OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Shepherd, Nick"

Browsing by Author "Shepherd, Nick"

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Open Access
Archaeology and post-colonialism in South Africa : the theory, practice and politics of archaeology after apartheid
(1998) Shepherd, Nick; Hall, Martin
I take my lead from a paper by Bruce Trigger (1984) in which he divides the disciplinary field into three modes or forms of archaeology: a colonialist archaeology, a nationalist archaeology and an imperialist archaeology. He goes on to suggest (1990) that South African archaeology is the most colonialist archaeology of all. Trigger was writing at a point before the current political transformation in South Africa had emerged over the horizon of visibility. Writing somewhat later, and from the point of view of a Third World archaeologist, I ask: What would a post-colonial archaeology look like? In particular, what would it look like from the point of view of South Africa in the late 1990s?
Open Access
Architectural modernism and apartheid modernity in South Africa a critical inquiry into the work of architect and urban designer Roelof Uytenbogaardt, 1960-2009
(2010) Murray, Noëleen; Shepherd, Nick
Roelof Sarel Uytenbogaardt who died in 1998 was, and remains, an important and influential figure in the disciplines of architecture and urban design in South Africa. As a prolific practitioner and academic at the University of Cape Town his influence has been far-reaching. Making use of previously unexamined archival material, this study examines - in detail - the extent of this influence. Importantly the thesis seeks to situate Uytenbogaardt’s work in relation to the rise of apartheid and speculates about the persistence of modernism in contemporary spatial practice. Through examining both the conception and reception of Uytenbogaardt’s buildings and urban plans, the work locates modernist approaches to design prevalent in architecture and urban design as products of apartheid modernity. The controversial and contested nature of Uytenbogaardt’s works provides space for critical analysis and this is evident in the uneven reception of his projects. Architects and urban designers revere him as a ‘master’ while pubic sentiment has very often been strongly negative. This is most strikingly evident in the case of the recent proposed destruction of one of Uytenbogaardt’s most controversial works, the Werdmuller Centre. Constructed in the 1970s after forced removals in Cape Town’s suburb of Claremont, since 2007 architects and urban designers have argued passionately for its retention as an example of ‘timeless’ modernist heritage. Through this and other examples, the thesis explores the complexities presented by professional practice in architecture and urban design in the context of designing buildings for designated publics under apartheid. It argues that the work of practitioners and academics such as Uytenbogaardt is intimately linked to the social crisis of apartheid and that the resultant relationship is one of the complex and interrelated crises of modernist design that persist in post-apartheid South Africa.
Open Access
Beyond the frame : a liminal space in contemporary South African photography
(2009) Hotsko, Jennifer; Shepherd, Nick; Godby, Michael
Anthropologists and ethnographers documenting the African subject – as soldiers of the colonial enterprise, dominated early practices of photography in Africa. These endeavors manufactured a visual narrative that was uniform in its approach to Africa's landscape, which largely persists in the popular imagination.In the early 1990s with the fall of apartheid and transition towards democracy, South Africa's landscape witnessed a new current in the medium of photography; photographers who had been documenting the 'struggle' were suddenly deprived of the central focus of their work. Creative artistic expression, which had been largely restricted, blossomed. This paper examines four of South Africa's 'new generation' of photographers who have seen unprecedented success both in South Africa and in the West. This paper examines whether these photographers and their images are confronting and challenging the stereotypical stock photographs that have misrepresented South Africa's landscape.
Open Access
Can intangibles be tangible? : safeguarding intangible heritage in the new South Africa : towards formulating policy for the conservation and sustainable management for living heritage
(2007) Manetsi, Thabo; Shepherd, Nick
This dissertation takes its lead from ongoing research associated with the process of formulating policy and developing instruments for safeguarding living heritage or intangible heritage as it is commonly known. In the absence of a national policy and management guidelines for the conservation and sustainable management of living heritage, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) has initiated a process of formulating minimum standards and guidelines for the· protection of intangible elements of heritage associated with tangible heritage resources (objects and sites). In terms of the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) of 1999, SAHRA has a mandate to manage heritage resources to which oral tradition or living heritage is attached. Being the designated head of the living heritage unit at SAHRA, I have the responsibility to ensure the proper conservation and management of living heritage. As such I have been charged with a number of key responsibilities such as formulating policy and developing management guidelines for living heritage. As part of the process toward developing policy, a major facet of this research project reviews and draws a comparative analysis of existing heritage legislation, legal instruments and best practices in the world that may be useful in the South African context. Drawing from the review and comparative study process, this dissertation also seeks to identify and define key management issues for safeguarding aspects of intangible heritage. The outcome of the literature review stimulates a critical discussion about the findings which explore the challenges and opportunities related to the strengths and weakness of existing heritage policies and management guidelines for the protection of intangible elements of heritage resources. This eventually informs the conclusion and recommendations which provides not only a summary of closing remarks but also suggests a way forward regarding appropriate measures to be adopted for safeguarding living heritage. In this way, this project takes the form of research and policy recommendations, premised on a real-world situation in which I am personally responsible for guiding national policy on the issue at stake.
