No abstract
During South Africa's transition to democracy in the early 1990s, tourism came to be seen as the 'passport' to development. In an emerging consensus, the country's tourist Africanness was articulated in a series of connected images-a 'world in one country'-presented through its animal wildlife, primitive 'tribalism' and modem society. While the primitive was set in more comfortable surrounds, South Africa's modernity was packaged in a primitive wrapping. This paper constructs a hypothetical tour of South Africa, visiting each element of the tourist vision, and provides a genealogy of these presented images of the past. RésuméRésumé Afrique du Sud : le monde en un pays. Instants de rencontres du touriste international avec le monde sauvage, le primitif et la modernité. -Au cours de la transition démocratique du début des années 1990, le tourisme en est venu à être considéré comme le «passeport» pour le développement. Dans ce consensus naissant, l'Africanité du tourisme sud-africain s'articulait en une composition d'images -« le monde en un pays » -autour de la vie sauvage de ses animaux, de son tribalisme « primitif » et de sa société moderne. Alors que le « primitif» était installé dans un environnement confortable, la modernité sud-africaine était, quant à elle, enveloppée dans un emballage primitif. Cet article compose un itinéraire supposé à travers l'Afrique du Sud, s'arrêtant à chaque élément de la vision touristique, et fournit une généalogie de ces images proposées du passé.
For all approaches to the South African past the icon of Jan Van Riebeeck looms large. Perspectives supportive of the political project of white domination created and perpetuate the icon as the bearer of civilization to the sub-continent and its source of history. Opponents of racial oppression have portrayed Van Riebeeck as public (history) enemy number one of the South African national past. Van Riebeeck remains the figure around which South Africa's history is made and contested.But this has not always been the case. Indeed up until the 1950s, Van Riebeeck appeared only in passing in school history texts, and the day of his landing at the Cape was barely commemorated. From the 1950s, however, Van Riebeeck acquired centre stage in South Africa's public history. This was not the result of an Afrikaner Nationalist conspiracy but arose out of an attempt to create a settler nationalist ideology. The means to achieve this was a massive celebration throughout the country of the 300th anniversary of Van Riebeeck's landing. Here was an attempt to display the growing power of the apartheid state and to assert its confidence.A large festival fair and imaginative historical pageants were pivotal events in establishing the paradigm of a national history and constituting its key elements. The political project of the apartheid state was justified in the festival fair through the juxtaposition of ‘civilization’ and economic progress with ‘primitiveness’ and social ‘backwardness’. The historical pageant in the streets of Cape Town presented a version of South Africa's past that legitimated settler rule.Just as the Van Riebeeck tercentenary afforded the white ruling bloc an opportunity to construct an ideological hegemony, it was grasped by the Non-European Unity Movement and the African National Congress to launch political campaigns. Through the public mediums of the resistance press and the mass meeting these organizations presented a counter-history of South Africa. These oppositional forms were an integral part of the making of the festival and the Van Riebeeck icon. In the conflict which played itself out in 1952 there was a remarkable consensus about the meaning of Van Riebeeck's landing in 1652. The narrative constructed, both by those seeking to establish apartheid and those who sought to challenge it, represented Van Riebeeck as the spirit of apartheid and the originator of white domination. The ideological frenzy in the centre of Cape Town in 1952 resurrected Van Riebeeck from obscurity and historical amnesia to become the lead actor on South Africa's public history stage.
No abstract
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