Monument(al) meaning-making: the Ncome monument & its representation of Zulu identity

Abstract

This essay offers a reflective reading of a recent Zulu monument/museum built at the Ncome/Blood River battle site in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The essay is organized into three sections: the possibility and politics of such a monument(al) re-presentation, perceiving the monument from the outside, and perusing the museum from the inside. As such, it examines representational issues of ethnicity, race, gender, nation, and power and their role in identity negotiation. More specifically, the essay explores how ‘Zulu’ identities are represented via a monument in post-apartheid South Africa. Ultimately, the monument/museum promotes Zulu nationalism and a Zulu warrior identity, homogenizes and fixes Zulu culture and identity, and, thus, fails to advocate unity and reconciliation, as was originally recommended.

*The core of this essay was originally written in two cultural studies seminars at the University of California, Davis. Earlier versions of this essay were presented at a Cultural Studies Graduate Program Colloquium at the University of California, Davis (2001) and at the Crossroads 2004 Conference. I would like to thank Nsizwa Dlamini, Paula Girshick and Anton Ehlers for sending me copies of their papers and for their kindness in responding to my queries. I would also like to thank Karyl Ketchum, David Nylund, and Karen Shimakawa for their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, I thank Frances Harding and Michael Mann for their editorial assistance and attention to detail.

Notes

*The core of this essay was originally written in two cultural studies seminars at the University of California, Davis. Earlier versions of this essay were presented at a Cultural Studies Graduate Program Colloquium at the University of California, Davis (2001) and at the Crossroads 2004 Conference. I would like to thank Nsizwa Dlamini, Paula Girshick and Anton Ehlers for sending me copies of their papers and for their kindness in responding to my queries. I would also like to thank Karyl Ketchum, David Nylund, and Karen Shimakawa for their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, I thank Frances Harding and Michael Mann for their editorial assistance and attention to detail.

¹Even though many historians and South Africans generally accept some basic facts regarding the battle, there are still varied interpretations of and some debates about these basic facts, as is noted in several of the papers presented to the South African Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology seminar The re-interpretation of the Battle of Blood River/Ncome (DACST 1998). In this paper, I use the terminology of ‘Blood River’ primarily when referencing Voortrekker-Afrikaner tradition or perspective or when alluding to both Afrikaner and Zulu traditions and perspectives. Otherwise, I employ ‘Ncome’ given this paper concerns the Zulu monument and the long absence of reference to the battle as such in mainstream South African popular culture.

²Note also that others accompanied these 450 Voortrekkers and would have been present at the battle. It is estimated that these present would have included in the neighbourhood of 120 port natal Africans, 130 or so wagon drivers and ‘voorlopers’; 200 grooms holding horses, 750 horses and 700 oxen (DACST 1998; see e.g. Laband 1998: 28).

³The rhetoric of Afrikaner nationalists regarding Blood River has been noted by Ehlers (2000) and others. Often cited, for example, is D.F. Malan's 1938 speech at Blood River celebrations, where he suggests that city-dwelling Afrikaners ‘stand today in your own white laager at your own Blood River, seeing the dark masses gathering around your isolated white race.’

⁴According to former Minister of the DACST Lionel Mtshali (1998b), ‘The Legacy Project was established to acknowledge the previously neglected, marginalised and distorted South African heritage. The expression of the Country's history through monuments, museums and other forms to commemorate what is meaningful to all South Africans, has the potential to contribute to reconciliation and nation building in the Country.’ The Legacy Project, approved by Cabinet in 1997, is administered by the DACST, and is co-ordinated by the Legacy Committee. The Legacy Committee, chaired by the Director-General of DACST, is an inter-departmental committee tasked with the establishment of new and diverse monuments, museums, and commemorations.

⁵The number of Afrikaans monuments in the country is not surprising. Tomaselli & Mpofu (1993), for instance, cite Franco Frescura's (1992) work to point out that 97% of declared monuments by the National Monuments Council in South Africa are reflective of white values and interests. The other 3% include artifacts, art and architecture of the majority of South Africa's population (84%). Over 60% of the monuments are in urban spaces. No doubt, these percentages have changed since the governmental transition in 1994.

