The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Soon after this was published, Noel Solani, then a researcher at RIM who worked on
the prison memory project, took issue with my analysis at a Cape Town conference,
with good reason. According to Solani, I had overstated the significance of Cell Stories
and the extent to which it represented an interpretive departure. Solani’s argument
was that in spite of its imaginative and challenging nature, Cell Stories remained firmly
located within “a national project of reconciliation”. “Visually and textually”, the
exhibition displayed “people’s achievements while they were in prison without really
problematising the contradictions and difficulties in which people achieved these”. It
celebrated those “who succeeded while silencing the memory of hundreds [who did
not]”. Indeed, Solani suggested, Cell Stories was no departure from the hegemonic
narrative of the ‘triumph of the human spirit over adversity’. 6 Solani’s concerns had
previously been expressed to me by former political prisoner, Vusi Nkumane, who had
complained that heritage interpretation at Robben Island contained no ‘blood’.
In the conference exchange that followed, and in subsequent discussions, I have
expressed my agreement with Solani’s argument, but argued that in the context of
RIM, where the Mandela experience had been so prominent, Cell Stories needed
strategic support in order to contribute to opening up wider possibilities for critical
debate over the meanings of political imprisonment. The work of the prison memories
project more generally took some focus away from the tours department, whose work
of site interpretation with former political prisoners, seemed to place emphasis on B
Section and the lime quarry, associated with the prison experience of political leaders.
The contestation over the meaning of political imprisonment also opened up space for
questioning national heritage frameworks that had turned Mandela’s biography into
the national story. This exchange with my erstwhile student, who had gone on to be a
museum researcher and public scholar in a national museum, showed how it was
possible to stimulate critical debate and spaces of engagement in institutions of
6 Noel Solani, ‘Representation of ex‐prisoner memories at Robben Island Museum’, paper
presented to the international conference, Memory and History: Remembering, Forgetting and
Forgiving in the life of the Nation and the Community, Cape Town, 9‐11 August 2000.
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