SOUTH AFRICAN SILENCES, JAPANESE ERASURES, APARTHEID STUDIES: BLACKMAN NGORO AND THE PERSISTENCE OF APARTHEID (original) (raw)
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“Exhuming apartheid: Photography, Disappearance and Return"
Cahiers d'études Africaines , 2018
Abstract This paper argues for thinking about the relation between photography and exhumation as well as the potential for photographs to bring buried histories into the light. After the close of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there were still hundreds of unresolved cases of people who had been killed under apartheid. The Missing Persons Task Team was established to investigate these cases and has subsequently located and exhumed the remains of many activists. This article examines the case of Siphiwo Mtimkulu, an anti-apartheid student activist who was abducted and murdered by the security police in April 1982, together with his comrade, Tobekile “Topsy” Madaka. The remains of Mtimkulu and Madaka were located in 2007, ten years after the security police who murdered them lied at the Truth Commission about the facts concerning how they were tortured and killed. Engaging with photographs of Mtimkulu taken before his disappearance and those of his mother Joyce Mtimkulu, I argue that both physical and photographic remains have a particular resonance in the wake of the Marikana massacre of 2012 and the protests against the persistence of colonialism and apartheid that young South Africans held at universities across the country in 2015-2016. résumé Exhumer l’apartheid: la photographie, la disparition et le retour — Cet article vise à penser la relation entre la photographie et l’exhumation ainsi que le potentiel qu’ont les photographies à éclaircir des histoires enfouies. Après la clôture de la Commission pour la vérité et la réconciliation (the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission), il y avait encore des centaines de cas des gens tués sous l’apartheid. L’équipe de la recherche des personnes disparues (Missing Persons Task Team) fut créée afin d’enquêter et par la suite put localiser et exhumer les corps de nombreux militants. Cet article se penche sur le cas de Siphiwo Mtimkulu, un étudiant militant anti-apartheid, qui fut enlevé et assassiné en avril 1982 par la police, avec son camarade, Tobekile « Topsy » Madaka. Les restes de Mtimkulu et Madka furent identifiés en 2007, dix ans après que les policiers qui les avaient tués mentirent à la Commission sur comment ils avaient été torturés et tués. En s’engageant avec les photographes de Mtimkulu prises avant sa disparition et celles de sa mère, Joyce Mtimkulu, je soutiens que les restes physiques et photographiques se revêtent d’une résonance particulière à la suite du massacre de Marikana de 2012 et les manifestations contre la persistance du colonialisme et l’apartheid que les jeunes Africains du Sud ont organisées aux universités à travers le pays en 2015-2016. Mots clés : Afrique du Sud, Marikana, Siphiwo Mtimkulu, apartheid, exhumation, manifestation, militantisme étudiant, photographie, Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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If you're] rich, then you can be a man among men. You've got a voice in the country, in the world, wherever. Even if you pass by where people stay, sit, and then they can point [at] you with a fin ger, "Yeah, you see that guy." Because you're well known. But if you're just simple like me, ah. .. even if you greet some of the guys, they'll say, "Ah, this guy.. .. What for? Why is he greeting us?". .. You're nothing. You don't have something.