Johan Snyman 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory * 
1. The social function of the war memorial 
W h a t is the func t ion of publ ic art in society? W h a t is the role of war 
m o n u m e n t s and war memor ia l s? Accord ing to Ar thur C. Danto, there are 
»tacit rules that gove rn the dist inction be tween m o n u m e n t s and memorials« 
(Danto , 1987: 115), and which a m o u n t to the following: 
We erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build memorials 
so that we shall never forget. ... Monuments commemorate the memorable 
and embody the myths of beginnings. Memorials ritualize remembrance and 
mark the reality of ends. The Washington Monument, vertical, is a celebra-
tion, like fireworks. The Lincoln Memorial, even if on a rise, presses down 
and is a meditation in stone. Very few nations erect monuments to their de-
feats, but many set up memorials to the defeated dead. Monuments make 
heroes and triumphs, victories and conquests, perpetually present and part of 
life. The memorial is a special precinct, extruded from life, a segregated en-
clave where we honor the dead. With monuments we honor ourselves (ibid., 
112). 
T h e fact that in the post -war Federal Republ ic of G e r m a n y (and even in 
the G e r m a n D e m o c r a t i c Republ ic) no m o n u m e n t to the G e r m a n defeat was 
erected, no t even a m e m o r i a l to the G e r m a n dead, seems to accord with Danto ' s 
The financial support for research on this paper from the Human Sciences Research 
Council, Pretoria, and a research fellowship from the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut 
in Essen, Germany, is hereby acknowledged. Further financial support was given by 
the Slovenian Society of Aesthetics. I would also like to express my indebtedness to 
Mr. Neels Nieuwenhuizen and Ms. E. Wessels of the War Museum of the Boer Re-
publics in Bloemfontein, and to colleagues at the Rand Afrikaans University for their 
invaluable assistance in drawing my attention to, obtaining and reproducing archival 
material. I owe Prof. Jörn Rüsen of the Bielefeld University, Prof. Detlef Hoffmann of 
the Oldenburg University and Prof. Jonathan Webber of Oxford University a great 
deal for drawing on their resources and participating in their project on Die ästhetische 
Inszenierung der Demokratie. Last, but not least, a word of special thanks to Dr. Ales 
Erjavec of the Institute of Philosophy of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian 
Academy of Sciences and Arts for being instrumental in getting me to start thinking 
about the »aesthetics of war«. 
Filozofski vestnik, XVII (2/1996), pp. 181-202. 
Johan Snyman 
view. The Germans (at least the former West-Germans) inaugurated a new 
kinds of memorials instead. One kind is the shelled remains of some promi-
nent pre-war public building as Mahnmal, as a perpetual sign of warning against 
the horrors of war. One could wonder whether the Mahnmal succeeds in 
making its point as time lapses. In the minds of the second and third genera-
tion, the scarred Mahnmal easily becomes a scar in the mind. The ever-present 
sign of warning turns into the ominous sign of humiliation - unless the Mahnmal 
is regularly attended with the ritual of remembrance and mourning of all the 
unnamed victims, and unless this occurs in such a way that the present gen-
eration can empathize with the victims by considering the paradoxical and 
remote possibility that they themselves might fall victim to some ineffable 
and as yet unforeseeable catastrophe. 
The other kind of war memorial is the so-called counte rmonument . 
Reacting against the various meanings that can become inscribed in the me-
morial due to changing politico-historical circumstances, the countermonu-
ment destroys itself as a spatio-temporal edifice. It is either »buried« over 
time (like the Monument against Fascism in Hamburg) , or it consists of »the 
disruption of a public space« by colour slides of documents of the Second 
World War projected on a public building whenever a member of the public 
crosses a certain light beam which then activates a h idden projector (Young 
1993: 27-48). 
2. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial 
Arthur Danto makes a very poignant distinction between a memorial 
and a monument: with the memorial we honour the dead, with the monu-
ment we honour ourselves. The memorial asks for sobriety and humility on 
the part of the survivors and the living. The monument , by contrast, is a 
license for self-indulgence, for aggrandized vanity. This distinction may be 
true if one considers the differences between the Washington Monument as 
an obelisk, »a monumental form with connotations of the t rophy in Western 
art« (ibid., 113) and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial »which carries no ex-
plicit art-historical references« (ibid.). The Veterans Memorial (in its original 
conception by Maya Ying Lin and dedicated in 1982) consists of two black 
granite walls holding back the sides of a pointed 132° depression in the ground. 
