The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

asked to “identify sites that are important to you and your family, friends, community,
neighbourhood, town or village”. Biography was a key characteristic of the NMC’s poster
campaign that invited the public to participate in “a national programme to honour the
founders of democracy”. Such sites, the people were told, “might include the homesteads
of our leaders” or those who created democracy in South Africa. 111 The overwhelming
responses to the site identification campaign were proposals for monuments that sought
to mark sites associated with resistance leaders. Correspondents proposed sites ranging
from Solomon Mahlangu Freedom Square, which had a memorial “built by the
community” in the early 1990s in Mahlangu’s honour, to the site in Mount Street, District
Six, where Moses Kotane had lived from 1939 and which Kotane had considered to be his
home until his death in 1978. The sites of the homes of Abdullah Aburahman, John Gomas
and the La Gumas were also put forward. The Border Historical Society proposed the
graveyard where Walter Rubusana had been buried. 112
At the end of August 1999, it was announced that a range of new monuments were being
planned to recognise “the heroes of the struggle against apartheid and the history of a
black majority officially deemed until recently to have no past worth remembering”. To
counter the dominance of colonial and Afrikaner monuments on South Africa’s landscape,
the NMC had endorsed a host of new heritage sites. This was to be one of the last acts of
the NMC before the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) replaced it.
Many of these monuments were associated with Nelson Mandela. The former president’s
one‐time Soweto home was declared a national monument, as was Pretoria’s Great
Synagogue, scene of the 1956 treason trial of prominent anti‐apartheid leaders. 113 In the
meantime a novel approach to biographic memorialism was being introduced by the
111 ‘Claim Your Heritage’ (National Monuments Council Poster, 1998).
112 Mamelodi Heritage Forum to NMC, 26 October 1998; Brian Bunting to NMC, 2 November 1998; Reg
September to NMC, 13 October 1998; Border Historical Society (East London Museum) to NMC
(posted 13 October 1998), File on Responses to NMC Poster Campaign, 1998, SAHRA.
113 Mail and Guardian website (www.mg.co.za), 31 August 1999. SAHRA was created in terms of the
National Heritage Resources Act No 25 of 1999). The transformation of the NMC involved a shift from
an emphasis on architecture and buildings to a broader focus on heritage sites. As a result of this
legislation, the ambiguous concept of ‘monument’ was dropped in favour of a new language which
referred to ‘heritage sites’ or ‘heritage resources’ – to broaden the focus from merely buildings with
architectural significance ‐ and ‘memorials’, which referred to monumental edifices, statues or works
of public sculpture.
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