Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will discuss the role of museums and representation of culture in Zanzibar in the twentieth century through the examination of the now-closed Peace Memorial Museum. The colonial museum in British Africa has yet to be studied in depth and as one of the most successful museums in the interwar period, Zanzibar’s first museum is an enlightening example, both for its architecture and its collection and activities.

The Peace Memorial Museum, built after the Great War, is a masterpiece of colonial architecture in East Africa, with its fusion of styles from the Middle East and local sources, which articulated a vision of the East, created by the colonial regime and embodied in the Museum building. The Museum was a visual projection of indirect rule, alongside the frequent ceremonies which celebrated the shared administration of the Sultanate and the British Empire.

Famed beyond the local context for its lively activity programme, it became an important centre for education run by devoted curators, who developing new displays and programmes to respond to local and international circumstances.

Looted after the Zanzibar Revolution and stripped of many parts of its collection, it has fallen into disrepair, while other historic sites have taken its place and been reconfigured as museums for Zanzibar’s burgeoning tourist trade. I will highlight the legacy of this museum, both architecturally and culturally, and locate it within wider discussions of colonialism, the meaning of the museum and cultural representation.

Paper long abstract:

The study will investigate how the memory and meaning of the June 16 1976 Soweto student uprisings has been constructed over the last three decades. The study will do this by tracking and analysing the complex, diverse forms and character of its commemoration and memorialisation, in the process delineating the multiplicity of its features such as division, contestation and counter commemoration within African communities and the broader South African political landscape. The research is located in the context of a complex political landscape representing a nation-in-the-making, emerging from a past divided along ideological, class, ethnic and so-called “racial” lines. The study seeks to contribute to the wider body of memory culture in South Africa through its critical examination of how the uprisings are being re-represented within public discourse and forms of public history.

The following questions will be posed: After the tragic events of 1976, a process of commemorating the uprising was initiated largely within African communities, the leading centre being the Regina Mundi Church. What forms of ‘narrative and performance’ did the early commemorations take and what dominant political questions emanated from the early commemorations? Given the view that, ‘because memories are transitory, people yearn to make them permanent by rendering them in physical form,’ into what physical or tangible form did the commemoration of the uprisings manifest with time? Further, taking into consideration that ‘the act of remembering the past and of assigning levels of significance to [that past]…is an act of interpretation,’ what has been the hegemonic discourse emanating from the contestations of the memory and meaning of June 16 1976 in the post-1994 period? Indeed, social and political changes impact on the evolution of historical memories. What therefore, has been the impact of the post 1994 socio-political chages on the commemoration and memories of June 16 1976 uprising.

And what forms of counter-commemoration have emerged from the activities of former liberation movements outside the ruling party and other sections of South African society?

Paper long abstract:

Author: Alphonse Bartson-Umuliisa

No abstract supplied