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 (