Apartheid's Festival

Leslie Witz

Description

How a nationalist, separatist agenda was spread by an apartheid-era festival.

Apartheid's Festival highlights the conflicts and debates that surrounded the 1952 celebration of the 300th anniversary of the landing of Jan Van Riebeeck and the founding of Cape Town, South Africa. Taking place at the height of the apartheid era, the festival was viewed by many as an opportunity for the government to promote its nationalist, separatist agenda in grand fashion. Leslie Witz's fine-grained examination of newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, and advertising materials reveals the expectations of the festival planners as well as how the festival was engineered, historical figures were reconstructed, and the ANC and other anti-apartheid organizations mounted opposition to it. While laying open the darker motives of the apartheid regime, Witz shows that the production of local history is part of a global process forged by the struggle between colonialism and resistance. Readers interested in South Africa, representations of nationalism, and the making of public history will find Apartheid's Festival to be an important study of a society in transition.

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Journeys, Festivals, and the Making of National Pasts
1. Van Riebeeck's Pasts
2. "We Build a Nation": The Festival of Unity and Exclusion
3. Contesting Van Riebeeck's Nation
4. "'n Fees vir die Oog" [A Festival/Feast for the Eye]: Looking in on the 1952 Jan Van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival Fair
5. Local and National Pasts: The Journeys of the Mail Coach "Settlers" Through the Eastern Cape
Conclusion: Post Van Riebeeck
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Republic of South Africa
• África
• South Africa
• Boer Wars
• South
• Politics
• History of Africa
• Anthropology
• Cultural Studies
• Africa
• Culture
• Afrique du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253028310
• Langue: English

Extrait

Apartheid’s Festival
African Systems of Thought
 
GENERAL EDITOR Ivan Karp CONTRIBUTING EDITORS James W. Fernandez Luc de Heusch John Middleton Roy Willis
Leslie Witz
 
Apartheid’s Festival
Contesting South Africa’s National Pasts
     
Publication of this book is made possible in part with theassistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowmentfor the Humanities, a federal agency that supports research,education, and public programming in the humanities.
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [e-mail]
 
© 2003 by Leslie Witz
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Witz, Leslie.     Apartheid’s festival: contesting South Africa’s national pasts / Leslie Witz.       p.  cm. — (African systems of thought) Includés bibliographical references (p. ) and index.     ISBN 0-253-34271-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21613-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)   1. Cape Town (South Africa)—Anniversaries, etc. 2. Festivals—South Africa—History—20th century. 3. Public history—South Africa. 4. Apartheid—South Africa. 5. South Africa—Cultural policy. I. Title. II. Series.     DT2405.C3657 W58 2003     968.73′55—dc21
2002153778
1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
 
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
 
Introduction: Journeys, Festivals, and the Making of National Pasts
1. Van Riebeeck’s Pasts
2. “We Build a Nation”: The Festival of Unity and Exclusion
3. Contesting Van Riebeeck’s Nation
4. “ ’n Fees vir die Oog” [A Festival/Feast for the Eye]: Looking in on the 1952 Jan Van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival Fair
5. Local and National Pasts: The Journeys of the Mail Coach “Settlers” through the Eastern Cape
Conclusion: Post Van Riebeeck
 
