The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

iography in public and commercial settings. Chief among these was the Nelson Mandela
Foundation. 269
Ever since the Krok brothers’ abortive attempt in the mid‐1990s to associate their business
ventures with the Mandela lustre through the ‘numbing gigantism’ of totalitarian art, 270
Mandela’s name, face and signature have been in demand for a range of projects,
landscapes, institutions and events in search of a transformed image. Informal settlements
have claimed Mandela’s name as part of their struggles for civic legitimacy. The creation
of Mandela Park as the name of Imizamo Yethu Township in Hout Bay, Cape Town, was
of a different order of civic politics than the municipal reordering of Port Elizabeth and
urban surrounds into the Nelson Mandela Metropole. A local township tourism
entrepreneur in Hout Bay could invite tourists to partake of “Dinner at Mandela’s”, in an
“evening cultural experience” in “the atmosphere of a true South African shebeen”, while
in P.E, the creation of the new municipal metro enabled a host of tourist and cultural
initiatives in Mandela’s name. The tourism magazine for P.E. and Eastern Cape surrounds
was named Madiba Action, while a coastal inlet being developed as a tourist destination
and holiday resort was named ‘Madiba Bay’. It also ensured that the Port Elizabeth Art
Museum was fully within its rights to rename itself the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
Museum. 271
These Mandela initiatives in P.E. culminated in the approval by the provincial
government at the end of 2002 of plans developed by a group of businessmen to build “a
269 Another key foundation was the Steve Biko Foundation. An additional institutional form created for
the propagation of biographic legacies was the Peace Centre, as in the case of the Desmond Tutu Peace
Centre, which sought to develop a museum and leadership academy for the presentation of leadership
courses to potential leaders (Nazma Dreyer, ‘Tutu Peace Centre to be situated in Cape Town’, Cape
Times, 16 December 2003).
270 The idea that this proposal ended in failure needs to be tempered with the admission that the Krok
bothers did eventually get their Apartheid Museum in 2001, a “rogue museum”, created as part of
their securing of the Casino licence for Gold Reef City. Ironically, this museum made use of social
history research to create a challenging environment of historical representation.
271 ‘Dinner @ Mandela’s: Evening Cultural Experience, Imizamo Yethu Township (Mandela Park),
Hout Bay’ (Flyer, n.d.); Madiba Action, Summer 2002/03; Art Talk, Vol. 4, Issue 1, 2003. It is not clear
whether the planned ‘Madiba Bay’ was the same as the ‘Nelson Mandela Bay’, the “exciting holiday
destination” in P.E. with “a signature of freedom” (Equinox, Issue 4, 2003, p 27).
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