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?