CHAPTER 5. CONTESTED PLACE AND CONTESTED MUSEUMS
5.3 The Msunduzi Museum Incorporating the Voortrekker Complex
5.3.4 Ncome Museum
Ncome Museum and the Afrikaner monument were erected for similar reasons: to celebrate the past, honour the ancestors and construct a political identity based on patriarchal history and traditionalism. If the government had been sincerely interested in promoting multiculturalism, and wished to erect a monument to it, they could have chosen a more neutral place. Therefore Ncome Museum did not become a place of reconciliation, but a place where Zulu-speaking Africans – and especially African nationalists – could reconnect with symbols of nationhood, struggle, cultural identity and victory and celebrate their freedom. It is not a multicultural symbol but a culturally exclusive symbol produced during democracy.
Zulu nationalism plays an essential part in the understanding of the perception of Ncome. The dominant African view of the Battle of Blood River from 1920-1961 symbolised an event of struggle for liberation. From 1961 to the late 1980s moral values such as bravery, dedication and commitment became prominent (Sithole 1998: 11, 23). The ANC and the SACP90 promoted the locality during the 1980s and 1990s as a place where lessons of bravery, commitment, and nation-building could be learned. The 16th December was celebrated as a day when Africans could recommit themselves to fight against oppression and racial and class exploitation (Sithole 1998: 4-5, 11). Within African and Zulu nationalist groups there was a vast difference as to how the battle was perceived. Between the ANC and the IFP there were conflicting versions; Dingane, favoured by the ANC, connected to the Battle of Blood River and the Voortrekkers, but was seen by the IFP in the 1980s as an untrustworthy villain because he had wanted to kill king Shaka in 1828 (Sithole 1998: 18-19). Conservative African elitists viewed the battle as a blemish in the history of race relations, while the ANC and SACP tried to justify the armed struggle, umkhonto weSizwe,91 and link it to the battle of Blood River (Sithole 1998: 11-13, 23). The meaning of the place is therefore not only contested between Afrikaner and African groups, but also among African groups themselves.
DACST appointed a committee of racially mixed academics to plan the museum. De Wet92 articulated what I hold to be the government´s purpose with the monument by saying: ‘It is now time for the Zulu to express their greatness through tangible symbolism’ (MIVM 1998- 08-15). The Zulu attack formation izimpondo zenyathi, ‘the horns of the bull’, was considered
90 The South African Communist Party.
91 The armed wing of the ANC.
92 A member of the committee.
a suitable shape for the monument and twenty-three shields were hung to symbolise the different Zulu regiments. In 1999 DACST deputy director-general Musa Xulu decided to establish a visitor centre and added an oval building behind the monument in the shape of a Zulu shield. These components are at present used in the teaching of IKS which is also promoted by the government as Transformation (Ngobese 2003: 5-6, Ndlovu & Shabalala 2004: 74). The monument was intended to represent male Zulu warfare which is a simplified version of Zulu heritage. The theme of war was most likely to assert a balance with the Afrikaner monument, but it entrenched the stereotypes of Zulu heritage and was a one-sided representation of Zulu maleness.
John Laband93 argues in a letter that the site of Ncome was particularly appropriate, since it directly faces the existing Afrikaner monument and the terrain has characteristics of both attack and retreat by the Zulu army (letter from Laband undated). This shows how the planning group regarded history and ethnicity. It was apparently important to them to allocate to each ‘cultural group’ their own space. This was especially visible on the opening of the place when a single function could not be held because, as explained in The Mail and Guardian (1998-12-04), there were two different cultures involved. I argue that there were two reasons, firstly because the separateness and uniqueness of ‘cultural groups’ were celebrated during apartheid and entrenched in people’s thinking. Ncome became a physical manifestation of such entrenched thinking. Secondly, the Zulu memorial would not be properly remembered or celebrated if it were incorporated in the Afrikaner monument and would be regarded as merely an artificial component added to the already existing monument.
