History Making and Present Day Politics - Stolten's African Studies ...

H i s t o r y i n t h e n e w S o u t h A f r i c a
transitional period, could influence the educational system for a long time
to come. 111
Even if the historian has an obligation to use a representative choice of
sources in a fair and comprehensive way, to seek the truth, and construct an
accurate picture of the historical reality based on facts, the nature of history
writing remains essentially selective and often ideological. While most historians
have largely abandoned Rankean aspirations, 112 there is still a widespread
tendency for historical work to be written in a style that appears to
remove the author’s voice from the text, creating a false impression that he or
she is a seemingly neutral observer presenting authoritative accounts and explanations.
As Maylam has stated, the claims of historians to be objective are,
however, always a mere pretence. 113 History writing, memories, and stories,
can never be “free”. They will always be laden with meaning. 114
The intellectuals’ self-defence against demands of socialisation, whether
such demands have been expressed by an official authority or put forward by
an alternative party, has often been the traditional, apparently unproblematic
argument for autonomy. In this argument for legitimacy and respectability,
research is often viewed as ethically and politically neutral, a value-free, objective
practice that develops within its own rationale and logic. 115 Harold
111. Bam, June, “Making history the South African way: Allowing the pieces to fall
together”, paper written in connection with the NAI/CAS conference on “Collective
Memory and Present-Day Politics in South Africa and The Nordic Countries”,
Copenhagen 22–23 August, 2002; Asmal, Kader and James Wilmot, Spirit of the
Nation, Reflections on South Africa’s Educational Ethos, NAE, HSRC, and the
Department of Education, 2002.
112. Georg G. Iggers and James M. Powell (eds), Leopold von Ranke and the shaping of the
historical discipline, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1990.
113. Maylam, Paul, South Africa’s racial past: The history and historiography of racism, segregation,
and apartheid, Research in migration and ethnic relations series, Aldershot,
Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2001, p. 3. See also Vincent L., “What’s love got to
do with it? The effect of affect in the academy”, Politikon, South African Journal of
Political Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2004, pp. 105–115.
114. sarah Sarah Nuttall, “telling “Telling ‘free stories’? Memory and democracy in South south African african autobiography
since 1994” in Nuttall, Sarah and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past:
The Making of Memory in South Africa, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1998,
p. 88.
115. Norvick, Peter, That noble dream: The ‘objectivity question’ and the American historical
profession, Cambridge University Press, 1988; Appleby, Joyce, Hunt, Lynn and
Jacob, Margaret, Telling the Truth about History, W.W. Norton & Company Ltd,
1995; Dahl, Ottar, “Om ‘sannhet’ i historien”, Historisk Tidsskrift, Vol. 3, pp. 365–73,
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