CHAPTER 6. COLLECTIONS CAPTURED IN TIME
6.5 Collections in a changing socio-political environment
The archaeological department of the Natal Museum formed the Institute for Cultural Resource Management in 1992, undertaking archaeological investigations in KwaZulu-Natal (Demmer 2004: 8). The material culture was collected as part of excavations performed in relation to an emerging urbanisation and infrastructure. It produced a slightly fragmentary picture of prehistory in comparison to more targeted research excavations. Archaeology became particularly important in Transformation because it produced a sense of belonging and self-worth by focusing on African heritage before colonialism.
My informant Nigel (2006-04-11) feared that the museum structures would be completely overthrown in Transformation. Given that the ANC policy (Wilmot 1993) argued that museums needed to completely reinvent themselves in new ideological frameworks, in order to become more inclusive, Nigel´s fear may have been justified. The ANC policy had a firm political and ideological base. It showed African nationalistic ideas in which Transformation should function, but gave few practical suggestions. The policy proposed collecting from previously subjugated groups and struggle material. Struggle material represents a new origin from which a common new heritage could be constructed. It also assumed a victorious position comparable to similar White aspects, e.g., uniforms or artefacts representing war. The Natal Museum had focused on rural and traditional aspects of African heritage, something contested during the late 1980s but celebrated during Transformation.
After 1994 rural and traditional African heritage played an important part in an emerging African nationalism which was a way of constructing an identity for heritage different from White identity. Collected material makes reference and heritage can therefore be said to shift political aspects of collection. The ANC policy criticised the material focus of museums that MUSA emphasised and proposed an intangible focus. Focus on oral material assumes an element of self-control of material culture: it was an intangible way of presenting history where ‘colonial archives’ could be disregarded and new narratives of heritage introduced.
Oral history, according to Jenkins (1989: 121), suggests that heritage was narrated through community members and was not controlled by curators.
In the beginning of Transformation the Msunduzi Museum (VM) made very few changes to their collection programme and remained a historical museum focused on Afrikaner heritage.
In 1992, however, the Natal Museum launched the Amandla – the struggle for rights and freedom,112 a collection of apartheid paraphernalia113 that started around 1989 when the historian at the Natal Museum, Graham Dominy, visited the USA to investigate how museums fostered reconciliation between former enemies, classes, races and communities (Dominy & Khoza 1995: 8, 11). My informant Nigel (2006-04-11) held that it was director Stuckenberg who suggested a collection of apartheid public signs, as these were disappearing from the urban landscape as apartheid neared its end. Either way the collecting activities were
112 Hereafter referred to as Amandla.
113 Amandla was originally called Collecting the anti-apartheid struggle in Natal.
initiated before national Transformation, because the museum was aware of the changing socio-political environment. During Transformation American perspectives became an important input to understanding race relations and renegotiating the social environment. It was believed that the USA had undergone a similar process and that, for South African museologists, America held the answers to the future.
Dominy (1991-05-05) described the effects of apartheid as central to understanding the country´s recent past and held that it was the museum´s duty to collect the material evidence.
He stated to The Natal Witness (1991-06-06) that museums should preserve relics for the future when people were prepared to take a fresh look at the apartheid era. The Amandla project started focusing on signs, dompasses114 and material culture showing the spatial separation of groups (Dominy & Khoza 1995: 14). The collected objects in the beginning of the project represented White versions of apartheid and norms that the government had forced on the population. Since it was spatially collected in White areas it did not represent Indians, Coloureds or Africans. It was a representation of a White self; their relation to and memories of other groups. As the pass laws were repealed in 1986 the signs of segregation were removed and the physical appearance of an era began to vanish.
The collection of signs was both a way to preserve White heritage and to make an example of it. It was protecting a part of history and the self, and although socio-political change was a relief to the people, one cannot help wondering if the collection was not a way of preserving a heritage that explained who Whites were. The objects formed a visible reminder of divisions between groups. Since division was, as I have argued before, entrenched in how people classified heritage, the collection manifested how they saw heritage and what was needed to preserve it. It was a way of retaining a system – a way of life that was about to be fundamentally changed – while not knowing what the future would hold for those previously in power. The apartheid classification system represented security to Whites, while to the other it was a way of life and of relating to each other, upheld on the one hand and hated on the other, but much needed to represent the self and still drawn on in the social environment to state a position in the world. Similarities between the cultures were never a focus in colonial and apartheid museums, and are still not emphasised as a focus, though at present museums are trying to represent all ‘cultural groups’.
