Exhumations, Reburials and History Making in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Exhumations, reburials and history making in post-apartheid South Africa. Robin-lea Karating 3320227 Supervisor: Prof. Leslie Witz Co-Supervisor: Riedwaan Moosage A mini-thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in Forensic and Visual History, University of the Western Cape, December 2018. i http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ DECLARATION I know what plagiarism entails, namely to use another’s work and to present it as my own without attributing the sources in the correct way. I, Robin-lea Karating, declare that ‘Exhumations, reburials and history making in post-apartheid South Africa’ is my own work, that it has not been submitted for any degree or examination in any other university, and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by complete references. Robin-lea Karating December 2018 i http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ Table of Contents: Declaration i Contents ii Acknowledgements iii Abbreviations vi List of images vii Abstract viii Introduction: Exhumation, Reburials and the missing body 1 Chapter One: The Slave Reburials and the Representation of Flora, a slave woman, at Vergelegen Wine Estate. 22 Chapter Two: The Representation of the Mapungubwe Remains and the Production of History. 58 Chapter Three: The twelve Robben Island political prisoners buried at Stikland and their memorialization 84 Conclusion: 118 Bibliography: 122 ii http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ Acknowledgements: The making of this mini-thesis has been an incredibly challenging yet rewarding task as I have learnt numerous things and made fond memories throughout my research journey. I am profoundly grateful and wish to thank everyone who has contributed to the completion of this mini-thesis, which has truly been the product of combined efforts. Saying thank you is definitely not enough when it comes to showing appreciation to my supervisor Leslie Witz and co-supervisor Riedwaan Moosage. They have been extremely instrumental to my academic progress and success since the start of my post-graduate career, I am truly grateful for all their assistance, encouragement, patience and most of all for the knowledge they have shared with me and for ensuring that I complete my thesis. The funding provided to me by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation’s Re-Centring Afro-Asia Project as part of the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) Flagship for Critical Thought in African Humanities at the University of the Western Cape, has made it possible to produce this mini-thesis. I would especially like to thank Premesh Lalu for awarding me with the fellowship. I want to thank everyone at the CHR and the History Department for the useful programmes throughout the past two years that has assisted me as well as all the fellows who have contributed to my mini-thesis. I also want to thank everyone involved in the Afro-Asia project especially Ari Sitas and Tinashe Kushata for coordinating the project and for creating a productive space through reading groups and other gatherings. I am also grateful for having the opportunity to attend and present my chapter draft during the September Conference this year at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits). A special thank you to Noëleen Murray, Jill Weintroub and Farah-naaz Moosa and their colleagues at Wits who welcomed me during a research trip to Johannesburg and for their warm reception during the September Conference. I appreciate the comments and feedback they gave me concerning my presentation at their campus as well as their hospitality. iii http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ Earlier this year, I was also afforded the opportunity to visit the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape and Molokwane Lodge in Rustenberg with Simon Hall, Carolyn Hamilton, John Wright and Amanda Estherhuizen as well as Himal Ramji, Henry Fagan and Sikho Siyotula. I wish to thank all of them for a productive and memorable trip. Many thanks especially to Simon Hall and Carolyn Hamilton for their insights and hospitality as well as for inviting Tom Huffman, who certainly added value to our trip. Lastly, thank you to the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative project for financing the trip and the CHR and Afro-Asia for specifically financing me. I also want to thank everyone who provided me with important materials that I would not have been able to acquire on my own namely Karen Harris and Ria van der Merwe from the University of Pretoria, the head of the Missing Persons Task Team Madeleine Fullard, Toby Atwell from TwoShoes Graphic Designers and Nolubabalo Tongo-Cetywayo from Robben Island. I’d also like to thank Abigail Moffet and Robert Nyamushosho for an informative meeting and for introducing me to Robyn Humphreys, and Simon Hall who provided me with archival material for chapter one and of course Leslie Witz who contributed the most material. Although, the Forensic History Reading Group came to an end last year, I would like to