Complex Histories in South Africa and America

Acadia Broussard

Background

Towards the beginning of our course, we read an article called “Teaching History After Identity-Based Conflicts: The Rwanda Experience.” The article was about the ways in which Rwanda had struggled to form a history curriculum dealing with the Rwandan Genocide. As a future history educator, that question of how to teach your own negative history is one that has stuck with me ever since. I ended up doing my final project for our class comparing the way that America teaches American slavery and the way that Germany teaches the Holocaust. I essentially concluded that while Germany does a thorough job teaching the Holocaust and America needs to greatly improve its history curriculum, the ways in which Germany teaches the Holocaust could not simply be transported into the American context because of our societal differences and the way that we view our own histories.

Experiences in South Africa

I brought this perspective and this question with me to South Africa, where many of the things that we saw or the people that we spoke with gave me a rich understanding of a new comparison between how two countries view their own history. Before going on the trip, I knew that South Africa and America had similar racial histories that create similar problems in the two countries today. However, it was only by going on the trip that I could make a deep and meaningful comparison of these histories that allowed me to think more about this question that stuck out to me from class.

Through interacting with museums and other spaces of public education, I quickly realized that South Africa was very confrontational with its history of slavery and apartheid. I was particularly struck by the large text that visitors see when they visit the Slave Lodge museum that brutally acknowledges slavery. What struck me even more was a plaque in the District Six Museum that informs visitors that the land on which the museum was built used to be owned by a slave trader. I stood and stared at this plaque for quite some time because I feel like this plaque would be unlikely or at least controversial in America. I personally feel that people only want to acknowledge slavery or racial problems when it is “relevant,” and would only create a plaque such as this one if the museum itself was about slavery. One could argue that there was no “need” to bring slavery into something that isn’t about slavery. I saw this as another way in which South Africa is very readily acknowledging the more negative aspects of their history.

The Importance of the “New” South Africa

Seeing South Africa’s acknowledgement of slavery and apartheid made me wonder how they were able to do so when we in America are still very torn over our own history. After my two weeks in South Africa, I believe that they are able to do so because their history is still so recent and, more importantly, they are under a new government. The establishment of a new government and the institution of a new constitution has allowed South Africans to distance themselves from the past state and be critical of that history. During my time in South Africa I heard lots of examples of speech that showed South Africans desire to move on from apartheid and embrace a new South Africa. One thing I noticed was a tendency towards post-racial sentiments. At the District Six museum our tour guide told us “there is only one race- the human race.” At a University one of my classmates asked a question about resources for black students and the professor seemed confused and possibly even offended. She told us that she didn’t understand why black students were different than any other students and that it is dangerous to think in terms of racial separation. These instances stuck out to me because I often hear this kind of rhetoric from people in America who don’t want to talk about race because they think we need to “get over it” or “move on.” Both of these individuals were black South Africans, however, so I wondered why they would be ignoring race. After spending more time in South Africa I came to understand that they weren’t ignoring race. South Africans are aware of the legacy of apartheid and how it influences their current society, however because the history is so recent thinking about how to “move on” from apartheid is a very real and tangible topic.

I think that America struggles with being able to actually acknowledge or move on from our tainted history because there is no symbolic separation such as a new government. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is glorified much in the way that we glorify our Founding Fathers. They have new symbols and new leaders to embrace and look up to, while our American heroes are centuries old and tangled in with our darker sides of history.