The walls of the monument contain only the names of the more than 58,000 
dead Americans of the Vietnam War in order of the dates of their deaths. To 
this »special precinct, extruded from life, a segregated enclave where we honor 
the dead,« a bronze statue of three servicemen by Frederik Hart was added as 
182 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
a concess ion to pa r t of the publ ic w h o d e m a n d e d some kind of »exacting« 
hero ic rea l ism as intr insic to war memor ia l s in general . Danto describes the 
V e t e r a n s M e m o r i a l thus: 
Like innocents ... [the three servicemen] see only rows and columns of names. 
They are dazed and stunned. The walls reflect their obsessed gaze ... The 
gently flexed pair of walls, polished black, is like the back of Plato's cave, a 
reflecting surface, a dark mirror. The reflections in it of the servicemen ... are 
appearances of appearances. It also reflects us, the visitors, as it does the trees. 
Still, the living are in it only as appearances. Only the names of the dead, on 
the surface, are real (ibid., 113-4).(/ig. J.) 
If one d i s rega rded the b ronze statue for one momen t , this memor ia l as 
an ins tance of minimal is t art is apposi te to its purpose . Structurally, it is nearly 
the exact oppos i te of the obelisk. Its principal axis is horizontal instead of 
vert ical (cf. Beardsley, 1989: 124-5). Instead of soaring up into the limitless 
sky, it de scends into the ear th , obst ruct ing the descent with two walls meet ing 
in a co rne r in which the n a m e s of the first and the last fatal casualty of that 
war a re j u x t a p o s e d on two separa te panels . According to Lin, »thus the war 's 
beg inn ing and end m e e t ; the war is ' comple te ' ... yet b r o k e n by the earth that 
b o u n d s the angle ' s o p e n side, and conta ined by the ear th itself« (quoted in 
Fig. 1: M a y a Lin. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 1982. (Reproduced in Danto, 
1987: 101.) 
183 
Johan Snyman 
Beardsley, 1989: 124). As such, the idea of walls with the names of the de-
ceased engraved on them is a fairly common memorial strategy. O n e comes 
across this way of memorializing all over the world. 
Initially, the Vietnam memorial commemorates no heroes and no he-
roic event. With its present overall form, situated as it is between the Wash-
ington monument and the Lincoln memorial , the American public can have 
it both ways. On the one hand, the memorial serves a »cathartic function,« 
»easing trauma into memory. In this, especially, the Vietnam Veterans Me-
morial is a stunning success. It is the continual witness of tearful homages to 
the deceased. Flowers and mementoes are regularly left there. These visible 
expressions of grief are eloquent demonstrat ions that the individual and col-
lective wounds of Vietnam are still raw, and in need of remedy« (Beardsley, 
1989: 125). O n the other hand, this memorial confronts the visitor with the 
stark results of war: people reduced to cold statistics, columns of faceless 
names of dead people. The memorial itself mourns the fate of the dead. Small 
wonder it evoked such controversy before its dedication. As anti-representa-
tional, conceptual art it indicts the wielders of political and military power to 
think on the wages of war. I do not know of any other memorial which un-
derscores the tragedy of war so effectively by its unders ta tement of grief and 
its stubborn, even iconoclastic abstinence of heroism. 58,000 meticulously 
recorded war casualties overwhelm the spectator. The magnitude of this visual 
record incites the viewer to produce an imaginative representat ion of the 
face of each single victim - an impossible task, which quickly stuns the imagi-
nation. Each name then becomes an abstract, de-personalized instance of the 
universal voiceless victim of the modern war-industry. 
3. The Dachau Memorial 
The Dachau Memorial by Glid Nandor in the late Sixties also fits Danto 's 
»tacit rules that govern the distinction between monuments and memorials,« 
but for different reasons from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial . Although it 
shares the Veteran Memorial's decided anti-monumentalism, it is not as icono-
clastic. Similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial the founders of this me-
morial are the people who survived the events commemora ted here and or-
ganized themselves in the Comité International de Dachau. Money was raised 
internationally, and the former West German government contributed D M 
300,000 towards the memorial. And like the Vie tnam Veterans Memoria l 
this memorial commemorates something which did not take place on the 
exact spot of the memorial. 