114 Forced identification by the government.
Collecting these objects is a way to preserve a fragile memento, especially since Mkhize (1998-08-13) holds that records from the apartheid era were actively destroyed. To preserve this history could be seen as a way of reconciling with the past by remembering and preserving evidence of segregation as an important testament to history. Tolia-Kelly (2003:
315) holds that material culture cannot be situated only as a memento of a bound-up past, but also as textures of remembered places – in this case places and spaces of apartheid. Tolia- Kelly (2003: 315) continues that signification of identity, history and heritage through material culture depends on continuing adherence to the past to sustain the present. Individual objects relate to individual biographies, but are at the same time significant in stories of identity on the scale of citizenship.
The Amandla project encouraged university students to preserve their political T-shirts from the 1970s and 1980s as well as more current material commemorating DCO Matiwane, chief Mhlabunizima Mapohumulo, Victor Africander, Major Mcoyi and Jabu Ndlovu. Other symbolic material such as items of uniform and insignia was also sought (Dominy & Khoza 1995:16-17, Dominy 1991-05-05, Cembi 1992, The Natal Witness 1991-06-06). T-shirts gave testament of how neglected the female participation in the struggle was in the museum, since the curator did not mention or ask for such T-shirts. This speaks about both the patriarchal sphere of struggle and the patriarchal sphere of the museum, where history was presented from a male heteronormative perspective. Although Transformation has tried to expand on representation of heritage, aspects of age and gender have been overlooked. The museum tradition of collecting material culture must be seen as a background to this. The museum had a tradition of collecting certain objects and it perpetuated and applied this tradition over time.
One of these objectives was to preserve objects from warlords and conflicts because they said something about the male norm that society rested on.
As the collection activities progressed, other material was incorporated into the collection such as political ephemera: posters, banners, leaflets, and pamphlets (Dominy & Khoza 1995:
16-17). The struggle paraphernalia was mostly collected from an ANC sphere, something important to bear in mind regarding the conflict in KwaZulu-Natal during the 1990s (Gustav 2006-11-07). Political affiliation is something that needs to be considered when discussing representation of objects in the collection. Struggle material was referred to overall as a homogeneous representation of groups or material, mainly because it represents defiance
against apartheid, White dominance and racial injustice. The fact was that the struggle was scattered along racial and political lines, but this was seldom acknowledged in museums since it served a nation-building heritage purpose. Struggle material was a Transformation construct and internecine war was not represented in museums because it worked counter to nation- building heritage.
I suggest that the struggle material symbolises a similar relationship to that of material confiscated by the Union defence forces or the police during the colonial and Union periods.
Dominy and Khoza (1995: 16-17) and Cembi (1992-08-20) reveal that the Amandla collection of home-made weapons, cultural weapons, private property and political material of historical or symbolical nature was confiscated by the security police and donated to the museum. This close relationship has, however, been overlooked since struggle material made up such an important political role during Transformation. Struggle material reflected interaction between groups and deconstructed the idea of African heritage. Collecting this kind of material has come to resolve the problems of collecting African heritage because struggle material allows African heritage to alternate its value sphere from being a symbol of submission to a symbol of power.
The same renegotiations of meaning and value could be narrated, e.g., with spears. Traditional weapons115 assumed a significant role during the struggle. They were symbols of resistance and reaffirmed traditional values, rejecting the origins of colonisation. Spears in a greater African context represented a manifestation of struggle against colonisation, but were collected by Whites as a symbol of colonial victory. Stuckenberg (1993-11-09) confirmed and reflected on this in an interview:
In South Africa, where apartheid compounded such problems by forging a linkage between class and race, what is most authentically ‘black’ in our museum is our collection of ethnology … but blacks, especially the younger ones, may disregard this evidence of their cultural history. For them the circumstances of their lives under apartheid may be their most exclusive form of self-identification.