Open Access
Carefully hidden away: excavating the archive of the Mapungubwe dead and their possessions
(2013) Kashe-Katya, Xolelwa; Hamilton, Carolyn; Shepherd, Nick
Ever since Jerry Van Graan first stumbled upon golden artefacts in 1933, Mapungubwe - an Iron Age civilisation that existed in the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers between 900 and 1300 AD - has been the subject of contestation. Initially knowledge production about Mapungubwe was informed by the need to make a case for the late arrival of Bantu-speaking people in Southern Africa ? a now discredited theory used to justify the subjugation of Africans. In the post-apartheid era, Mapungubwe became a focal point for a new form of myth-building: the myth of liberation and a romantic past but, in my view, with a neo-liberal bias. In this dissertation I interrogate the role played by the disciplines of archaeology and physical anthropology in the political contestation that has surrounded Mapungubwe, focusing on the production of knowledge. I do this by investigating the claim that Mapungubwe was shrouded or hidden away. In particular, I ask: What happens when disciplinary workings, in the course of knowledge production, construe an archive? What do museums, archives and other memory institutions hide and what do they reveal? What gets acknowledged as archive and what is disregarded? How is this knowledge presented in the public domain over time? Lastly, what happens when the archive is construed differently? My interrogation lays bare the continued discomfort and improvisation that prevails among those disciplines or institutions that engage with Mapungubwe. I have chosen to organise the core chapters of the thesis according to specific timeframes: before apartheid, during apartheid and after apartheid. This is done to demonstrate how archaeology, claimed as a science, was a powerful strategy deployed to exchange the messiness for the "true" knowledge of the past. The research on Mapungubwe, by way of the Greefswald Archaeological Project, was the most prolonged research project in the history of South Africa. Its four research phases, which began in 1933 and ended in 2000, mutated as the broader political landscape shifted. As a result, everything that can possibly play itself out in broader post-apartheid South Africa is present in Mapungubwe: contested claims, racial history, land dispossession, apartheid and the military, repatriation, post-apartheid claims, nationalism, pan-Africanism, ethnicity and more. This thesis demonstrates how the disciplinary practices of archaeology were instrumental in keeping Mapungubwe shrouded. An example of this "shrouding" is the deployment of highly technical language in writing about Mapungubwe. Before the end of apartheid, this epistemic hiding offered a convenient retreat for the discipline, to avoid engaging with issues facing South African society at large. This placed the discipline in a position of power, a position of "truth" and "objectivity". All inconvenient forms of knowledge were simply disregarded or silenced through choices, made by powerful institutions and individuals, about what was worthy of being archived. However, when the archive is differently construed, a different picture emerges.
Open Access
Exploring the tourism potential of heritage sites : the case of the Botha Bothe Plateau in Lesotho
(2006) Ramakau-Ntene, Moliehi; Shepherd, Nick; Worth, David
This paper examines how the cultural landscape of the Botha Bothe Plateau can contribute towards improving the lives of people in the area, through the management of its heritage resources. The main objectives of the study are: (a) to examine the way the Botha Bothe Plateau has been managed as a cultural landscape in order to evaluate how much the local communities are benefiting from this important Lesotho heritage site. (b) To investigate the potential of a well-managed Botha Bothe Plateau for contribute to improving living conditions. The study takes the view that with proper management system in place, the plateau will be able to retain its cultural heritage values and provide meaningful benefits to the local community.
