The Voortrekker Monument, the birth of apartheid, and beyond

The role of monuments in producing contested national histories and identities is increasingly receiving critical attention in geography. This paper contributes to the existing literature on monuments and nationalism by examining the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and illustrating how it became a key site at which Afrikaners produced a distinct political identity in the late 1940s. Through examining the discourse surrounding the monument's inauguration in December 1949 it looks at five key discursive themes that attached different, but often complimentary, meanings to the monument. Through analysing these themes, I demonstrate how a contemporary Afrikaner identity was constructed through a particularistic interpretation of an heroic Voortrekker past and argue that the construction of this history and identity was governed by political debates in the 1930s and 1940s rather than any historical authenticity to Afrikaner nationalist claims. Moreover, the monument's inauguration just months after the election of the first apartheid government provides a useful window into the specificity of apartheid political identity. I argue that the representation of Afrikaner identity at the monument in distinctive ethnicist terms both legitimised, and was fundamental to the possibility of, apartheid. Finally, building on this analysis of apartheid I conclude by suggesting how this illuminates debates concerning South Africa's contemporary nation building project and the content of post apartheid identities.