1997:158) as it was for reconciling the various parties on different ends of victimhood
and perpetration. More substantially, it was for the purpose of coming to terms with the
past. At the national level, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) headed by
Desmond Tutu, was regarded as government’s own way of promoting “the redemptive
power of memory and personal testimony” (Jean Comaroff 2005: 126).^71 By giving
further centrality to the exploration of memory, one is bound to agree with Richard
Terdiman (1993:7) that by interrogating the past, the wisdom of the process and act is
etched in the understanding that “what precedes us seems to constitute the frame of our
existence, the basis of our self-understanding”.
Convinced about the primacy of memory, not only at the official level, but also by South
African writers in the post-apartheid era, various writers have committed themselves to
the act of interrogating and reinventing the past in order to confront the challenges of the
present. Not least because by dint of the enthusiasm shown by all towards the project of a
post-apartheid dispensation, there is among South Africans an unstated avowal in the
institution and concept of the nation, no matter how imagined and demonized that has
become in the postmodern era. It is on this account that memory, rather than being seen
as exhibiting conceptual “rupture” from history (Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton
(1994: 10) can be seen within the South African context as forging an alliance for the task
of making the present worthwhile through a simultaneous look into the past. In the words
of Andre Brink (1996: 17), this is perhaps because “the need to revisit history has both
accompanied and characterised the literature of most great ‘thresholds of change’”.
Therefore, the centrality of memory in the mediation of literature in the post-apartheid era
is considered to be crucial if it is to retain its relevance. This fact holds much water in
spite of the knotty nature of the responsibility with which the writers are saddled:
The influence of the historic moment on literary activity in South Africa has been no less
conflicted and dramatic. No longer directly burdened by the presence of colonial and
71
Beyond the state efforts at addressing the past for the purpose of reconciliation through the agency of the
TRC, a number of other efforts were made along this line on the part of individuals and groups as members
of a society in search of a revitalized framework for confronting the challenge of cohesion and nation
building in the wake of apartheid. In the words of Comaroff, the efforts demonstrated “a democratizing
spirit” on the part of the various institutions and individuals involved in the efforts: “evangelical churches
and NGOs, popular journalism, and TV talk shows.” (128)