Open Access
From tin trunk to world-wide memory : the making of the Bleek collection
(2006) Weintroub, Jill; Shepherd, Nick
This research sketches the history of the Bleek-L1oyd collection by documenting the cataloguing and archiving of material which has occurred in the years subsequent to the recording of the original manuscripts and certain related material during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It attempts to track the processes by which material elements (notebooks, manuscripts, printed documents, artefacts, objects and original artworks, correspondence, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, books, photographs, paintings) became consolidated - or separated - as part of the making of what is now known as the Bleek-L1oyd archive. In addition, this research examinesthe various projects of knowledge production and writing which have emanated from the archive in the 80 years since a small part of the notebook texts, edited by Lucy Lloyd, was published in 1911. In particular, I examine ways in which the notebook texts have been deployed in the service of emerging and established academic disciplines including philology, "native studies", folklore and anthropology, archaeology and rock art interpretation. In more recent times, the Bleek collection provides a case study of the archive reconstituted for the new nation, serving not only as a site for the recovery of lost or hidden histories, but also as location for an international, redemptive celebration of indigenous identities
Open Access
'If it's not black gold, then it's bone gold' : contested knowledges of the Prestwich Street dead
(2008) Ralphs, Gerard; Shepherd, Nick
The aim of this mini-dissertation is to map out the nature of these contested knowledges of the Prestwich Street dead, and to describe and analyse the struggles of dominance and resistance these different ways of knowing gave rise to. My argument throughout is that out of the clashing of these knowledges emerged a frontier - a discursive space of conflict and turbulence that came into being with the surfacing of the dead, and dissipated with an official decision to prevent basic anatomical research on their skeletal remains. If this discursive battle and this frontier opened up the post-apartheid public sphere to new and emergent (South) African identities, then it also closed down the public sphere with the further entrenchment of particular disciplinary identities and formations, namely archaeology, physical anthropology, development, and heritage resources management.
Open Access
In the halls of history: the making and unmaking of the life-casts at the ethnography galleries of the Iziko South African Museum
(2016) Cedras, Robyn-Leigh; Shepherd, Nick
This mini-dissertation is a study of the phenomenon of life-casting and the display of these in the museum space. It looks specifically at the practice as it came into use at the turn of the twentieth century at the South African Museum in the Western Cape. The research aims to place the practice in context with the historical triggers and larger perspectives of the subject of indigenous races. A focus on particular life-casts and its display in designed productions allows the reader insight into knowledge production. I point to this to unpack a loaded history informing deeply seated identity constructs and prejudices. A trajectory of the use of the life-casts is supported by visual records included in this text. The museum's archive also affords a plethora of correspondence and research giving context and insight. A close analysis of the archive exposes the museum's processes and the exchange in consumption and production by museum visitors and related institutions both private and state supported. The making and unmaking of the life-casts acts as proxy for peoples brutally subjugated.
Open Access
No hunting : finding a new f. stop for the Bushmen
(2008) O'Connell, Siona; Shepherd, Nick
This mini-dissertation is a personal, methodological , and scholarly study of a seven month visual art program at !Khwa ttu: San Culture Education Centre. It centres on the fraught issue of the representation of the Bushmen, with a particular focus on the violence of representation through the photographic genre. Through this mini-dissertation I attempt to re-imagine the photograph in relation to the Bushmen; through an interrogation of the medium as one that has the potential for healing, dialogue and empowerment. The act of looking is discussed, and I raise questions of ethics and photographs as well as questions of ownership of photographs in relation to the Bushmen of southern Africa. Since this project was an opportunity to engage in rhetoric, particularly on the definition of the Bushmen, a core element of this project is the participation and the voice of the !Khwa ttu Reference Group.This participation was underscored by the group both engaging in the past through historical imagery, and attempting to use the past as a springboard to re-imagine their future.