This shows aspects of ‘shelving’, which is visualising democracy by making sure that all
‘cultural groups’ are equally represented. It is multiculturalism on separate demands, accommodating different locations for the celebration of different heritages, but it is not a multiculturalisation of heritage or representations. The place continues to be contested because it does not show reconciliation and upholds apartheid values of separate development and an imaginary of cultural diversity and uniqueness.
Ncome Museum is a place that embodies political, nationalistic and racial conflicts, but it is narrated as an example of promoting national unity. At the opening on 16th December 1998 Lionel Mtshali said to The Natal Witness:
93 A member of the committee.
One of the tragedies of mankind’s history is that it has been etched by the blood of soldiers and warriors. At the same time one of the triumphs of history is that great nations have been built as former foes have been reconciled and joined hands to build a shared future … South Africa must cling to the belief that peace and reconciliation have emerged after the bitter lessons of war, and that nations have been built, not as a consequence of war but as a consequence of the determination to avoid war and conflict … Ncome monument and museum will serve to promote peace and reconciliation. This museum is no dusty collection of artefacts. It is here to teach us how to build a peaceful future (Bishop 1999-11-27).
Ndlovu and Shabalala (2004: 30) argue similarly that the spatial separation gave the visitor an opportunity to reflect on the past and its history. I argue that by spatially organising the place according to the rules of separation, a comfort zone has been produced from which heritage representations can be experienced but not questioned. This means that the place was not positioned differently, or reconciled with its contested meaning. Transformation made room for a new cultural expression but did not break with the apartheid classification or spatial organisation of heritage. The separation could be due to the fact that the planning committee encouraged the government openly to support a movement away from the one-sided representation of the battle (report of the panel of historians 1998-09-01). Robertson and Richards (2003: 4) argue that in the same way that dominant groups create the meaning of the landscape, the meaning of resistance is also visible. The intention was not to suppress any interpretations, but to support and stimulate conflicting interpretations of the battle (Mapalala, Kuene, Laband, Hamilton and Groebler 1998).
When the place is visited, the symbols of separation are activated and despite reconciliation efforts they symbolise racial segregation. The classification is so entrenched in people’s mind that visitors might not reflect on it. The conflict is not resolved or reconciled, but is repeated and acted out by Whites as well as Africans. The differences are constantly narrated and become part of the understanding of the self and others in a present heritage landscape. It might be a democratic ‘shelving’ of heritage, but it is not a unified explanation of South African history. At present Transformation has not found a form to present a unified multicultural heritage – an aspect that will take time to formulate and spatialise. South African heritage will for some time continue to be presented as ‘shelved’ heritage – heritage as separate units – because this reflects the reality of the social environment.
The planning committee had a unique opportunity to claim that they were not prisoners of history, that they could learn from history. They encouraged the panel to refigure and rework the symbolism of the place when planning the monument (Hamilton & Kunene undated).
Girshick (2003: 6) suggests that the objectives were to deconstruct colonialism and promote reconciliation, which becomes quite ironic at a place symbolising two different nationalistic expressions and conflicts. The ANC (1994) endorsed reconciliation, promoting nation- building, redressing, correcting and giving new and appropriate perspectives to historical facts, something that the planning group tried to convey. The word ‘correction’ is something that is commonly used when speaking about re-addressing images of history and places.
There is a tendency to regard old images of history as wrong and to hold that they can be corrected in museums. Correcting, however, leaves very little room for multiple and conflicting expressions and furthers a one-sided view of history. The plans for Ncome Museum were to correct Afrikaner nationalist-dominant narratives of the place and to introduce (deliberately or unintentionally) an African nationalist interpretation. Correcting the expressions left no room for alternative multicultural expression and no contemporary explanation as to why this monument was so important in today’s South Africa.
At the Ncome Museum and Blood River Heritage Site one can encounter the possibilities of past, present and future. Malpas (1999: 181) argues that a sense of the past is tied to the sense of the place. The past is also at the same time part of the actions of the present; the distance (between races) the temporality (past, present and future), and the spatiality (Ncome-Blood River) produce an understanding of the contested meanings of place. To resolve these contested meanings the visitor must be fully aware of the role of the the place in the past and the present, though most visitors are not.