CHAPTER 5. CONTESTED PLACE AND CONTESTED MUSEUMS
5.3 The Msunduzi Museum Incorporating the Voortrekker Complex
5.3.2 The Oldest House and the Andries Pretorius House
parading the Orange Freestate flag83 and the Transvaal Republic flag84 with the Hebrew letters YaHWeH (Jehovah) on the white stripe. Etta Judson85 identified the flag and the group as the Daughters of Zion. She described them as a ‘fundamentalist religious group’ who were trespassing because there was a police interdict against them entering the terrain. The Voortrekker Monument disassociates itself from the Daughters of Zion and their ideologies (letter from Judson 2008-03-18). It must be clearly pointed out that this celebration was not orchestrated by the Blood River Heritage Site, but was an individual initiative from the group.
The sentiments of the Boer Republic that played an important role in Afrikaner nationalism were, I conclude, clearly acted out by the Daughters of Zion parading with flags. While they were doing this at a Voortrekker site they emphasised a connection between the two pillars that Afrikaner nationalism rested on. They linked different times and spaces together in one patriotic expression.
Reading the vow, praying, dressing up in Voortrekker outfits, and parading flags is a physical re-enactment at a particular site that creates a bond with history. This is a manifestation of ancestry and a demonstration of citizenship. The actors manifest and strengthen the right to land and to be regarded as both African and South African, reflecting that they are indigenously African parallel to any other cultural expression in the region. At present Afrikaner identity is experiencing a crisis, since they are dealing at the same time with the apartheid past and are trying to reform and appropriate their identity in keeping with new democratic ideals. Blood River is a contested place that has difficulties in conforming to the new democratic dispensation due to its association and function in the past drawing on segregation between groups. Therefore it functions as a site that manifests separation rather than reconciliation.
Museum premises at Langalibalele Street and the location results in a low number of visitors.
The house holds little symbolism in the urban landscape compared to other satellite museums, because it was not attached to any event in Afrikaner nationalist narrative, neither did it play a dominant role in African, Indian or Coloured narratives. The meaning of the house was not constantly acted out and narrated, as in the case of the Church of Vow, and has therefore not received contested meanings or played a significant role in the construction of heritage. Yet the place was a marker of identity and when acted out, held associations with urbanism, land, and ownership, especially for Afrikaners, and symbolised a construction of White South Africa. In the 1950s the 333 Boom Street pamphlet (undated) writes that the Pietermaritzburg municipality organised a plaque that identified it as the oldest house in the town. It shows a clear interest in the beginning of apartheid to identify and mark out places in the urban landscape that differentiate Whites from the other.
The house was declared a national monument on 9th September 1979 and in 1982 it was bought by the Msunduzi Museum (VM), restored and opened as a satellite museum in 1987 (333 Boom Street Pamphlet, undated). The Oldest House becomes a symbol of Voortrekker achievements in establishing Pietermaritzburg and the Republic of Natalia. It can be located within the discourse of Afrikaner nationalism that invested heavily in the sentiments of the Boer Republic and is therefore a reference to the socio-political climate. During this time there was an increased militarism in White South African society; young men fought in Angola, Namibia and in the South African townships. To institute a symbol that drew on the establishment of White towns or republics was a direct response to the political climate.
The incorporation of the house as part of the museum was also a matter of staging a difference between Afrikaner and anglophile heritage and homesteads, manifested in one of the alternative names: the Voortrekker House. The urban context has predominantly been connected to anglophile heritage, whereas rural contexts are associated with Afrikaner heritage. The Oldest House is a spatial materialisation of Afrikaner heritage used in a historical narrative of urban Pietermaritzburg. It legitimized and made visual an Afrikaner urban presence in a predominantly anglophile town after the British annexation of the Boer Republic; and at the same time deconstructed the image of urban heritage being anglophile- dominated. In the 1980s this was part of the museum´s renegotiation and attempt to expand the concept of Afrikaner identity.
At present the Msunduzi Museum is trying to establish a new association of the Oldest House.
To construct a multicultural ownership is simpler than at other places because it is not infused with negative meanings of Afrikaner nationalism. Nevertheless, it represents a White colonial home and the museum through different museum activities aims to transform it into a multicultural site of reconciliation in keeping with the government’s promotion of national healing and reconciliation. The plan is to include the house in the herb-garden project and focus on healing among different ‘cultural groups’ in Pietermaritzburg.
The Andries Pretorius House or Welverdiend is situated at the Msunduzi Museum and is part of the area known as the Voortrekker Complex.87 Andries Pretorius, one of the Voortrekker leaders, was given the farm Welverdiend in 1840 for his services at the battle of Blood River (Oosthuizen undated: 11-12, Pols 1988: 164). The incorporation of this building must be seen in the light of the Niemand Report (1975) that recommended that the museum become an open-air museum. Oosthuizen (undated: 11-12) and Pols (1988: 164) write that in 1965 the house was declared a national monument. At the time the house existed in the township of Edendale that later became part of the KwaZulu homeland and it was decided that the house should be moved and reconstructed at the Msunduzi Museum (VM) premises in 1981. In 1984 it was opened to the public.