Open Access
Place of Light' : what cultural villages can tell us about 'culture', 'ethnicity' and tourism in post-apartheid South Africa
(2010) Tinker, Anna; Shepherd, Nick
The 'new' South Africa is abuzz with keywords. There is much talk within academic discourse and beyond of 'ethnicity', 'culture' and the 'rainbow nation' among others. They are a national obsession at this crucial time when South Africa is still struggling to negotiate its identity. The usage of these words is rapidly evolving and today they their use extends far past their original meanings. However, their use has persisted and has done so largely unchallenged. This has meant that the words are now highly problematic. In order to critically examine these concepts, I use the space of the cultural village as an analytical tool. Cultural villages have faced criticism in recent years - accusations that they 'stage' their 'authenticity', and freeze cultures in order to package them for international consumption. While this paper does devote space to these criticisms, it focuses its attention on 'what cultural villages can tell us about the nature of post-apartheid South Africa', specifically about the keywords, 'culture' and 'ethnicity'. Research is based at Lesedi Cultural Village in the North West Province. I use the landscape of the surrounding area and the signs and symbols in the village itself as entry points to map and frame my discussions. The Cradle ofHumankind where Lesedi is situated is saturated with an evolutionary narrative that visitors to Lesedi will bring with them to the site. Evolutionary notions of the 'primitive' have been re-appropriated by the tourist industry to draw visitors back 'home' to Africa, while South Africa owes much of its difficult history to the same evolutionary narratives. Through ethnographic fieldwork, the space of the cultural village is deconstructed to see what it can tell us about 'culture' and 'ethnicity' in the country beyond its fences. I interrogate the concept of 'culture', by closely analyzing the meaning of a proverb on Lesedi's shebeen wall which reads, 'a man without culture is like a zebra without stripes'. It transpires that the humble zebra can tell us a great deal about the nature of 'culture' in South Africa and the current debates which surround the use of the word.
Open Access
Practices of pastness, postwars of the dead, and the power of heritage: museums, monuments and sites in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-2010
(2014) Mataga, Jesmael; Shepherd, Nick; Hamilton, Carolyn
This thesis examines the meanings, significances, and roles of heritage across the colonial and postcolonial eras in Zimbabwe. The study traces dominant ideas about heritage at particular periods in Zimbabwean history, illustrating how heritage has been deployed in ways that challenge common or essentialised understandings of the notion and practice of heritage. The study adds new dimensions to the understanding of the role of heritage as an enduring and persistent source terrain for the negotiation and creation of authority, as well as for challenging it, linked to regimes and the politics of knowledge. This work is part of an emerging body of work that explores developments over a long stretch of time, and suggests that what we have come to think of as heritage is a project for national cohesion, a marketable cultural project, and also a mode of political organisation and activity open for use by various communities in negotiating contemporary challenges or effecting change. While normative approaches to heritage emphasise the disjuncture between the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods, or between official and non-official practices, results of this study reveal that in practice, there are connections in the work that heritage does across these categories. Findings of the study shows a persistent and extraordinary investment in the past, across the eras and particularly in times of crises, showing how heritage practices move across landscapes, monuments, dispersed sites, and institutionalised entities such as museums. The thesis also points to a complex relationship between official heritage practices and unofficial practices carried out by local communities. To demonstrate this relationship, it traces the emergence of counter-heritage practices, which respond to and challenge the official conceptualisations of heritage by invoking practices of pastness, mobilised around reconfigured archaeological sites, human remains, ancestral connections, and sacred sites. Counter-heritage practices, undertaken by local communities, challenge hegemonic ideas about heritage embedded in institutionalised heritage practices and they contribute to the creation of alternative practices of preservation. I propose that attention to the relationship between institutionalised heritage practices and community-held practices helps us to think differently about the role of local communities in defining notions of heritage, heritage preservation practices and in knowledge production.
Open Access
Renaissance and revenants in an emerging global city: discourses of heritage and urban design in Cape Town's District One and District Six, 2002-2014
(2017) Ernsten, Christian; Shepherd, Nick
On 10 January 2014, the New York Times placed Cape Town at the top of its list of the "52 places to go in 2014". The hopeful rhetoric of the city as ultimate holiday destination, African creative metropolis, prime global-events location and city of freedom indicates powerful cultural discourses at work. Looking at how Cape Town is simultaneously reinvented and haunted, this thesis poses a set of questions regarding the discourses associated with the reinvention of the city, on the one hand, and the city's unresolved pasts, on the other. Situated at the convergence of two fields, Urban Studies and Heritage Studies, it sets out to investigate the workings of heritage and urban-design discourses in the city of Cape Town over the period of 2002 to 2014. It describes the unfolding of these discourses, and discusses the organisational process of both the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2014 World Design Capital in relation to the exhumation of human remains at District One and the restitution of land at District Six. Using as its methodology a combination of embedded ethnographic research, qualitative indepth interviews, desktop and archival research, and a form of embodied research, the thesis points to a historical hinge upon which these discourses shift. Through discourse analysis, it examines what this discursive shift entails, and how it takes place. It points to "moments of poignancy" in the construction of Cape Town's recent urban transformation. As such, this study offers a series of insights into the links between colonial modernity, on the one hand, and the origins of contemporary heritage and urban-design discourses in Cape Town, on the other. It examines the function of official discourse concerning the design of the city, as well as the sudden eruptions of public dissent that disturb this official discourse. The central argument of this thesis is that, through an in-depth understanding of the shifts, transformations and internal workings of the discourses of heritage and urban design, a critique can be made of the way contemporary Cape Town has been repositioned in relation to the city's past, present and future.