The memorial is in the form of a camp fence, but the barbed wire is 
184 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
f o r m e d by the g ro tesque and partially d i smembered skeletons of Nazi con-
cen t ra t ion c a m p vict ims (fig. 2). T h e original design wanted the visitor to 
a p p r o a c h the m e m o r i a l f r o m the right or the eastern side, where a wall bear-
ing an inscr ip t ion f r o m J o b 38 would have been erected. Passing this wall, the 
visitor de scends into an excava ted space, f lanked on the one side by the me-
moria l . Af te r c o m i n g to the central feature of the memoria l , namely the group 
of emac ia t ed and con to r t ed f igures which the visitor views f rom undernea th , 
one ascends to a wall on the left where an u rn with the ashes of the Nameless 
Pr i soner has b e e n in te r red . 
T h e or iginal design was only partially realised. T h e f lanking walls (with 
the inscr ip t ion and the u r n with the ashes) were left out. And al though the 
inscr ip t ion f r o m J o b 38 is absent f rom the present precinct , it remains an 
impor tan t key to unde r s t and and experience the edifice. T h e inscription should 
have r ead as fol lows (Job 38, 16-17): 
...[H]ast thou walked in search of the depth? 
Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors 
of the shadow of death? 
This quo ta t ion f r o m J o b consti tutes the f r amework of reference, namely 
of a descen t in to a val ley of death , invoking associations of a t rench, a mass 
Fig. 2: Glid N a n d o r . The Dachau Memorial. 1960. (Photo: J o h a n Snyman.) 
185 
Johan Snyman 
grave and the pits where murdered victims of Nazi gas chambers were cre-
mated. At the same time an expectation of or a longing for redempt ion from 
above is suggested. How does this dialectic of threat and redemption work in 
this memorial? 
The visitor descends into the depths of despair, to be confronted and 
overwhelmed by the suffering victims of the Nazi system. The presentation 
of the victims follows the medieval tradition of the triptych, with the center-
piece alluding to the Crucifixion. The portrayal of suffering is grotesque: vic-
tim and instrument of torture are fused into one. The skeletons are the barbed 
wire. Nandor 's sculpture is expressive of the unthinkable horror of the Holo-
caust - the co-optation of the victims in their process of destruction (cf. Bauman, 
1989: 117-150). In this sense this memorial has to witness for the suffering in 
all Nazi concentration camps. The location as well as the styling of the sculp-
ture alienates the visitor from the portrayed victims. The victims are barely 
recognizable as human shapes. Not only are they (and were they, once upon 
Fig. J : J ean Veber . Les 
Camps de Concentration. 
1901. (Reproduced in 
Veber 1901: 414.) 
186 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
a time, in the past) physically maimed, but they are also sculpturally man-
gled. Empathizing with the victims is prevented by showing them stripped of 
their humanity and dignity - their suffering is complete, beyond comprehen-
sion even in the portrayal thereof. Not a semblance of human dignity re-
mains. In front of this memorial one can only mourn the ineffable suffering. 
As Adorno intimated, to accord the suffering of these victims any positive 
meaning, would have amounted to an insult (Adorno, 1966: 352). 
An interesting feature of Nandor 's work is the treatment of the crucifix-
ion motif. The figures in his sculpture refer to incidents which occurred in the 
concentration camps when prisoners committed suicide by falling onto the 
electrified camp fence, electrocuting themselves. The few photos of such in-
cidents have become icons of Nazi atrocities. Nandor stylized these incidents 
to a unity of victim and instrument of torture. Iconographically, Nandor has 
his precursor in J ean Veber , a French caricaturist at the beginning of this 
century. Veber drew political cartoons for a French newspaper of the British 
war effort to conquer the two Boer republics in South Africa. Because he did 
not report on site, but rather commented on events, he chose to portray his 
views of the progress of the war in terms of well known works of art. Gericault's 
Raft of the Medusa was »quoted« and graphically inverted by Veber (fig. 3) to 
I ES P R O G R E S l)E LA S C I E N C E 
Fig. 4:Jean Vebér. Les Progrés de la Science. 1901. (Reproduced in Vebér 1901: 
396.) 
