The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

cases, the iconic representations of Mandume’s face and form were based on trophy
images of his dead body. The production and circulation of Mandume’s biography
shifted in 2002 from the terrain of anti‐colonial and nationalist resistance to
incorporation into the official landscape of memory, when a new monument honouring
his life was constructed at Oihole in southern Angola as part of the reordering of
national memory. This memorial edifice was built as part of a phalanx of modernising
construction projects of national roads, harbour furnishings, bridges, libraries and
government buildings as part of the reconstruction of Namibia and southern Angola
after decades of war and destabilisation. 80 In the ‘postwars of the dead’ in the
postcolonies of southern Africa, the memorial complex was indeed part of the imprint of
modernity.
The biographic features of the southern African memorial complex were derived in part
from the cult of leadership deification, which was inaugurated in the Soviet Union by
Stalin after Lenin’s death in 1924 “to ensure his own succession to the leadership”. 81 For
Stalin and his successors, Lenin served as “the hero whose prestige and authority they
inherited”. 82 According to Trevor Smith,
Lenin’s life and revolutionary career were embellished and
refined, and over time the historic Lenin was replaced by a
largely fictional, god‐like figure who served to legitimise both
the state and generations of Soviet leaders who claimed to be
carrying on Lenin’s historic mission. 83
For more than six decades, this “cult of Lenin” was propagated in the Soviet Union,
based on state controls over education, the press and the dissemination of
information. School classrooms were important forums for the transmission of Lenin
80 WML Consulting Engineers (Windhoek, Walvis Bay, Oshakati, Luanda), Pictorial Wall Calendar,
2003. My gratitude to Patricia Hayes for this reference.
81 Chris Bryant, ‘Remains of the deity’, New Statesman, Vol 10, Iss. 465, 8 August 1997, p 17.
82 Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), p203.
83 Trevor J Smith, ‘The Collapse of the Lenin Personality Cult in Soviet Russia, 1985‐1995’, The
Historian, No 60, Winter 1998 pp 325‐344; see also Trevor J Smith, ‘Lenin for Sale: The Rise and Fall
of the Personality Cult of V.I. Lenin in Soviet Russia, 1935‐1995’, M.A. Thesis, University of
Ottawa, 1995.
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