Open Access
Representing the past in the present with the future in mind : a close reading of the â€˜Cell Storiesâ€™ exhibition at the Robben Island Museum
(2005) Nesje, Pernille; Shepherd, Nick
Robben Island was declared a museum with the understanding that it should not embody the suffering and adversity of the maximum-security prison, rather it should celebrate 'the triumph of the human spirit against the forces of evil' (Kathrada 1996:10-11; see also Deacon 1998: 163; Deacon 2000: 1; Coetzee et al. 1998: 10; Solani2000b: 6; Coombes 2003: 58) . Thus, the triumph narrative has become prevalent at the Robben Island Museum. This dissertation seeks to undertake a close reading of the 'Cell Stories' exhibition at Robben Island Museum, in order to explore if the exhibition has created a counter narrative to the dominant triumph narrative. The exhibition was established in 1999 and it consists of 38 cells in section A in Robben Island's previous maximum security prison, and visitors interact with the exhibition through a self-guided tour. In each cell there is a photograph of one of the ex-political prisoners, a locker which holds an object, a label explaining the object to a certain extent, an extract of an interview with the former political prisoners, and occasionally an intercom through which you can listen to the prisoner himself talking about a certain aspect of his experience at the Robben Island maximum security prison. It was set up in order to showcase other histories of former political prisoners and life on Robben Island, attempting to counter the triumph narrative.
Open Access
Social consultation : a personal exploration of working relations and challenges faced by site developers, archaeologists and local communities : using Dzata site as a case study
(2004) Mafune, Irene A; Shepherd, Nick; Murray, Noeleen
Open Access
Social housing as heritage : case study : Langa hostels : whose values and what significance?
(2014) Smith, Raymond; Shepherd, Nick; Townsend, Stephen S
This study examines the first identification and assignment of heritage values and significance undertaken by the “establishment”, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and the City of Cape Town (CCT) in the Township of Langa in the Cape Province a decade ago. In brief, this is the story of Langa migrant labour hostels reviewed for its meaning as heritage to the diverse communities within Langa, compared with an earlier 2001/2 official evaluation by the state-led heritage management institutions. It is within a broader socio-political, cultural and heritage discourse context that this research project explores what the residents of Langa find significant. This is done with particular reference to the migrant labour hostel schemes since the intention was to establish to what extent conservation and heritage management is an appropriate response in an environment of material, economic and social difficulties; and, if so, to what degree the inhabitants of the hostels’ sense of value correspond to that articulated in the “official statement of significance” of 2004. This study questions the validity of nominating migrant labour hostels as “Grade I” national heritage resources.
Open Access
The "social life" of industrial ruins : a case study of Hashima Island
(2015) Hong, Insoo; Shepherd, Nick
The inscription of a strange-looking industrial site- coalmine on Hashima- on the World Heritage Site has proved to be the most publicly contested debate of heritage making work between Japan and Korea The debate about this place brings up poignant questions with regard to not only the significance of this heritage, but also the subsequent use of this island. The failure of reconciliation between countries especially, but also of reparation, restitution since the end of the Second World War and the issues of identity and memory have been brought to the fore. This paper seeks to challenge the dominant modes of heritage making and, in so doing, offer an analysis of influences from political, social and economic factors or an improved understanding of the dynamics of capitalistic production expansion. The origin and transformation of tradition is invoked in attempts to explain the pervasiveness and power of historical temporality and continuity. A critical approach to canonisation is employed whereby the choice of heritage resources is done in a more limited and cogent manner. It is argued that currently heritage-making functions as both value distribution and intentional perception for a people in a nation. Above all, the social life of those living in industrial ruins is positioned in the new perspective that as heritage resources they cannot be separated from capitalistic production and world history. Following from this, it is said that the temporality and spatiality of ruins need a political, social and economic debate in which the myths of the nation are forged, transmitted, negotiated and reconstructed constantly. Through employing these ideas, one can relate the thematic approach of heritage selection to commodification, collective memory, capitalism and nationalism in a theoretical and analytical way.
