial subject, its sophisticated conception of race which conceives of race as being consciously contrived can serve to illustrate the implicit non-racial outlook of the Black Consciousness philosophy. Through the project of Black Consciousness the end goal could indeed be perceived as being a radical egalitarian non-racial society. The overall tenor is that Black Consciousness complements non-racialism more than it contradicts it.