Review by Choice Review
Marschall, program director of Cultural and Heritage Tourism at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, critically examines South Africa's official attempts to reshape its commemorative landscape in the postapartheid era through projects such as the Hector Pieterson Memorial, Constitution Hill, the Sharpeville Massacre Memorial, Freedom Park, and the National Women's Monument. According to Marschall, what makes the effort to reconstitute the heritage sector unique "is the systematic, self-conscious, deliberate, and methodical manner in which new monuments engage with the legacy of the past." In particular, postapartheid heritage development has focused on the production of memorials that symbolize the liberation struggle against apartheid, colonialism, and racism in general. Designed to promote nation building and reconciliation, many of these projects, according to Marschall, have instead exposed the political fractures in postapartheid society. Nonetheless, South Africa has largely avoided the tendency to sanitize or romanticize its heritage and has instead made an earnest effort "to come to terms with previously denied, neglected or shameful aspects of [its] past." Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. O. Gump University of San Diego
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