The Andries Pretorius House was physically removed from the African township to a place within a ‘White territory’ of Pietermaritzburg. The act of relocating the house articulates racial alignment and the racial zoning of cultural property and seemed to reassure preservation of the house and its meaning. It was a manifestation of self and others where the area KwaZulu was not part of the White self, since it became an African legislated area. The house location in an African area was conflicting with the symbols the house held of Afrikanerdom;
the intangible meaning was conflicting with the meaning of the physical location. What was imperative in this process was to save the meaning of the house, and not the physical house itself. Oosthuizen (undated: 11-12) writes that only about one third of the original building material was used in the reconstruction.
The association that the house had with a Voortrekker leader played a political role in the turbulent political climate of the 1980s. Andries Pretorius as a leader came to embody the
87 The area of the Msunduzi Museum premises that is occupied by the Church of Vow, the EG Jansen extension and the Andries Pretorius House is the area that is referred to as the Vootrekker Complex.
virtues, actions and struggle of Voortrekker men. The house therefore reinforced the idea of the strong patriarchal leadership of apartheid that associated itself with the image of the
‘heroic’ and ‘modest’ Voortrekker leaders. The house is a material expression and a reminder of Afrikaner security, leadership and governance and embodied confidence in strong leadership in the 1980s. It was not the house itself that needed to be saved from KwaZulu, but rather the intangible expression of a dominant Afrikaner identity and of victory, land, role models and homes that needed to be salvaged. In the 1980s political climate Africans were regarded as invaders and Whites needed to take precautions against them. The Andries Pretorius House revealed the museum´s visualisation of socio-political structures that exposed the ideas in heritage preservations.
The house is an important physical symbol in this context and my field research reveals that Afrikaners attach considerable significance to the concept of home and family and use it as an identity-marker to distinguish themselves from English-speakers. The house is a visual reminder, a place that signifies the conclusion of a diasporic journey, while the artefacts within the house remind from where the diaspora originated. Tolia-Kelly (2003: 316-317) argues that a home has many incarnations associated and intertwined with the social memory of the group and continues to be a resource of identification. Bachelard and hooks explain people’s relations to the house similarly. Bachelard (1994: 19) sees the primal space that framed our understanding of the space outside; hooks (1990) suggests that ‘black children’
growing up in segregated societies associate White homes with oppressive powers. This place evokes multiple narratives that could be beneficial in the museum´s Transformation. The story of the house is not just a story of Andries Pretorius, but is also about the multicultural community that has used the place after him.
Taking that the house represented security and land for more recent Afrikaner generations, it is possible, following hooks´ (1990) statement, that it could also represent loss of land and rights for Africans. Yet the Andries Pretorius House was not acted on in narratives or as a symbol in the struggle against oppression and it is not regarded as a symbol of oppression.
The meaning of a place is always dependent on people’s narratives and relations to it. If there are no relations to it then there is no meaning applicable to the place.
White places as symbols of oppression sometimes hold more meaning for Whites as oppressors than for blacks. For Whites these places become dualistic. On the one hand they
have positive connotation symbolising Whites in power. On the other they symbolise the White role as subjugating other ‘cultural groups’, the latter a tainted history that Whites deal with daily and which they are constantly associated with. These are aspects that all ‘cultural groups’ need to come to terms with in the democratic South Africa. It is often through narratives by Whites that White oppression is applied to places and buildings. When Whites write about places as symbols of oppression they are trying to comprehend and come to terms with history and create a new narrative. When Africans, Indians and Coloureds write about the same issues they are trying to understand themselves in relation to former and changing power structures and trying to deconstruct old symbols of power. White South African narratives about places of oppression are usually detailed whereas African narratives in general associate White South African places with oppression. In this process Whites, of course, highlight aspects that are important for their understanding of history, identity and power; but their narrative of a place might not be the same as African narratives of the same place. What Whites considered oppressive might not be oppressive for Africans, and vice versa, and it is therefore important to allow multiple versions of history.
The Andries Pretorius House is presently located at the Voortrekker Complex, forming an Afrikaner enclave on the museum premises. Since most of the museum activities are staged in the main building, it enforces the assumption of the diminished significance of Afrikaner themes. By forming a Voortrekker Complex the museum is trying to find ways to modify a previous dominant heritage without suppressing and demeaning it. The Andries Pretorius House is at present displayed as a Voortrekker house showing an 1800-settler lifestyle. It has become a symbol of femaleness and home, related to the concept of the volksmoeder. The house is therefore a visual expression of entrenched gender roles and a more subtle expression of Afrikanerdom. It is a reference to the present social climate and toned-down characteristics of Afrikaner identity and mythology. This is both a continuation and a renegotiation of a heritage that Afrikaners and others find ambiguous.