Reclaiming histories: The resounding call issued through the Simonites  culturally-marginalised memory of the apartheid forced removals

Solomons, Anastasia Joan

Reclaiming histories: The resounding call issued through the Simonites culturally-marginalised memory of the apartheid forced removals

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Abstract

Produced with the intent to link the consciousness of the classified coloured Simonites to the needs presented by their physical surroundings, this study presents a poststructuralist critique of the post-apartheid culture of race. It invokes the Simonites' production of a living, inclusive and diversified archive as a disruptor to the existing colonial and apartheid power relations that structure social interactions. The study deploys oral history as a methodology due to its fluid administering of historical production. This study is a testament to the Simonites' agency pertaining their reclaimed histories and personhoods. These phenomena are intentionally pluralised to oppose a singularised, state-imposed culture of race that culturally-marginalises memories, histories and identities. An analysis of the Simonites' memory of the apartheid forced removals reveals that their memory is framed to meet a present cultural demand. Namely, the need to transform their culturally-marginalised social position as administered by the rainbow identity and subsequent citizenship status. Reclaimed histories are transformative to the extent that it produces a re-envisioned humanity that subverts existing power relations and appeals to greater society. A subversion of power relations reinvigorates a sense of belonging, broadens the recipients of state obligations and epistemologically undermines the dominance of racial discourse in a post-apartheid context. Therefore, this study supports an emerging discourse that posits Simon's Town as an ancestrally-diverse heritage landscape to which belonging and a unique history is claimed.

Keywords

Political Studies

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