Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This dissertation takes Chris Hani beyond the conventionally biographic by thinking through his multiple lives and deaths and engaging with his legacy in ways that cannot be contained by singular, linear narratives. By doing so, I offer alternative routes through which to understand historical change, political struggle and subjectivity, as well as biographical and historical production as a conflicted and contested terrain. I attend to these conflicting narratives not as a means through which to reconcile the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides of history, struggle, or the political subject. Nor do I sacrifice either to what Frederick Jameson has referred to as a dialectical impasse: a “conventional opposition, in which one turns out to be more defective than the other”, and through which “only one genuine opposite exists… [therefore sharing] the sorry fate of evil… reduced to mere reflection.”1 Instead I place contested narratives about Hani and the anti-apartheid struggle into conversation with one another, and treat them as “equally integral component[s]”2 of the life and legacy of Hani. This I argue, provides fertile ground through which to rethink the lives and times of Martin Thembisile ‘Chris’ Hani, and the political subject more generally. Through a study that focuses on performance and memorialisation, violence, revolution, and spectrality, this dissertation also engages with a number of issues surrounding Hani’s assassination, the transitional period in southern Africa, justice, armed struggle, and the work of mourning in a postapartheid society. It begins by revealing the contested ways in which Hani’s legacy was produced during the anti-apartheid struggle, and how it was contained and acted out in the immediate aftermath of his assassination. This study then goes on to trace how the postapartheid state’s narrative about the struggle against apartheid, has been challenged and undermined, and how differing modes of narrative emplotment have shaped the ways in which we understand this period. Critically, I argue that the operative and contested qualities of historical production mean that Hani’s revolutionary legacy is always already uncontainable. As such this type of legacy and politics haunts the ANC’s postapartheid project and, to paraphrase Jameson, makes the present waver like a mirage on the landscape of postapartheid South Africa.3 Within this framework I ask if rumour and conspiracy surrounding Hani’s assassination merely represent a yearning for ‘truth’, or if these have become a means through which the nation comes to terms with the violence that remains in the wake of apartheid and colonialism, and to call on activists like Hani to judge and denounce capitalism, state violence, corruption, and exploitation. Rather than attempting to reveal the truth of his assassination and political legacy, I end by asking what possibilities might be opened up when we dwell upon the uncertainty and plurality of Hani’s lives and deaths and take seriously the continued presence of Hani and the spectralities that remain. I do so in order to work against the monumental projects of nationalism and the nation-state, and to keep open our horizon of expectation in the face of what David Scott has called the ‘stalled present’ of postcolonial and postsocialist worlds.4
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/9000 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Longford, Samuel |
| Contributors | Rassool, Ciraj |
| Publisher | University of the Western Cape |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | University of the Western Cape |
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