Unimagined Communities: Post-Apartheid Nation-Building, Memory and Institutional Change in South Africa (1990-2010) by Melissa Romy Levin A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto © Copyright by Melissa Romy Levin, 2017 Unimagined Communities: Post-Apartheid Nation-Building, Memory and Institutional Change in South Africa (1990 – 2010) Melissa Romy Levin Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto 2017 ii Abstract Studies of nationalism and nation-states insist that the construction of usable pasts is central to the creation of national solidarities and the very identity of a nation. The memory/nation nexus is taken for granted in scholarship on nation-building. However, this scholarship is limited by the scant attention that is paid to how those pasts are constructed, or what the mechanisms are through which decision-making occurs. The results of this neglect are often abstracted assumptions that presume a voluntarism and coherence that most often does not exist. Repeatedly, studies focus on the products of memorialization which generates a tendency to impose consistency and statist intentionality, after the fact, on what is a contingent, messy and complicated process. In addition, studies often assume a singularity of power, located in an unfragmented state, with authoritarian capacity to produce meaning. This dissertation remedies these flaws by paying attention to the processes and procedures through which memorialization and nation-building are constructed. It focuses specifically on post-Apartheid South Africa where these processes are currently unfolding. It examines the context of South Africa’s transition, which has produced multiple continuities with and changes from Apartheid institutions. The partial critical juncture that enabled South Africa’s transition ensured that there were no clear victors resulting from the struggle for and against the legislated system. The “new” nation thus had to be imagined within a context of deep antagonisms and a colonialism that was theorized as internal. This meant that the relationship between the settlers and the colonized would have to be transformed into a unified national imaginary; a new nation of equal citizenship needed to be imagined on persistent bedrock of inequality and bitter violence. In other words, the making of the memory-nation is theorized as both path-dependent and contingent. This perspective emerges through tracing the processes of memory-making; processes that reveal a neglectful, rather than an assertive governing party, contested approaches within the state, and a multiplicity of variables within the party and within local contexts that limit and enable different approaches (including the character of the ANC and the character of opposition). There are numerous factors at play in understanding memory-making including the character of transition, fractions within the governing party, frictions in the state, and the relationship between national, international and local contexts. In tracing the processes of memory-making as iii they are attached to nation-building, this dissertation pays careful attention to processual analysis that rejects the reification of “the nation” and its memory. Reification inadvertently or deliberately participates in the production of the very memory/nation under scrutiny. It argues that on-going dynamics of power in bureaucratic states tend to lend formal benefit to the already empowered with the so-called previously disadvantaged reliant on more informal mechanisms of asserting voice; in other words, in the context of the post-Apartheid dispensation, democratization and decolonization are not necessarily simultaneous processes. The dissertation does not present a puzzle for resolution, but instead suggests a method of reading the construction of the memory-nation. This method takes context and contingency not as variables in theory, but as theory itself. Thus, the unexceptional exceptionalism that is the nation-state in this global conjuncture can be analyzed and understood. iv Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………… iii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………. vi-vii List of Appendices……………………………………………………….. viii Preface: Being Inside-Out – On Research, Positionality and Methodology………………………………………………………….. 1-7 Chapter One: Introduction – The Memory/Nation Nexus, Critical Junctures and the Return of the Repressed in Memory Studies.................................. 8-49 Chapter Two: Between Reconciliation and Decolonization: Freedom Park and the Voortrekker Monument…………………………………………… 50-68 Chapter Three: Retrospectively Nationalizing and Deracializing the Colony…………………………………………………... 