[AFRICA FORUM #2 is presented by Jane Carruthers, University of South
Africa. She is the author of _The Kruger National Park: a social and
political history_ (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995) and
more recently has edited a retrospective on the Jameson Raid published by
Brenthust Press.

AFRICA FORUM contributions may be treated in the same way as normal H-Africa
queries, i.e. members are encouraged to respond to issues raised --editor]


Date: 20 Oct 1998
From: Jane Carruthers, Department of History, University of South Africa
      <CARRUEJ@alpha.unisa.ac.za>

"Heritage and History"


When public holidays for the New South Africa were promulgated after
1994, September 24 was proclaimed as Heritage Day. This is in late
spring - an appropriate season of rebirth and renewal. Unlike the other
holidays which are to some extent sectarian (Easter and Christmas for
Christians, Women's Day for women, Human Rights Day, Youth Day and
Freedom Day for struggle heroes, Day of Reconciliation for Afrikaners
etc.) Heritage Day is for all. It is a truism that individuals and communities
have a heritage - just as everyone has a past. This might include a
religion, material or spiritual culture, physical space that a group occupies
by way of a farm, village, town or city, or a wider sharing of national
values, wildlife, landscape etc. `Heritage' packages any of these
individual and communal values very neatly.


The currency of `heritage' is proving a lifeline for embattled historians in
South Africa. Few, if any, professional historians foresaw what would
happen after 1994. Many academics thought, perhaps naively, that
history had been vindicated, that at last it would be liberated from its
apartheid metanarrative and that post-colonial and other fresh ideas
could be integrated into the corpus in a reinvigorating way. At schools,
many history teachers were delighted at the prospect of being able to
explain to an enfranchised generation how their struggle had come
about, but more importantly, how it had ended. Thus for practitioners at
various levels, history was poised to rise to new heights. As is now well
known, this did not happen. At universities throughout the country,
student numbers in history have dropped alarmingly. All the humanities
have suffered, but history has borne the brunt. (In my own institution, the
numbers of first year students has declined from 3 000 to 1 000 in two
years.) Those who have been affected have endlessly debated the
reasons for the fall-off in interest. They include the lack of school
teacher advancement, the threat of downgrading history in the proposed
Curriculum 2005, retrenchments and trauma throughout the educational
system, organisational restructuring generally and many others.


But just as all was looking totally bleak - almost as if history was
redundant -  `heritage' came to the rescue. Because if people don't want
history, they certainly do want heritage. And heritage is burgeoning.
Robben Island is a shrine to heritage, and local and international tourists
flock to it in incredibly high numbers. Many other `heritage' sites are being
explored, District Six, Kliptown's Freedom Square and hundreds of
others. Heritage seems an ideal route to follow in order to keep alive an
interest in the past, a way of attracting tourists (and their money),
revitalising the museums, the archives and much else besides. The
University of the Witwatersrand has established a marvellous Tertiary
Heritage Training Network offering a wide variety of Degrees and
Diplomas in the field of `Heritage'. Unisa is going onstream with a Centre
for Arts, Culture and Heritage Studies and the University of Pretoria is
well advanced in the field of Heritage Education, also offering courses
and programmes. These are just a few examples. Heritage is broad: it
includes music, drama, dance, crafts, the natural environment, wildlife,
sites of historical and scientific importance, museums, monuments,
buildings, works of art, literature, oral traditions, cultural objects and
living culture. In addition to popularising the past and to presenting the
hidden alternative histories which exist, heritage is also regarded as
being able to assist economic development (in particular through
tourism).


I do not think that ever before has there been an initiative in this country
which has brought together academic historians and the public in such
an innovative manner. It is a two-way learning process, as academics
engage with popular culture and history on the ground and yet have the
opportunity to intervene and present history in a tangible and perhaps
more meaningful way to an interested public.


As well as the institutional espousal of heritage, politicians are also
showing considerable enthusiasm and their real interest is to be
commended. It is just marvellous to have political leaders who recognise
a variety of pasts, instead of the myopia of what passed in former times
as history with its settler and Afrikaner mythologies. There are even new
provinces which need to shape an identity through heritage: Gauteng is
one of them. The premier of Gauteng, Dr Mathole Motshekga, a prominent
legal academic, has dedicated himself to identifying, conserving and
presenting the heritage of Gauteng in all its variety. He has established a
Heritage Commission for the province. For historians, this is extremely
encouraging. I was privileged to attend the Premier's Heritage Day
Symposium at which one could only be astounded by the wealth of
information presented and the palpable enthuasism of the audience.
Interspersed with some wonderful singing from the Vista University
choir, Professor Philip Tobias spoke of the prehominid remains around
Swartkrans, Professor David Lewis-Williams about San rock art and
engravings, Dr Simon Hall on the Iron Age. They were followed by
Professors Chris Boonzaier and Andre Meyer from the University of
Pretoria on Heritage and Tourism education. Luli Callinicos's visuals on
the working class history of Johannesburg were wide-ranging and
interesting, Johan Marnitz of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut spoke on
the Afrikaner experience and a retired school principal, A.B.C. Motsepe,
movingly recounted the oral history of his Tswana community. In the final
panel discussion Professors Tom Lodge, Khehla Shubane, Bernard
Magubane and I gave papers on how democracy had worked in
Gauteng, principally in relation to local government structures. Mary
Metcalfe, the MEC for Education, summed up the day's proceedings,
highlighting how important it was - as the symposium had shown - that
histories intersected with each other and how they could not be
separated as had been done in the past.