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
 
In a book of this nature, which is primarily concerned with contests over theconstruction of public history, the range of people who have contributed to itsproduction is very wide. It encompasses film and radio archivists, environmentalactivists, advertising agents, secretaries in government departments, curatorsat museums, sales assistants at secondhand bookshops, students in lectures,guests at dinner parties, and even passers-by in the street. While it is not feasibleto acknowledge each of these contributions individually, they have enabled meto develop an understanding of how history is produced, contested, and receivedin different ways in the public terrain.
Historians tend to search for a beginning as a means to develop and sustaintheir arguments. Looking back over the more than ten years of research on theconstructions of and contests over South Africa’s public iconography, particularlythe figure who came to represent apartheid history, Jan van Riebeeck—thecommander of the Dutch East India Company’s revictualing station at theCape of Good Hope from 1652 to 1662—I find an originating moment difficultto pin down. Much like the subject matter of this book, which details the circuitsof appearance and disappearance of historical events and figures in thepublic domain, I find it much more useful to try to locate many of the individualswho have given me, over the years and at different times, the supportand encouragement to sustain this project. Without all their assistance thisbook would not have been possible.
One of the key moments was undoubtedly my move to Cape Town in 1990to take up a lecturing post at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Twopeople at UWC who encouraged and facilitated this move, Ciraj Rassool andGary Minkley, have become my close friends and colleagues. We developed acommon interest in public history and have worked and taught together onseveral projects that examine the construction of public images of the past inspheres ranging from festivals to museums, tourism, memorials, and heritagesites. This has allowed for an incredible cross-fertilization of ideas that, in turn,have fed into many of the formulations and arguments I develop here. A paperI co-authored with Ciraj in 1992, “The 1952 Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival:Constructing and Contesting Public National History in South Africa,”informs many of the ideas in this book. The article was published in the Journalof African History, 34 (1993), and parts appear here with the permission ofCambridge University Press. An unpublished piece that Gary and I wrote for the History Workshop conference at the University of the Witwatersrand in July 1994, “Sir Harry Smith and His Imbongi: Local and National Identities in the Eastern Cape, 1952,” forms a key component of the arguments developed in chapter 5. I am indebted to Ciraj and Gary for allowing me to draw on our collaborative work for this book.
A large portion of this book is based on my Ph.D. dissertation that I completed in 1997. The supervisor of my doctoral research, Nigel Worden at the University of Cape Town (UCT), gave me constant support and encouragement, directed me to certain material, and, most important, helped me to refine and cohere the ideas I presented. Many others made substantial contributions toward the research and writing of the dissertation. Andrew Meston, Carol Witz, Patricia Hayes, Uma Mesthrie, John Mason, Chris Saunders, William Frater, Rena Sherman, Andrew Ball, and Michele Pickover all helped in locating and providing source material and entered into sometimes lengthy discussions about my work and the directions it was taking. Ingrid Scholtz and Wayne Dooling assisted with the translation of Dutch documents. Anriette Esterhuysen and Ran Greenstein not only extended their hospitality to me during research trips to Johannesburg but also, through discussion, encouraged and supported the project. Carolyn Hamilton’s comments and incisive questioning helped to provide direction at a stage when the dissertation threatened to become bogged down in the almost overwhelming mass of sources on the festival. Andrew Bank read chapters of an early draft and made very useful, detailed comments. Pat van der Spuy proofread the dissertation, picking up on my inconsistencies, incorrect usage of certain phrases, and various other grammatical errors.
Most of the work on the development of the manuscript of the book took place in 2002. I was most fortunate in being awarded a fellowship on the Institutions of Public Culture program at the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship (CSPS) at Emory University. This was one of the most intensive and comprehensive periods of study and research for me, which, in no small measure, was owing to the constant support and encouragement from the directors and staff at the CSPS. Anne Walker, the CSPS program coordinator, was absolutely amazing in facilitating the smooth running of the fellowship program. Cory Kratz, co-director of the CSPS, was not only one of the most astute critics of my work but someone who always managed to find time in a hectic schedule to ascertain how one’s life, in general, and work, in particular, were progressing. Ivan Karp, also co-director of the CSPS, was a constant source of support. He promoted my work at every turn, read and reread drafts of chapters, engaged in ongoing discussion around the issues I was raising, and made immensely valuable suggestions as to the directions it could take. This fellowship was made possible by the University of the Western Cape, which granted me study leave, the institutions that provided the funds, the Rockefeller Foundation and Emory University, and my colleagues at UWC and UCT, who managed projects and taught various courses while I was at Emory. In the last category I am particularly grateful to Premesh Lalu, who not only took over many of my teaching and administrative responsibilities but also read my work and offered instructive critiques.
As the manuscript was nearing completion I was most fortunate to be able to call on the services of three most able research assistants, who located photographs, illustrations, and bibliographic references: Chrischené Julius and Jill Weintroub, students on the UWC, UCT, Robben Island Museum Postgraduate Diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies, and Mbulelo Mrubata, who had just completed his MA degree in history at UWC. Pete Stuckey at Graphco Processing and Matthew Cooke of Design Matters facilitated the reproduction of photographs and cartoons and the drawing of maps and diagrams. It was also a pleasure to work with a copy editor as meticulous as Rita Bernhard. Thanks also to Leonie Twentyman Jones who, at very short notice, compiled the index.
Lastly, thanks to my