69-86 Chapter Four: Natives of a Special Type? CST, Autochthony and Nation-building………………………………………………………… 87-101 Chapter Five: The Ambiguities of the National in the Local: Commemorating the Violence of Transition – A Tale of Three Monuments………………………………….. 102-119 Chapter Six: Naming the Nation – A Tale of Three Cities………………… 120- 176 Conclusion: Unimagined Communities……………………………………. 177-185 Reference List………………………………………………………………. 186-213 Appendices………………………………………………………………….. 214-231 v Acknowledgements If I were to properly acknowledge all who played a role in seeing me through this dissertation process, I would produce a longer document that the thesis itself. Like raising a child, it takes a village to raise a dissertation. My village has consisted of comrades, friends, colleagues, students and family. To all, I am deeply grateful. I am especially honoured to have worked with Dickson Eyoh as my supervisor. I have been enriched by every encounter I have had with his great mind. His patience and intellectual generosity are boundless. His irreverence and healthy cynicism kept my work grounded and helped me understand the interplay of specificity and universalisms as I worked my way out of the heady exceptionalism that those nationalized as South African are notorious for. Also in the village are my teachers and friends, Antoinette Handley, Sean Hawkins and Ato Quayson who went above and beyond any dutiful calls. They have mentored me, calmed me, been interlocutors and emotional supports throughout the PhD. Their intellectual dynamism coupled with thoughtfulness and precision continues to inspire awe. Courtney Jung, Paul Kingston, Wambui Mwangi, Joseph Wong and Eyal Naveh are teachers who have shaped my thinking in significant ways and I can’t believe my luck at having encountered them along the way. At the end of the PhD process, I was examined by Pablo Idahosa and I could not have imagined a more generous and astute interlocutor. My colleagues and friends, Thembele Kepe and Bettina von Lieres held my hand and sustained my curiosity as we co-edited my first academic book. My dear comrades, interlocutors and friends, Jon Soske and Melanie Samson beat the narrow nationalism out of me as they enlarged my intellectual horizon. Elinor Bray-Collins, Merom Kalie, Juan Marsiaj, Erica Frederiksen, Mitu Sengupta, Arjun Tremblay, Noaman Ali, Luke Melchiorre, Dubi Kanengisser, Kate Korycki, Ozlem Aslan, Karlo Basta, Omar Sirri, James McKee, Khalid Ahmed, Craig Smith, Linzi Manicom and Andrea Meeson (editor extraordinaire) at different times, and some throughout the programme, kept me thinking, kept me (in)sane and offered me friendship that has sustained me. Carolynn Branton is a saint and walked me through multiple administrative hurdles as if I was the only graduate student she worked with (there are many, many others). Louis Tentsos vi provided essential administrative support throughout. The Department of Political Science patiently supported my ill-discipline and reined me in when it was necessary. New College, where I have taught throughout the PhD, has become a home. The faculty, students and administrators at the College will surely see themselves in these pages as they have enabled and inspired my work. Sean Jacobs and Africa is a Country as a whole provided me with an opportunity to belong to a more public community which is often inaccessible in the isolation of PhD writing and single parenting. For my comrades, family, friends and colleagues in South Africa and Namibia who opened doors, gave me places to stay and offered their time and insights in interviews, I am truly grateful. The Liebermans, Orfords, Murphy-Naidoos gave me sanctuary. In particular, Subesh Pillay, Pallo Jordan, Mandla Langa, Tony Trew, Saki Macozoma, Bridget Mabandla, Mike Sutcliffe, Neeshan Balton and Mac Maharaj gave time and provided tremendous support for this work. There are many others who are deeply valued who have chosen to remain anonymous. My siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews have been my rock. Without my mother, Carla Levin, I would not have been able to do this work. It is to her that I dedicate this work. It is also dedicated to my father, Cyril Levin, who loved me even when I rejected his politics. He would have been proud to see this finished. This work is dedicated to the fighting spirit of the ANC, an organization that has formed me. Perhaps it can forgive my critique. And finally, this work is dedicated to Natali Hava Levin, of course. This work would not have been possible without the generous financial support provided by Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Beattie Fellowship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Frank Peers Award, the McCuag-Throop Bursary, the New College Senior Doctoral