Memory, Ethics and the Re-temporalisation of South African National History in the Works of Jacob Dlamini

This paper examines Jacob Dlamini's two main historical works, Askari (2014) and Native Nostalgia (2009), for the ways in which they critique dominant South African memory practices while offering an alternative, and presumably more ethical, form of memoralisation which can also be read as a modality of temporality in the literary (re)historicisation of South Africa's national history. In Askari, Dlamini's recall of collaboration between traitors within the liberation movement and the apartheid security agencies disrupts the received narrative of South Africa's transition from anti-apartheid struggle to democracy. Similarly, in his earlier book, Native Nostalgia, he provocatively uses nostalgia to challenge the apparent politicisation of official memory projects. Furthermore, both texts adroitly complicate the relationship between the past, present and future in ways that may be read as a re-temporalisation of South African national history by deconstructing notions of a teleological national transition from an apartheid to a post-apartheid dispensation. The paper draws on Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage's (2013) as well as Homi Bhabha's (1990) theories on the construction of national histories.