On Heritage
Have you ever heard of the Mandela effect?
Have you ever heard of the Mandela effect?
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon first coined in 20091, it describes situations where multiple people recall a fictitious event/situation from the past as if the event actually occurred. It's called the Mandela effect because the person who first observed it recalled that Nelson Mandela was killed in captivity during the 80s. Other people seemed to recall the exact same event even though as we know Nelson Mandela only died in 2013 and after being the first democratically elected president of South Africa in the 90s.
As I reflect on Heritage, the word “memory” has stuck with me. How we remember and what we remember is at the best of times selective. I think that one element of Heritage is that it is a form of memory. I am not a sentimental person but I do believe in rhythm and ritual. These ancient systems of knowledge are our best tools to retain our humanity. The battle for retaining our humanity did not just start when we thought the machines were going to take us over, it started long ago. The dehumanising of us is baked into the prevailing constructs of our economic and social order and these aren't new systems. We have inherited and continue to perpetuate the grossest harms even as a progressive species on the planet. My heritage for example includes most likely a history of slavery and colonialism. I guess my ancestors were both the beneficiaries of land theft and the victims of slavery. I can only guess because there has been a concerted effort to suppress some of our histories.
Perhaps heritage, if it is a form of memory, can help us reclaim the core of our humanity. Things like language and music, and art and poetry and even dance are cultural distincitives. I would argue these things keep us human. They are perhaps not always seen as very important nor are they praised as efficient or a measure of success. But they are exactly the things that make us more Human than Machine. These forms of memory point us to who we are. They are signposts for where we are from. They unveil our true identity as humans. They tell the stories of our people. They do not let us get away with half truths or rainbow washing.
The fact that the phenomenon is called the Mandela effect is almost ironic when thinking about our context in South Africa. When September comes around here we tend to flatten all of our cultural nuances into a braai. I think it's because we need to scramble to find common ground. What is our cultural identity as South Africans, what do we have in common? If the last couple of weeks in Cape Town has taught us anything it is that we are as apart as ever. The disproportionate impact of a city wide taxi strike and the crime statistics both show that we live in two very different cities. Cape Town is both listed as the best city to visit in the world2 and ranked in the top 10 most violent cities in the world3. What was and continues to be crippling for some is but a small inconvenience for others. And so it is maybe too convenient to reference the election of Nelson Mandela as president as the ultimate elixir for cultural celebration and equality. We took a broken country, slapped a rainbow on it and thought we would get better. Our nation's own Mandela effect is perhaps what Koleka Putuma refers to as Collective Amnesia4. Perhaps that's where the work lies, that we begin to remember.
We have lost too much, we have suffered too much, we have lived with too much distance to be able to have a cheap celebration of a false flourishing of all cultures. And it cannot be flattened into a braai day, it's just too complicated.
We are evolved enough to hold both those ideas, both those emotions. Pain AND Beauty. And in the worst cases where we know those who came before us have done harm, there is hope. For in South Africa we believe in a living heritage. You are tomorrow's ancestor. Your actions today are shaping the history of tomorrow. My hope for our generation is that we reclaim our humanity and that we become better humans.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-mandela-effect-4589394
https://www.capetownetc.com/cape-town/take-a-bow-cape-town-youve-been-voted-best-city-in-the-world/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/
https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Collective_Amnesia.html?id=rLysDgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y