Constructing a collective memory : monuments commemorating warrior kings and name changes in Limpopo Province South Africa

Abstract

Commemoration of the Wars of Resistance in South Africa generally and the subsequent monuments in honour of Warrior Kings in Limpopo Province particularly raised recognition of African traditional leadership beyond the status it had previously enjoyed in South African historical memory. The figure of the king also provided a model of post struggle leadership. He represented the political posture, the collective responsibilities, and the ideals of personal appearance prescribed by the society that honoured him, including its vision of ethnicity. The king was particularly emblematic of ideas about masculinity in the wake of a war and amid the social upheavals that followed it. Limpopo‘s commemorative Wars of Resistance monument represents the physical points of collective remembrance and stand in South Africa‘s public spaces as a permanent reminder of the wars of resistance. The creation of a collective memory is very important to the cohesion of the people of Limpopo Province. The population of the province consists of several ethnic groups distinguished by culture, language and race. Thus, the decision by the Limpopo Provincial Government to launch the ‗Wars of Resistance against Colonialism and Imperialism‘ theme was meant not only to acknowledge the contribution of the selected kings that are being honoured, but also to bring about an element of cohesion and shared past out of the people of Limpopo. Indeed every society, whatever its ideological climate requires a sense of continuity with the past and its enduring memories maintain this continuity. Stable memories strengthen society‘s ―temporal integration‖ by creating links between the living and the dead and promoting consensus over time. This consensus is resilient because memories create the grounds for their own perpetuation. Memories are not credible unless they conform to an existing structure of assumptions about the past—an ―available past‖ that people accept as given and that possesses a self-sustaining inertia. Thus a true community is a ―community of memory,‖ one whose past is retained by retelling the same ―cognitive narrative,‖ by recalling the people who have always embodied and exemplified its moral values and in this case those are the warrior kings of the Limpopo Province.