Open Access
State-prioritised heritage: governmentality, heritage management and the prioritisation of the liberation heritage in post-colonial South Africa
(2017) Manetsi, Thabo; Shepherd, Nick
This study seeks to examine and trace the notion of state prioritisation of heritage in relation to state intervention through political, policy and governance regimes in heritage management in South Africa. The study covers key highlights in the evolution of heritage management and developments through specific epochs and contexts such as the colonial, apartheid and post-colonial South Africa. Drawing on theories such as 'governmentality' and 'authorised heritage discourse' the study provides a perspective on the extent of state influence and dominance in the formalisation of heritage management through policy, legal instruments and governance processes. Using the National Liberation Heritage Route project in South Africa as a case study, the research illustrates the notion of state prioritisation of heritage in relation to the deployment and mobilisation of state resources (policy, legal instruments and material resources) in heritage management to support a select past as 'official' heritage of the nation state. The politics of transforming the heritage landscape in post-1994 South Africa witnessed the emergence of the idea of state prioritisation of the liberation heritage as a site for restorative justice particularly to honour and recognize the legacy of the political struggles for freedom against colonialism and apartheid. Conversely, the framing of the liberation heritage also demonstrates political uses of heritage at expedient moments to achieve political goals by the regime in power and state control. While normative approaches to heritage management tend to emphasise the disjuncture between colonial and post-colonial periods, the results of this study confirm strong ties to colonial and European influences across these categories. The findings outline the complexity of state intervention and its inherent biases that inform the governance of heritage. In this light the study contributes to ongoing research on the discourse of evaluating the global, local, and transnational dimensions of heritage management and practices, in relation to the problematics of heritage as mainly a product of state authority and political power.
Open Access
Stylizing Cape Town : problematizing the heritage management of Prestwich Street
(2006) Ernsten, Christian; Shepherd, Nick
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-108).
Open Access
Tonal Landscapes: Re-membering the interiority of lives of apartheid through the family album of the oppressed
(2012) O'Connell, Siona; Bogues, Anthony; Shepherd, Nick
This research seeks to be a methodological contribution to the fields of visual and memory studies. It enters these conversations through the family photograph found in the home of forcibly removed ex-residents of Roger Street, District Six, Cape Town in an attempt to think about ways of living during and after apartheid. Through this study, practically and theoretically, I engage with the challenges of restorative justice and contemplate how the family photograph may be engaged as a transactional object of translation in this contested area. I look at apartheid through District Six land claims and address as well, questions of trauma, memory, and freedom in the aftermath of apartheid. This dissertation therefore seeks to place three seemingly distinct literatures in the same frame: that of photography, that of memory, and that of justice and freedom. Conflicts over land, both local and global, range across the continuum, where long-term residents are displaced to make way for new developments and the other extreme where residents are forcibly displaced, violently evicted. What is clear in all of these instances, however, is that the problem cannot be reduced to one of monetary remuneration, that the land itself is imbued with meaning that cannot be measured in monetary terms. It is important to recognize - not only that land/place may mean different things to different people, but also that it can mean multiple "things" to the same person. Unless we recognize the multidimensionality of the meanings of land, as well thinking about what it means to be oppressed, any attempts to engage in restitution or restorative justice are destined to fail. This thesis attempts to think through how an ordinary object - the photograph - can be used to gain an interior look into how oppressed people lived during apartheid, and how they continue to live after its demise. Antjie Krog's book, Country of My Skull draws attention to the issue of death during apartheid. What this thesis does is to look at what happens to those who lived through apartheid and how they deal with the aftermath. It looks at the move from death to life. The family photograph may at first glance appear to have little in common with the issue of restorative justice. They both however speak of public and private, of remembering and mourning, of death and life, of absence and presence. They are both prone to multiple interpretations, as well as being at the cutting edge of contemporary and political debates. Taken together, the family photograph and visual studies form a forceful space, initiating interdisciplinary dialogue and providing a creative and scholarly engagement that has both local and global implications.