⁶This Zulu monument is part of the Ncome project, which includes a monument/museum housing 18th, 19th and 20th century ‘Zulu’ cultural artifacts and information and a souvenir shop in a beehive hut outside the monument. There has been discussion of adding a living cultural village to the monument to ‘display the various aspects of the living heritage of that region’ (Xulu 1998: 3). Incidentally, while I have used the terminology of memorial and monument in this essay, Girshick (2002: 5) has discussed the Ncome monument's ‘transformation from memorial into monument,’ distinguishing between the two and noting the varying visual modes of each.

⁷It is, of course, problematic to homogenize all Zulu speakers into an ethnic identity category. It is my contention, however, that the monument rhetorically functions in such a way, thus the appearance of what may seem my preference for prioritizing ethnic Zulu identity over other identities of Zulu speakers. In fact, Zulu nationalist rhetoric, like that of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, often subsumes other identities under a ‘Zulu’ identity, while simultaneously making appeals to ‘tradition.’ Wright (2000) argues that such discourse is more reflective of a conservative ethnic elite and its advocates than of most Zulu speakers. (Girshick 2002: 9, thus, asserts that such elites employed the Ncome project to ‘promote a declining IFP ideology.’)

The difficulty of defining ‘Zulu,’ as well as the problematic of speaking for and to ‘Zulus,’ is suggested by Robert Thornton (1996: 145) when he writes,

There is no simple way to ‘be Zulu’ since the king, the ethnic party (Inkatha Freedom Party), the region (KwaZulu) and the category of ‘speakers of Zulu’ are all in conflict in some domains, and unresolved in all domains. Not even colour is a reliable signifier any longer. The latest population census reports 6,000 people who list themselves as both ‘White’ and ‘first-language speakers’ of Zulu.

Neville Alexander (1997) also implies this difficulty in post-1994 South Africa when noting that South African identities, such as ‘Zulu,’ are ‘being hotly contested.’ This same struggle is articulated by Wilmsen, Dubow & Sharp (1994: 351) when they write that

‘Zulu identity’ is a terrain of contestation and manipulation on which many actors – Inkatha, the bantustan government, the apartheid state, white Natalians, the trade unions, and the liberation movements – have played diverse parts.

Carolyn Hamilton (1998) also addresses the discourse about Zuluness in her discussion of Shakaland's representation of Zulu identity during the midst of the 1990's negotiations. She (1998: 203) writes,

The controversy surrounding these definitions of ‘Zulu-ness’ and concern over their authenticity involved questions ranging well beyond the identities of the people who described themselves, or who were designated by others, as ‘Zulu.’ The backdrop to these questions was the painful emergence of the so-called new South Africa, and the controversy included struggles over what ideally would constitute this new society, as well as over changing and sometimes contradictory meanings of what it was to be ‘black’ or ‘white,’ ‘Zulu,’ ‘Sotho,’ ‘Afrikaner,’ and so on.

De Haas & Zulu (1994) also discuss, in depth, the social construction of ‘the Zulu’ by Inkatha, the Zulu king, the National Party government, the media, and many others, pointing out the flawed historiographies and ‘myths about social and cultural homogeneity within the Zulu kingdom’ (p. 436), the often ‘inferred isomorphism between Zulu culture and nation’ (p. 437), and the occasional suppression of Zulu ethnic identity by some due to its associations with the IFP and Buthelezi.

⁸In using West, I am not suggesting that ‘black’ has the same meaning in the US and in South Africa, nor am I claiming equivalent social situations in both countries. In regard to past representational opportunities and practices, however, there is a shared exigence, though perhaps now more widespread access and opportunity for black voices and representations in South Africa than in the United States.

⁹Girshick (2002) writes that Mtshali prioritized the Ncome project over other Legacy projects because of his perception that the ANC was constructing its own biased monuments and due to his desire to promote the Zulu version of the battle.

