Yesterday's Heroes? Canonisation of Anti-Apartheid Heroes in South Africa

Jeremy Punt argues that the canonisation of South Africa's anti-Apartheid heroes is an important component in the construction of a narrative of a country emerging from a violent, divisive past informed by racialist engineering and deliberate processes of exclusion and othering. The icon of the struggle against Apartheid and the one who most often springs to mind is, of course, Nelson Mandela, around whom quite a hero if not a martyr cult was erected. Heroes' discourse plays an important role in structuring memories about South Africa's past and negotiating identities in the present. Notwithstanding the ambiguities, the role of anti-Apartheid heroes and their veneration are important in underscoring new group values, restoring human dignity and self-esteem while at the same time articulating identity and acknowledging leadership and achievement. But the commemoration of heroes is also time and place bound and therefore susceptible to constant critique and adjustments as evident from recent events in South Africa.