thank Nicky Rousseau and everyone involved in the project for their contributions to my academic career and for an amazing conference earlier this year. I would specifically like to thank Bianca van Laun and Brent Abrahams, who were part of the project, for their company during our field trip to Johannesburg last year where we attended the exhumation of PAC members at the Mamelodi Cemetery as well as visited the Gallows Memorial and Mapungubwe Collection. A very special thank you to Madeleine Fullard and the Missing Persons Task Team for allowing us to observe their work last year during the exhumation and the NRF Forensic History Project for financing the trip. I would like to thank my parents and my sisters for all their continuous love and support. My Mum and Dad have always done their best to assist in my academic career, I truly appreciate all their efforts. Thank you to my sister, Nicki and cousin Geneva for always encouraging me to complete my work. A warm thank you to my best friend Sherwin for always motivating me and for iv http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ accompanying me on trips to the library and other places of enquiry. Lastly, a thank you to my colleagues Rosalia, Bongiwe, Nsima, Dean and especially Janine Brandt at the History Department for their words of encouragement. v http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ Abbreviations: AmFarms Anglo-American Farms Limited EAFF Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team) ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross MK Umkhonto we Sizwe MPPT Missing Person’s Task Team NPA National Prosecuting Authority SAHRA South African Heritage Resource Agency TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission UCT University of Cape Town UP University of Pretoria UWC University of the Western Cape Wits University of the Witwatersrand vi http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ List of Images: Figure 1: A sketch in Ann Markell’s Field Notes, April 1990. Figure 2: A statue commemorating Gavin Relly, Chairman of AngloAmerican in the Exhibition Corridor at Vergelegen Wine Estate. Figure 3: Pictorial Panel about Flora. Figure 4: The site of the Slave Lodge and Flora’s grave. Figure 5: A model of the Slave Lodge. Figure 6: Inside the Mapungubwe Collection. Figure 7: Reburial of the remains. Figure 8: The entrance at Stikland (Bellville) Cemetery Figure 9: A compilation of the prisoners’ names from the memorial. vii http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ Abstract: This mini-thesis, ‘Exhumation, Reburial and History Making in South Africa’, is concerned with an analysis of the practices of exhumation and reburial through discussing the case studies of the Iron- Age archaeological site of Mapungubwe, the Vergelegen Wine Estate in Somerset West and the reburials carried out by the Missing Persons Task Team (MPPT) from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), particularly its unsuccessful attempt at exhumations at the Stikland Cemetery, in an attempt to understand how they form part of the production of history. These case studies conceive of the times of the precolonial, slavery and apartheid, and are all linked temporally to an envisaged future through ideas of nation building and nationalism. As narratives produced through these exhumations and reburials, they contribute to the notion of making the post-apartheid by remaking history and reconstituting nation. Each of these case studies are significant as they in some way have been utilized in a manner that is relevant to us in the new democratic South Africa. This mini-thesis aims at rethinking the role of archaeologists, the exhumation and reburial processes, the construction of ethnicity, how the dead are used to construct narratives of struggle against apartheid and in general the implications each of these have on the re-making of history. It also thinks about what the practices of exhumation and reburial mean conceptually and how they relate to the concept of missingness, which I refer to as the process of making absence or invisibility. Thinking about exhumations and reburial in this way has allowed reflection on the purpose of the practices, in terms of who it’s for and how it’s perceived by the stakeholders involved in each case. Through dissecting each of these issues one may be able to trace how the remains to be reburied become missing. Therefore, the question of exhumation and reburial is essential in thinking about what it does for the human remains and how their identity is either shaped or lost. This thesis mainly argues that the remains in each of the case studies go through various phases of missingness and that their reburials and memorialization, or in the case of Stikland the spiritual repatriation, inscribes them further into narratives of the times that they emerged from. viii http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ Introduction Exhumation, Reburial and Missingness This study emerges out of an interest in Southern African reburial sites and how they have been historically documented and narrated.

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