The battle for public memory: Why #RhodesMust(Not)Fall

By Marlyn Faure

Don’t get me wrong I don’t think colonial symbols like the statue of Rhodes should be left uncontested. But blanket calls for the removal and sometimes the destruction of all colonial symbols could perhaps be working against the very issues being fought for: transformation, recognition, acknowledgment and justice. The protests at UCT have now sparked public debate around the country. And while these reactions have spanned a range of responses, what this incident points to is the battle for the public memory of South Africa.

But before making any argument it seems necessary, given South Africa’s current social and political climate, to first state one’s social background before having any right to comment on anything related to race. I am a coloured 26-year-old South African male who grew up (and still lives) on the Cape Flats. I was the first person in my family to attend university, and the University of Cape Town at that. Whenever I fall asleep to the sounds of gun shots (which is often), or feel the fear, like many people, to just go outside — afraid of stray bullet hitting me — or see young people sitting on street corners, or the dirt and squalor lining the streets, I am reminded of the legacy of apartheid. But I am also reminded that I am one of the privileged few who managed to gain access to a world previously and still currently denied to most of us who are not white.

It has now been a few weeks since the Rhodes statue saga. It seems unfortunate that so many have entirely missed the point. The fact that painful experiences of being black in South Africa have been denied and South African universities have showed minimal signs of transformation has now been eclipsed by the destruction or removal of a statue. This polarised issue has left very little space for South Africa’s complex history to enter such public debates. Instead the battle lines have been drawn and the “us” and “them” approach once again wins the day.

This battle is ultimately about power. Power over who gets to tell the story of South Africa. Cultural symbols like the Rhodes statue seeks to tell a single story in celebration of a colonialist figure. In asymmetric power relationships, the oppressor decides which stories will be told, and those which will not be told. But calls to destroy all colonial symbols such as those made by some of the protesters and most clearly by Julius Malema on the weekend, reflects a disempowered move to forget. The removal of all references to our difficult, painful and complex past is really about public memory. The erasing of the material existence of these symbols could inadvertently whitewash how colonialism and apartheid continue to affect every aspect of reality for all South Africans. Calls to destroy all symbols of colonialism bear the mark of an adolescent democracy. The removal of all reference points to our difficult and messy past is a way of allowing a single story to dominate. This “us” and “them” logic is based on those who are “innocent” and “guilty” in clear and neat categories. History is of course much more complex than this.

More importantly, such an erasure almost acts as a deliberate forgetting or amnesia. In the absence of such symbols, what hope can we have of not returning to society where one group rules over another? Remembering is difficult because it forces us to re-live the trauma that we have and continue to go through as a people. But remembering is also important because memory can serve as the great teacher. It reminds us that we are a people who come from struggle and sorrow but also from strength and resistance. But this is a choice that we must make. This kind of remembering is an act of resistance to only be able to respond violently (physically and symbolically) in ways determined by the oppressor. We have to ask, instead of simply “forgetting” our painful past, how can we remember in ways that continue to remind us how far we have come but also how far we still need to go. In ways that we can use these symbols to continue to call memory stories that we have long been forced to forget? And in what ways can we remember how we continue to be denied any belonging because of past and present symbols and structures? Such subversive acts calls for an oppressed people to move beyond mere binary structures controlled by those who oppress.

In allowing a diversity of cultural symbols to co-exist, in complex and contested ways, we also disallow those who have benefitted from colonial structures to deny this reality. A refusal to forget is in fact a move that insists on those who have benefited to take responsibility, which is both beyond denial and guilt. Symbols are of course embedded in power matrices. Removing these symbols does not necessarily change the power structures in which it is embroiled. Instead it has the potential to mask our counter- and contested-narratives. Active remembering holds the possibility of fostering healthy public spaces where multiple, diverse and competing narratives can be told. Maintaining this tension is a refusal of democracy to collapse into violence or apathy.

The falling of cultural symbols is not our only option as a nation in the spring of its reconciliation. It is possible to subvert, challenge and contest these symbols in ways which moves the project of restoring our humanity forward. We do not have to act violently (physically and symbolically), a move which oppressors always predict and expect from those who they oppress because violence and domination is their only way of holding onto power. Instead, we can subvert such structures and act in ways that insist on being heard and on hearing. We are capable of this kind of imagining and acting, not because we are black but because we are human, a category denied to us for too long.

I do hope the statue is moved to a less prominent place on campus. I don’t think symbols should remain as they are. But I do hope that I will still get to see it. I find it a great and joyful irony when I walk past these symbols, knowing where I have come from and what our people have sacrificed so that I could be there. I refuse to let symbols determine how I relate — this not the power I choose to give them. But I am also reminded that I am one of the few. I am reminded of the pain that lies behind this symbol. I am also reminded that it is the responsibility of us to call to memory our painful past, in that this refusal to forget pushes us closer towards healing, justice and freedom.