Memory Wall

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism. In particular, the guide discusses the racist policies of the apartheid era in South Africa.

The titular story of Memory Wall, set in South Africa, depicts the lasting effects of racial discrimination beyond the official end of the apartheid era. Apartheid refers to South Africa’s former policy of racial segregation and political, social, and economic discrimination against the non-white citizen majority. The term comes from the Afrikaans word for separateness: apart (apart) + -heid (-hood). Afrikaans is the language spoken by white Dutch settlers in the South African area called Afrikaners. 

The social and political climate that led to apartheid stemmed from the history of colonialism in the region. Both colonialism and apartheid contributed, through formal and informal means, to the entrenched racial disparities illustrated in “Memory Wall.” A description of Pheko’s home—“Khayelitsha is thirty square miles of shanties made of aluminum and cinder blocks and sackcloth and car doors. […] War refugees, water refugees, HIV refugees” (15)—concisely exemplifies these disparities.

Though the influence of white Europeans in southern Africa can be traced back much further, the period of colonization that resulted in apartheid is typically thought of as beginning in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established Cape Colony on the southern coast of the Cape Peninsula (“South Africa Profile-Timeline.” BBC News, 19 Dec. 2022). The British invaded the region and established their own colonies around the turn of the 19th century, and in 1910, four of those colonies united to become the Union of South Africa. As part of the British Commonwealth, it was ruled by a governor-general who represented the British Crown. South Africa gained independence in 1961 when it left the British Commonwealth, due in part to other member nations taking a critical stance toward the racist policies of apartheid.

These policies were enacted in 1948, when the National Party took power, and the population was forcibly segregated by race. Many other practices that discriminated against non-white citizens became law, including severe limitations on voting rights and political participation and a ban on sex and marriage between white and non-white citizens. Systematic racial oppression occurred over the next several decades until local and global protests, as well as economic sanctions, led Frederik Willem de Klerk, elected State President of South Africa in 1989, to announce sweeping political reforms. He is known for his role in dismantling apartheid, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela in 1993 (“Apartheid Timeline: Key Dates in the End of White Rule in South Africa.” The Irish Times, 11 Nov. 2021).

Beginning shortly after apartheid was instituted, Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress—originally founded in 1912 as the Native National Congress—in a protest campaign that embraced tactics of civil disobedience. He was imprisoned in 1964 with a life sentence and served 27 years before being freed. When de Klerk’s term ended in 1994, South Africa held its first election open to people of all races, and Mandela became the country’s first Black president. His administration sought to reverse the legacy of racial inequality and discrimination that colonialism and apartheid fostered.