CHAPTER 6. COLLECTIONS CAPTURED IN TIME
6.4 Collections in an emerging Transformation
economic value and he could therefore not authenticate it. The material he encountered in Indian homes was not what he thought represented Indian heritage. It is therefore not a question of what Indian heritage was, but rather of what my informant thought it was.
The museum had higher expectations of Indian than White material culture. The museum was interested in ancient, exotic and exclusive Indian heritage from India and not South Africa.
White material culture was represented by everything from mended socks to weapons. This indicates that the White collection dealt with heritage rather than history (following Lowenthal 1996) and that there are sentiments connected to the artefacts. Indian heritage required authentication by White museum standards to represent heritage and be incorporated in the collection. The collection activity shows how separated ‘cultural groups’ were and the lack of knowledge that Whites had of other cultures. It also shows how preconceived thoughts stipulate what was collected and how the collection programme differed from material culture collected through anthropological research programmes.
My informant argued that instead of collecting antiques, Indians spent their money on weddings, saris and jewellery which according to him could not be collected (Nigel 2006-04- 11). It is obvious that it is not Indian culture per se that the museum was out to collect, but rather an idea of what was Indian. According to Ebr.-Vally (2001: 146), marriage was a most important religious ceremony that symbolised the meeting of two families and the progression into adulthood. My informant touched on marriage items that were significant in Indian heritage and were therefore crucial to collect, but he turned them down. My field research has shown that several wedding dresses were donated to the cultural history collection, but the museum was not open to such Indian objects. Clifford (1999: 67) holds that collections are about what deserves to be remembered and treasured, whereas traditional artefact are more valued then modern items. Incorporation of material culture from modern wedding ceremonies could have to do with the perception of gender, especially feminity, and what role this played for the museum.
Places of origin, as mentioned before, assume differences between people, culture and identity – something that was considered necessary in the 1980s. Whites needed something characteristic to compare themselves with. Choosing to collect differences and traditionalism in other cultures was a way to resolve the rootlessness in which Whites found themselves in the 1980s. This way of expressing identity was very similar to the collection activities post-
1994 when socio-political and cultural instability called for the collection of traditional material to find identities in the past to make up for the loss of identities in the present. In Transformation the struggle for democracy replaced origin as a marker of identity and emphasised the creation of a new myth of origin for South Africans. This built on old stereotypes of origin that manifested a joint beginning, multiculturalism and a departure from segregation. But it was ambiguous, since at the same time it rejected and affirmed values of segregation. The new materialisation of heritage was therefore an explanation materialised in objects that walked a cultural mine-field.
The Natal Museum collection visualised a materialisation of self-reflection and a negotiation of identity that started before apartheid fell. It was a way to find out what society represented in a tumultuous environment which would increase during Transformation. The post- structural idea changed the interpretation of collections and renegotiated the way that material culture was assembled, a way that gave room for post-apartheid negotiation of the collection which later assumed a representation of political suitability. Transformation started to develop quite rigid policies of what to collect and from where. It also started to implement new classification systems that contextualised and deconstructed previous classification systems.
Yet the changes confirm old structures rather than challenge them. New policies were based on what kind of material was collected in the past and were also based on eurocentric classification systems.
New collection policies limited collecting to a local context. This worked in favour of the museum, since Transformation demanded a more local focus of the collection. My informant Gustav (2006-11-07) stated that the ethnographic collection in the Natal Museum, although the staff-members were very liberal politically, was never strong and relied on donations. The collection was fragmentary and there was no holistic approach to the material understanding of African societies. Therefore the museum for the first time began to purchase objects from Zulu culture to fill gaps in the collection (NMAR 1988/1989). Filling gaps in a collection and overseeing representations are in line with the ideas of new museology.
Wooden objects such as milkpails, headrests and spoons were the main interest together with a new focus on contemporary material. The museum showed an exploration of what it regarded as Zulu culture and a renegotiation of identity. But the interest in traditional material remained the core of attention. The museum noted problems similar to Ernest Warren´s:
objects that did not have European influence had become scarce and had vanished from the local dealers (NMAR 1988/1989). There was still an underlying assumption that traditional material could explain cultures as distinctive, and it showed a search for an essential signifier that was assumed to be abstracted from the material culture. It also visualised an exploration for something that had been lost and a yearning for something original. Articulating the collector’s heritage and exploration of something original projected onto the other´s heritage.
Although the museum might not have realised this, they started to question their culture of collection through donations with its attached problem of insufficient documentation (NMAR 1988/1989). The museum started to renegotiate White scientific ideas and put White heritage into new contexts. The renegotiations of African heritage came as a bonus rather than as an objective.
The new collection policy in 1989/1990 (NMAR 1989/1990), started to focus on collecting in the Tugela Valley because the area was a borderline between rural and urban areas, a landscape rich in traditions, and had for a long time been subject to conflict and faction fights (William 2006-03-06, Gustav 2006-11-07). Political affiliation played an important role in the collection activities. The ANC-governed areas were controlled by several committees that approved researchers´ appeals to do collection or carry out research activities. My informant explained the situation as a long process flanked by suspicion towards him and his intentions.
In Inkatha-controlled areas permission was sought from the chief, after which the researcher had no problems in the field and the process became much faster (Gustav 2006-11-07). Due to this, collecting activities in the 1990s were undertaken mostly in Inkatha-controlled areas which reflected on the material culture that was collected.
Inkatha encouraged a traditional way of life as did the apartheid government.110 Material culture therefore represented traditional values and a different social system from that in ANC-controlled areas that upheld socialist principles. Although the choice of area was a practical issue for my informant, it worked in line with the museum´s idea of what was considered African heritage. Collecting ANC material culture infused ideological aspects of the ANC into the museum and into the self; a process which the mainstreamed cultural expression might not have been ready for at the time.
110 This issue will be further elaborated in Chapter 7.
It was more important for the museum to collect material culture and fill gaps in the collection than to consider the intangible meanings connected to such activity. But the local context in which collecting was undertaken broke with previous attempts to find common components in general African material cultures. Efforts now focused on differences within African cultures rather than on pan-African heritage and its juxtaposition to White heritage. Despite these developments Transformation emphasised pan-African heritage, not local contexts, because the BCM influenced ANC politics. There is therefore a discrepancy between the advances in ethnography in the late 1980s and the more static idea of heritage within Transformation politics.
Collecting African material culture during this period was not always easy, since part of KwaZulu was considered a ‘no-go’ area for Whites. To circumvent this problem the museum contacted African dealers to acquire material culture. Mrs H Zuma sold her beadwork and Mr A Mzila provided various material culture which the museum selected and purchased (NMAR 1989/1990). Representation becomes complex in this respect, since the museum made the choice of what Africans offered them. It was therefore a choice based on White scientific ideals and on material assemblage by African´s interest. Africans were representing themselves through the medium of the museum just as Mr Kambule had done during the early 1900s. Acknowledging African participation in collecting activities gives a new dimension to the collection and resolved Transformation implications of Africans not having the right to represent themselves.
Self-representation was also dealt with in the museum project of traditional healers and social transformation in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg initiated by my informant Gustav. The project connected to already existing themes in the collection, but aimed at collecting oral data, becoming a focus during Transformation as seen through amasiko. This project touched on self-representation since my informant Gustav, although White, was trained as a traditional healer by another group. Gustav (2006-11-07), however, argued that his role as a traditional healer had nothing to do with the material collected. Nevertheless his training may have provided him with a deeper understanding of the material culture. More importantly the project represented the multiculturalism of South African heritage. It visualised how complicated it was to classify material culture and people according to South African social borderlines of cultural distinctiveness.
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.