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Legacy of Racism
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Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999
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by Martin Hall
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For years most South African archaeologists argued that there was no
connection between politics and the study of the past. This blinded many
scholars to the political implications of their work. For example, instead of stressing
the frequent divergence of traits such as material culture, social
practice, and language, South Africa's prehistory was written as a set of
discreet units defined by distinctive types of material culture. This
expressed the generally held belief that all cultural characteristics are
immutable despite the passage of time--i.e., that black people were beneath
civilizing because they could never change.
The elections of 1948 brought the National Party, the fathers of formal
segregation, to power. The new government made it clear that the next
meeting of the Pan African Association for Prehistory and Related Studies
would be "inconvenient." For the next 20 years, archaeology languished. But by
the early 1970s the government was spending more than ever on civic
amenities for whites, and the growth in funding to universities and museums
created more positions in archaeology. By 1985 there were more resources in
archaeology than in any other country in Africa, yet South African
archaeologists were alienated from the contemporary communities whose
history they studied, and there were almost no black archaeologists.
Now, five years after its first democratic elections, South Africa is back
in the international community. At the same time, the number of
professional positions in archaeology seems to be declining, one department
has closed, and there are still very few black archaeologists. What we are
seeing is the legacy of apartheid. There is very little public appreciation
of the past in South Africa. The most important priority for the future is
to ensure that all South Africans develop a full sense of their past. Until
the nation's historical fabric becomes part of everyday life, archaeology will
remain an esoteric pursuit on the margins of South Africa's popular
consciousness.
Martin Hall is a professor of historical archaeology at the University of Cape Town.
© 1999 by the Archaeological Institute of America
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