Ordinarily, with the turn of events in 1994, the euphoria that accompanied the
inauguration of a democratically elected government, and which substantially signalled
the passage of not only minority rule, but the dismantling of official structures of racial
segregation, should suffice to make the nation forward-looking only. What is more, prior
to this time, specifically from 1990, the prefigurations of the reversal of relations of
power were evident in the opening up of borders to allow exiles of various kinds the right
of return:
Over the past few years in South Africa we have witnessed the emergence of a new
nation not only in our first national elections or the forging of the new constitution, but
also in the dramatic, tidal return of an exiled and sequestered population. With our border
posts now thinly defended, electric fences dormant, and prison doors swinging open,
every day brings scenes of jubilant reunion, at airports or docksides, with gaunt refugees
returning. (David Bunn 1996:33)
.
The gesture from the apartheid government then not only created an atmosphere of
tolerance for the opposition amidst fears and uncertainties, it also created what from that
period onward became part of quotidian national spectacles to which many people looked
forward and through which the dying days of apartheid scored points on image
laundering around the world. It goes without saying that while exiles, victims of state
oppression, were physically returning from prisons and countries of destination to be
united with their loved ones and the land of their origin and birth, the minority-run
establishment of apartheid, as well as its affiliations, was also returning, in the
metaphoric sense of the word, from an estrangement trauma unleashed upon it through
the national and international condemnation of its atrocities against humanity.
The imperative of memory, however, presupposes that the nation goes beyond the
euphoria of transformation, which the election brought about in order to probe into the
despicable cesspit of the past. Owing essentially to the enormity of the scars and wounds
the apartheid system inflicted on its victims, who, with the reversal of relations of power
have since assumed political headship, it was just in order that the newly established
status quo look into the past on a grand and official scale. Doing this, however, was
hardly for the purpose of staging “the revenge of the repressed” (Fredrick Crews et al