Spears were originally collected as symbols of colonialism and the forging of a White state, but in the context 1980-1990 they became symbols of the struggle, internecine war and African rights to cultural expressions. The spears manifested a rural African heritage that upheld an idea of urban White heritage and reflected and upheld the idea and the reality of
115 As I will elaborate in Chapter 7.
spatial segregation. The urban landscape was designated White, but at the same time Whites identified themselves with rural aspects. Spears played a role in explaining White heritage and cultural location while actually narrating African heritage. Transformation also polarised urban and rural, the latter representing roots to Africans. During Transformation the meaning of material culture changed due to socio-political structures and ideals combined with the employment of different ‘cultural groups’. By renegotiating traditional rural material to become symbols of struggle, the museum assumed a new role by actively constructing political significance attached to material culture. It renegotiated Africans as a passive other to become an active agent with a political identity.
The Natal Museum showed an awareness of the meaning of material culture before Transformation started. The museum was aware of what the collected material could symbolise and communicate. Because of this awareness it had the ability to renegotiate material culture and change its associated meaning. Since the museum was aware of the role material culture could play, they were also aware of the collection and of what was ‘missing’.
The museum (NMAR 1992/1993) held that Amandla broadened the contacts and addressed problems in the entire community. The project was described by Dominy (1996: 4) as very important for the development of ownership by disadvantaged communities. Makhosi Khoza said to The Echo: ‘Much pain has been experienced and we need material that will reflect the everyday life of people through this long period’ (Cembi 1992). An important part of Transformation was to relate the museum to the community, to open up the institution and make it accessible to them.
The later phase of Amandla was undertaken by Makhosi Khoza, Modisa Khosie and Aubrey Ngubane who established contacts with the townships (Dominy & Khoza 1995: 22, Maqetuka 1993). The later phase of the collection is a representation of self, since the collection activities were undertaken by Africans. The question is whether the material culture in the collection is relevant to the entire community because it was Africans that collected it. The economical class of the collector and collected is another important issue to consider and holds implications for representation. The collectors´ training as curators also affects the work. I suggest that there is a formula in the museum on how to collect and that it governs the purpose of collecting and the objects collected. The museum workers when collecting are performing a collection ritual. The group affiliation of the collector does not change the tradition of collecting, though it might change the relation to the object collected, but not the
type of object assembled. But being from a different race, class or gender than the museum norm might grant collectors access to other spheres in society. In this case Africans had easier access to townships and information than Whites. The material culture might therefore be the same, but the information might differ. It is a self-representation, but that is not necessarily more objective. Compare, e.g., White material in the cultural history collection. Yet the act assumes an authority over the material previously claimed by Whites.
The museum was interested in a holistic approach to the political parties and trade unions that all played important roles in the history of the region (Cembi 1992). The Amandla project did not actively collect Indian and Coloured struggle material, perhaps due to the socio-political changes during the tricameral parliament. After the election in 1994, Dominy and Khosa (1995: 28-29) held that ‘normal’ political activities were collected. They continued to state that Amandla was not a shortcut to cosmetic change for museums that had lost their direction.
Dominy said to The Echo: ‘The museum accepts that this is not yet the complete story, and are anxious to obtain more material so that all parties and viewpoints can feel involved, and that their stories are included’ (Maqetuka 1993).
Struggle material and Indian and Chinese material was reclassified and incorporated in the cultural history collection in the 1990s (Sahra 2005-10-11). The cultural history department collected from all the inhabitants of Natal and focused on interaction between different groups. The anthropology department collected traditional African-South African material culture. When I asked my informant why this reclassification had occurred, she said that it
‘was just decided’ that it should be history rather than anthropology (Sahra 2005-10-11). The museum during this time deconstructed its own classification system, and renegotiated material culture and presented new sets of standards. The classification entailed a division of the rural-traditional (ethnography) and the urban-modern (cultural history) in considering material culture. The system is ambiguous but shows a way to deal with Transformation.