Contested Cultural Heritage in the Limpopo Province of South Africa: the case study of the Statue of King Nghunghunyani

Abstract

Commemorative structures like walls of remembrance, statues and monuments are representatives of social narratives and they usually represent the current political order. They also represent heroes deemed important by the current political regime. These structures, together with the corresponding narrative, can either be of local, regional or national importance. Nghunghunyani was a Gaza Nguni king who reigned in southern Mozambique in 19th century. His statue in the town of Giyani is a case in point. Nghunghunyani fought wars and entered into negotiations with the Portuguese in southern Mozambique in order to keep the land of his forefathers. However, the erection of his statue sparked controversy and has been met with resentment and rejection among the people of the region where it has been placed. This study aimed to elucidate the reasons behind the resentment and the rejection of the statue. This was done by examining the history of the homeland of Gazankulu and of the clans of the region in order to understand the ethnic enclaves of the Tsonga and the Shangaan, and the political undercurrents involved in the erection of a statue which is undeniably of national significance, but problematic locally and regionally. As heroes are imbedded in collective memory and collective narratives, the theory of collective memory following on Maurice Halbwachs was used. The discussion on ethnicity was directed by the ethnicity theories of Webber and Geertz. The interview was employed as the tool for collecting data, which elucidated that Nghunghunyani is not part of their founding heroes and that their praise poems do not include this historical figure. It appears that in as much as Nghunghunyani is a regional hero, his representation in Giyani is clouding the real history of the region and the debates are clouding the hero that King Nghunghunyani was. The study unveiled that Nghunghunyani is a nationally celebrated hero who cannot be contextualised positively in the local context amongst Tsonga speaking tribes and chiefdoms due to the nature of the hostile historical relationship between the ancestors of these groups and the Gaza Nguni.