The 1952 Jan Van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival: Constructing and Contesting Public National History in South Africa

Abstract

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.

Public Histories in South Africa: Between Contest and Reconciliation

“…6 As well as promoting Afrikaner interests, the National Party made strenuous attempts to foster a broader white identity and used symbolic moments -the initial Dutch East India Company's settlement from 1652, for example -and heritage sites such as the Castle of Good Hope, built in 1666, to achieve this. 7 On the 300 th anniversary of the Castle in 1966, every white schoolchild in South Africa received a copy of the publication Bastion of the South, a celebration of white power in the African subcontinent, recalling 'our history from a new angle … of the advances and technical triumphs'. 8 This was a time when many African states were achieving independence.…”

The politics and aesthetics of commemoration: national days in southern Africa

“…As Marschall's (in this issue) discussion of the rearrangement of the South African national festive calendar after 1994 points out, 'Freedom Day', the public holiday introduced in memory of the first inclusive democratic elections, was only a belated addition in the complex negotiation of the post-apartheid holiday policy. Even though there is good reason to be wary of claims to South African exceptionalism, in this instance a significant 13 distinction is apparent: the country's new national days were designed against the foil of a set of pre-existing national (public) holidays intended to transmit previous imaginations of the nation, especially in its exclusive Afrikaner and, in the later apartheid years, exclusive White South African versions (see also Witz 2003;Rassool and Witz 1993;Louw 2009). In the negotiated settlement that gave rise to the 'new' South Africa, these established national days were retained, though renamed and reinterpreted.…”

“…However, Fauré's suggestions for further research into African national holidays have remained largely unmet, with a few notable exceptions. Leslie Witz (2003), for instance, has explored the construction of Afrikaner nationalism through the 1952 commemoration of Jan van Riebeeck's arrival in South Africa and the controversies that surrounded these festivities (see also Rassool and Witz 1993). Andrew Apter's (2005) work on the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), a great cultural spectacle celebrated in 1977, has shown how the Nigerian government used its recently acquired oil wealth to attempt to create a national culture under the motto 'unity in diversity'.…”

The Fairest Cape of Them All? Cape Town in Cinematic Imagination

“…They have been predictably reviled in academic revisionist work in recent years, yet the Fairest Cape does not disclose this. Instead, Jan van Riebeeck retains the ‘founding father’ status he enjoyed in so much South African public history before 1994 (Rassool and Witz, 1993). Equally, Cecil John Rhodes retains his status as icon of English‐speaking white South Africans (Maylam, 2005): ‘the lofty setting of Rhodes Memorial recalls the vision of a man dedicated to the development of this fair Cape for generations to follow’.…”