Jointly organized by Dr Nicola Cloete (Wits), Dr Katrin Antweiler (U Bremen/Wits) and Dr Duane Jethro (UCT), this symposium brings together different scholars working critically on politics of memory. Your participation in the conversation is highly welcomed.

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^{"South Africa and Germany have frequently been lauded for their approaches to responsibly dealing with their pasts. These historic lessons have been drawn upon as grounds for a democratic civic culture that links memory and heritage to identity and belonging. Yet the assumptions that have up until recently guided these dominant heritage and memory practices, such as good memory cultures leading to inclusive, tolerant and open societies, have increasingly been shown up as incomplete, paradoxical and at times contradictory. In South Africa, many state built heritage institutions, monuments and memorials dedicated to the memory of the struggle for freedom lie in ruin due to neglect, while at the same time significant moments in national social justice history, such as the Marikana Massacre, have gone officially unmarked. And in Germany, it is becoming increasingly difficult to square the official insistence on a liberal democratic order based on an active, institutionalized memory culture based on national guilt, with the rise of the right-wing social movements and political parties. We believe heritage and memory cultures—and the political order’s they are tethered to—are being remade in these spaces of contradiction; a review of these transformations is necessary."}

Where: 

Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Southern Africa office

237 Jan Smuts Avenue | Parktown North | Johannesburg

When:

17 October 2025 | 10:00-15:00 SAST