Public History and Culture in South Africa, Memorialisation and Liberation Heritage Sites in Johannesburg and Township Spaces by Ali Khangela Hlongwane and Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu (review)

The heritage construction and curation of new memorial and museum sites grew rapidly in South Africa during the “memory-boom” of the post-apartheid period from 1994 to the present. During this period, public history and heritage studies programs also expanded across universities and colleges. However, the growth of heritage practices has tended to be in the cities and has faced at least two clusters of interweaving problems. Firstly, it has been constrained by limited financing from the nation-state. In fact, of all government departments in democratic South Africa, the Department of Arts and Heritage is the most poorly financed. Hence, the construction of most new heritage sites has depended on funds raised from foreign donor organizations across Northern hemisphere countries. Secondly, heritage sites linked to significant anti-apartheid struggle events and figures have dominated across the country. Although liberation struggle sites are historically significant, they tend to conform to nationalist ideological expectations and ideas espoused by the nation-state. Moreover, these liberation struggle sites tend to consume the largest chunks of scarce internal and external heritage sector financing. Debates around these liberation struggle sites and how they were erected, curated, and publicly represented are central themes to the book by Ali Hlongwane and Sifiso Ndlovu. Both authors are accomplished academics who also played leading insider roles as researchers and curators at some of the heritage sites discussed in the book.

This is a well-researched, coherently organized book that provides a detailed account of liberation heritage sites in Johannesburg and the surrounding provincial area of Gauteng. It is not accidental that most of the sites selected and developed as case studies by the authors are connected to two historic days that were declared national public holidays after 1994. The Sharpeville Massacre occurred on March 21, 1960, and therefore March 21 became “Human Rights Day.” Similarly, June 16 was declared “Youth Day,” in commemoration of the Soweto school student uprisings which began on June 16, 1976.

I appreciate that early in the book, the authors included a chapter on the Johannesburg Workers Museum and its representations of Black workers suffering in mining and other industries as well as their living circumstances in migrant worker compounds and townships. Including the Workers Museum in the book is a smart move, as it pulls the reader beyond the narrow categorization of liberation heritage sites as supposedly only involving political movements or figures.

But, as expected, most of the other chapters deal with watershed liberation political episodes; most notably, the 1976 Soweto uprising. Both authors played curatorial roles in the Hector Pietersen memorial museum in Soweto. This site commemorates and educates visitors to the events that unfolded during the 1976 youth uprising against the apartheid state’s imposition of Afrikaans as the primary medium of instruction at Black high schools. Hector Pietersen was famously the first of many teenagers to be killed or injured by the apartheid police. This memorial site is, in my view, one of the best museums in the country in terms of its carefully constructed exhibitions and nuanced, evocative storytelling. It also makes extensive and skilled use of oral history recordings in multiple exhibitions. The curators of the museum can be commended for the considerable sensitivity they convey towards diverse visitor audiences, who are not only visiting tourists, but also many school students from across the vast Soweto township and the broader Johannesburg metropole.

The book also explores other Soweto sites such as the Mandela family house museum in Vilikazi Street and the 16 June 1976 Interpretation Centre. The interpretation center includes artwork and an outdoor memorial garden and is situated near to the Morris Isaacson High School, which was one of the epicenters of the Soweto uprising. The authors provide oral histories of...