Ways of erasure
The lives of Dulcie September, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Dimitri Tsafendas and many others have me thinking about the ways of erasure and the functioning of memory in the arms of powerful men and who use their power to oppress.
Three different stories; a central theme of erasure of their being and their anti-apartheid work which would render the system vulnerable to revolutionary action hastening its collapse.
Erasure is important to colonial scripting as a means to control its subjects. Between Dulcie September’s work on sanction busting, Dimitri’s political identity and Madikizela’s prowess, ways of erasure that would persist for generations were constructed to nullify revolutionaries.
I then think frequently about memory, how it has been weaponised to subjugate. Memory is a vector of culture, identity and politic across generations. The absence thereof is epistemic violence, a pervasive form of domination in South Africa. Education to a people with little to no account of their history interplay’s into the colonial script of subjugation. Because memory is political, the absence thereof is also political, with roots grounded in psychological manipulation. This then speaks to a pervasive form of illiteracy, the medium through which we move, under a facade of reform and reconciliation that is uncontested.
It’s also In memory and peace prizes that we remember being given freedom.
In memory that we define freedom as pre-and post-.
Or in the absence thereof that we’re called to worship current leaders.