¹⁰Much has been written regarding this warrior identity and appeals to it by Zulu nationalists, Zulu-speakers, and non-Zulu-speakers (De Haas & Zulu 1994; Golan 1991, 1994; Hamilton 1998; Makhanya 1992; Mkhize 1990; Taylor 1994). It is a well-known and common perception of ‘Zulus’ in South African society, and one easily observable in popular media.

¹¹From this point (‘Perceiving the monument from the outside’) to the end of the essay, I often employ a more personally reflective style of writing, in large part because monument viewing and interpretation is a subjective experience and practice. One's own social location and knowledge greatly shape such experiences and readings. Consequently, my reading of this monument is a personal one and may not be shared by other viewers, be they South Africans or tourists. My own perceptions, reading and articulation of this monument are influenced by a number of factors. Such factors are the date I visited the monument (December 22, 2000), my residence outside of South Africa, my failure to talk with anyone extensively involved with the Ncome project, my limited familiarity with Zulu history (especially from Zulu sources), my marriage to a white, English-speaking South African woman, and my status as a white, middle-class, heterosexual, Southern United States American male with white family and friends in South Africa. Most of these things place me in somewhat of a different ‘conceptual and linguistic universe’ (Hall 1997a: 22) than the majority of South Africans, which complicates my reading of these Ncome monument representations. For such reasons, in this essay, I have at times worked from a frame of what it seems may be intended in these representations and what a tourist's eye may see and a tourist's mind may wonder. In some senses then I am offering ‘educated’ guesswork. It should be understood, moreover, that my statements appearing certain and definite are personal readings and are not to be read as the ‘right’ reading. What this essay may also demonstrate is that regardless of the intended representational meanings, readers may read things differently, that is have their own interpretations and understanding of what is intended by representors (see, for instance, Sturken & Cartwright 2000). Readers may also subject themselves to and be subjected differently by the representations (Hall 1997a), thus differences in reading, interpreting, understanding and subject-positioning will continually emerge.

¹²I would contend that after 1994 one saw the ‘traditional’ Zulu warrior identity supplemented with a reconciliational element, ultimately resulting in what can be termed a ‘reconciliational identity,’ a form of identity that has been practiced by many South Africans in post-apartheid South Africa (Schönfeldt-Aultman 2000).

¹³Girshick (2002) notes that one hut is a curio shop selling crafts of the Nquthu Arts & Crafts Organization and that the other hut is for meetings and storage.

¹⁴The children's presence, of course, is much more than imagery and speaks to issues such as class, power, social location, and the like. Class seems a rich area to explore in relation to the Ncome project, particularly in regard to the benefits the monument is apparently supposed to have for the immediate rural community. Dlamini (2001) briefly discusses the anticipated income (more than one million Rand in 1999) and number of visitors (roughly 120,000 per year) to the site. When I visited the Ncome site, these gathering children left me with the impression that they were subsisting in a rural and impoverished environment in a state of semi-hunger, leaving me to wonder how much they are benefiting from the monument's presence, with the exception of tourists' ‘sympathetic’ handouts. Dlamini (2001) does, however, note that a local group (Nquthu Community Tourism), mostly composed of women, sells cultural goods in the curio shop, that other local people have the opportunity to sell curios to visitors, and that the museum provides live Zulu dancing at Wednesday lunchtime for which visitors can pay the performers. Still, Dlamini contends that these financial opportunities are overshadowed by the ‘less obvious exclusion of other parts of the memory of this historical event’ (2001: 137), that is, by the representational omission of the Tlokoa, ‘despite their presence in the area today and the involvement of the tribal authority in the planning of the Ncome project,’ and the apparent involvement of a Tlokoa chief, Sekoyela, in events that sparked the battle (ibid: 136).

¹⁵Dlamini (2001) argues that this display case addressing the battle draws mostly on a Zulu nationalist interpretation of the battle, specifically that of the Zulu historian J.S. Maphalala (see Maphalala 1998).