There are many hundreds of conferences and symposia which we all
attend from time to time and H-Africa readers may wonder why I have
provided so much detail about this single initiative. It is because I felt
incredibly uncomfortable listening to the presentation given by Marnitz,
who stressed that he was talking in his personal capacity. He delivered
what was obviously a valid personal viewpoint (all are), but one which
caused me great professional disquiet. With some factual inaccuracies
(but I am not carping about those) he described at length how Afrikaners
had fought against British domination. First they had countered with the
Great Trek, and had founded their Republics only to be hounded once
more by Britain. They had won proudly at Majuba but lost the South
African War. However, they had regained their independence in the
Transvaal in 1907, and in South Africa eventually in 1961, with an
initiative dating back to the founding of the National Party in 1914. But
although they had won the political battle, the economic power of the
country was more elusive, but with Sanlam and other institutions, this
too, had come their way. About the relationship between Afrikaners and
Africans or about what had brought about 1994 - in fact the issue which
had dominated South African history throughout the period - there was
total silence. Marnitz was celebrating his heritage, which is what he had
been invited to do. From my historian's perspective, what he had to say
was incorrect, incomplete, biassed, in fact, totally ahistorical. But as he
ended, he got a most enthuasistic applause from the predominantly black
audience - far more than the other papers had received.


There are many other versions of heritage which are like Marnitz's but
his made me wonder at the time - and Africa Forum seems a good place
to air the issue - that if this was heritage, should not university history
departments and academic historians be avoiding it rather than
embracing it? Heritage is problematic and it poses distinct theoretical
challenges to the discipline of history which have not yet been
addressed. While it may well be beneficial to democratise history (and
perhaps get away from the arcane language of the various discourses
at the same time), how is professional history to cope with the fact that
there are as many heritages as there are `publics' and `identities'? Are
they all equally valid, or, from the standpoint of an academic historian,
should `heritage' be treated as primary sources or raw data and
subjected to evidential scrunity?

There are a number of themes which require dissection. First, are
heritage and history the same thing? If they are, why has heritage
caught on and why is history in eclipse? Is it merely a question of a
trendy buzzword new to the South African situation with `history' in
disgrace, having served the populace ill for too long? If heritage and
history are identical, then what are the skills required to practise it?
Perhaps it is no longer necessary for academic historians to monopolise
the discipline or to act as gatekeepers for `good' or `bad'
history/heritage. Pursuing that point, the flight from history to heritage
may be part of a larger post-modern issue relating to source evaluation,
the death of positivism and hard evidence and the birth of `stories'. If
texts are the reality and there is no universally agreed validity, then
possibily the raw material of history is `heritage' and history may well still
be something else. But if the sources or texts are themselves supreme,
then they do not require mediation through the academy in any heritage
programme.


A further point for argument is the place of heritage in nation-building, for
it may be here that the split from history should be recognised. It is the
old debate about the purpose of history, which graduate students
traditionally debate. Tilman Dedering, a colleague in Unisa's history
department, believes that this is the area which requires clarification. Are
all the national identities and components to be integrated equally without
any single hegemony? Does a `national heritage' require understanding
and tolerance of all heritages, and is apartheid history therefore just as
valid as struggle history, nationalist Zulu history, and so on. There seems
to be a problem with essentialising the `nation'. In this regard, state
intervention by appropriating `history' through `heritage' might be raised.
Is the academy, with its (perhaps) inconvenient intellectual professional
rigour and critique of the evidence, being deliberately marginalised? Is
history becoming less contested as it moves from educational institutions
into the public domain as `heritage'. For without contestation,
nation-building might be better promoted.

David Lowenthal is the pre-eminent historian of memory (The Past is a
Foreign Country, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History etc.) In
their rush to retain their academic positions, enhance their future and
perform a valuable educational service to the public, should historians
heed what he has to say about heritage? Or has the time come for a
thorough-going postcolonial re-evaluation of that discipline which deals
with the chronological past? In a recent issue of History and Memory
(10(1) Spring 1998) Lowenthal has an article called `Fabricating
heritage'. There he argues, `Heritage should not be confused with
history. History seeks to convince by truth ... Heritage exaggerates and
omits, candidly invents and frankly forgets, and thrives on ignorance and
error. Time and hindsight alter history, too. But historians' revisions must
conform with accepted tenets of evidence. Heritage is more flexibly
emended. Historians ignore at professional peril the whole corpus of
past knowledge that heritage can airily transgress ... History tells all who
will listen what has happened and how things came to be as they are ...
Heritage keeps outsiders at bay by baffling and offensive claims of
superiority. Being clannish is essential to group survival and well-being
... "Getting its history wrong is crucial for the creation of a nation", Renan
comforted his fellow French ... Heritage everywhere not only tolerates
but thrives on historical error ...'


For many decades many South African historians fought against a
version of heritage: it was about ownership and control. It was imposed
on the country and on the educational system. As Lowenthal says,
`Heritage uses historical traces and tells historical tales. Heritage
diverges from history not in being biased but in its view of bias.
Historians aim to reduce bias; heritage sanctions and strengthens it.'
Heritage has a purpose, certainly, but is it the domain of historians?

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