Chief Curator, Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum

In the last thirty years, the June 16, 1976 student uprisings have been commemorated in various ways. The commemorations have taken the form of expression of grief, loss and the will to continue pursuing the liberation project in South Africa. These processes of commemoration have over the years been characterised by tradition, change and continuity. Underpinning the characteristics of tradition, change and continuity is a feature of memory as a site of struggle for liberation and ideological contestation amongst those engaging in the struggle for liberation. This struggle on the one hand took the form of political mobilisation against apartheid colonialism and on the other hand took the form of competition for ideological hegemony among the former liberation movements. All this was within the context of the pre-1994 political order that was bent on demonising the meaning, significance and legacy of the 1976 uprisings and in some instances even attempted to erase its memory from the popular consciousness and as public history without success. The 1980s saw the memory of the uprisings being continually contested and at the same time taking new forms of tangible and intangible public re-representations. The new forms of tangible memorialisation and re-representation would later be re-imagined as tourism attractions or destinations. The latter introduced further metamorphosis of commemoration turned into monument(al) re-representation concerned with the post 1994 ‘national interest ’ to create jobs and develop local economies using the heritage of the liberation struggle side by side with the public pressures and national and public interests in symbolic reparations and social justice