¹⁶Dlamini (2001: 126), too, argues that the monument invokes an ‘exclusive Zulu ethnic nationalism.’ He suggests that the involvement of IFP member and Deputy Director-General of DACST, M. Xulu, the dependence on Zulu nationalist historian J.S. Maphalala's interpretation of the battle rather than on that of an academic panel, and the predominance of ‘Zulu elite’ at the opening ceremony, all contributed to this Zulu nationalism. Girshick (2002: 5) agrees that the project ‘was transformed from a symbol of reconciliation to one of ethnic resistance.’

¹⁷Given such apparent representation, it is key to note that Dlamini (2001), drawing on correspondence with anthropologist F. Prins, asserts that the ‘material culture’ presented in three of the four display cases are not ‘Zulu’ styles of the area, but are styles of amaBhaca and amaLala. This assertion even further supports the arguments I am making about the apparent political intent to maintain traditional ethnic and gender identities at the expense of reconciliational elements.

¹⁸Dlamini and Girshick have also commented on the role of reconciliation in this monument. Dlamini (2001) notes some of the anticipated use of ‘symbolism of reconciliation’ (p. 131), such as a proposed footbridge over the Ncome river connecting the Zulu monument and the laager monument, yet concludes that, ultimately, ‘reconciliation and nation-building cannot be served’ by the Ncome project (p. 135). Girshick (2002: 10) argues that the Ncome monument is, rather, a ‘symbol of resistance,’ which she supports by pointing out failures of the Ncome project to meet the recommendations of the academic panel and Steering committee. She references the unbuilt footbridge, the failure to plan and the lack of a ‘secondary monument of reconciliation,’ and the absence of traditional Zulu cleansing and reconciliation ceremonies at Ncome events.

¹⁹Regarding the museum's display cases, Girshick (2002: 8) writes that it is ‘striking’ that the cases contain ‘very few labels and no attempts at indicating dates,’ and that they fail to sort materials regionally. She adds that this ‘glossing over of temporal and regional differences in style, whether intentional or not, promotes a view of Zulu culture as unified and homogenous, a view well suited to Zulu nationalist perspectives’ (ibid: 8–9).

²⁰As Patricia Davison (1998) has argued about museums, this re-presentation is, of course, a particular one, one that authorizes a particular version of the past, which will also become ‘institutionalized as public memory’ and will ‘anchor official memory’ (p. 145). She also notes that when decisions are made about collecting and displaying, ‘museum curators determine criteria of significance, define cultural hierarchies and shape historical consciousness’ (ibid.; cf. Lidchi 1997).

²¹One such limitation is that the representations furthered by the Ncome project in conjunction with the Afrikaans monument privilege masculinist discourses that reinscribe and reinforce nationalist ideologies that obscure or even erase the material experiences of women and others in post-apartheid South Africa. I am indebted to my colleague David Nylund for helping me articulate this point.

²³As I argue, and as Dlamini (2001) contends, the project failed to live up to its stated intentions. Dlamini states that the ‘Ncome project consciously or unconsciously exploited a national ‘heritage’ resource to revive ethnic nationalism, and in so doing, contradicted the aim of the Legacy Project' (2001: 132). He continues, 'It is discomforting to consider how completely the implementation of the Ncome project failed in terms of the objectives of the Legacy Project; in its presentation of simplified polarised public history, and in its exclusion of significant actors in the past. Indeed, the Nquthu area is being ‘Zulu-ised,’ its past reordered in a revival of an exclusive ethnic nationalism’ (ibid: 137). He concludes his essay with the claim, ‘Ncome is indeed an opportunity lost in the state's search for reconciliation and nation-building’ (ibid: 138).

²²Building South African unity becomes complicated if reconciliation with others is problematic for ‘Zulus’ who perceive reconciliation ‘as an act of commitment based entirely on loyalty, responsibility and accountability’ (Mathenjwa 1998: 42). There may be, after all, for many Zulus some uncertainties and reservations about the sincerity of white/Afrikaner commitment, loyalty, responsibility and accountability, thus making ‘reconciliation’ itself difficult (not to mention marking reconciliation materially and with a sense of permanence in a monument).