187 
Johan Snyman 
invoke the utter sense of despair which had to befall the victims of the Anlo-
Boer War. O n e of Veber 's portrayals of British war strategy under the head-
ing Le Progres de la Science shows Boer prisoners of war trying to escape but 
becoming crucified in a camp fence (Veber, 1901: 396) [fig. 4). Art histori-
cally, this is the first transposition of the crucifixion motif to a part of modern 
industrialized warfare. (This distinguished Veber 's f rom Goya's portrayals of 
impalements in the latter's Los Desastres de la Guerra.) As far as can be ascer-
tained, Nandor was not acquainted with Veber ' s specific portrayal. When 
one looks back from Nandor 's work to Veber ' s cartoon, the latter becomes 
part of the preceding history of the Dachau memorial and represents a step in 
the process of creating icons of suffering by connect ing por t rayal of the 
sufferings of war with the well established tradition of the crucifixion motif, 
illiciting the same reverence for victims of war as the crucified Christ. 
4. The Women's Memorial 
As a memorial for (some of) the victims of the Anglo-Boer War the 
W o m e n ' s Memor ia l was i n fo rmed by a d i f f e r e n t i c o n o g r a p h i c a l and 
iconological tradition. In stead of the crucifixion motif, the Women ' s Memo-
rial utilized the motif of the Pieta. Several reasons, f rom the history of this 
monument, amongst others, can be adduced for this preference in motif. 
Danto's »tacit rules« seem not to have existed or not to have been ac-
knowledged in the construction of the Women ' s Memorial in Bloemfontein, 
unveiled in 1913 {fig. 5). Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial , it was funded 
by public donations. The driving force behind the completion of the memo-
rial was a foreigner, Emily Hobhouse. »That Englishwoman« was a vocifer-
ous member of an anti-war, mainly Whig-inspired faction of the British pub-
lic during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902. She did much to alleviate the 
suffering of Boer people during the war, involving herself very closely with 
relief aid in the former Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free 
State, much to the ire of the British colonial and military authorities and 
much of the British public. The design that won the public competi t ion was 
by the German architect, Frans Soff. His design was for a monumenta l ob-
elisk to be erected on a hillside outside Bloemfontein. The obelisk would be 
adorned by a bronze statue of a Boer woman with two children. The original 
maquette did not satisfy Emily Hobhouse, and she was entrusted to supervise 
the making of the statue by the Dutch-South African sculptor, Anton van 
Wouw, who was sent to Rome for that purpose. Van Wouw made the statue 
under Emily Hobhouse 's supervision: not only had Van Wouw to tear his 
188 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
o w n work d o w n several t imes, but »that Engl i shwoman« insisted on V a n 
W o u w chang ing his who le original concep t 
Her final judgment was expressed in a letter dated April 5, 1912: 
The standing woman seems to me very good, full of feeling and the sitting 
mother is better, though still far from satisfactory. The child on her knee is 
nicely modelled though still only appears to me a sleeping child and neither 
sick nor dead. I suggested he should get leave to go to a hospital and study 
one or two dead figures (ibid., 513-514), 
and (from a memoi r ) : 
Mr. Van Wouw as you know reproduced the scene in bronze. Had he seen it 
with his own eyes, the child would have borne more directly the aspect of 
emaciation and death (ibid., 112). 
Fig. 5: Frans Soff and 
Anton van W o u w . The 
Women's Memorial. 
1913. (Photo: W a r 
M u s e u m of the Boer 
Republics , 
Bloemfontein.) 
189 
Johan Snyman 
What is the point about the Women ' s Memoria l then? Should one re-
gard it as an unsuccessful attempt at a memorial , unsuccessful in more than 
one sense of the word, namely executed by an incompetent sculptor, and 
blurring the borders between a monument and a memorial? 
Let us attend to the second problem first. The sandstone obelisk, situ-
ated on a hillside as it is, conveys something dignified, heroic, and celebra-
tory. The sculpture's placement on a four-metre-high pedestal in f ront of the 
obelisk transforms the tragic group into something heroic, something elevated 
above the ordinary. It aggrandizes suffering. 
This is not so much a memorial dedicated to the suffering of the dead, as 
a monument for the grief of those left behind. The facial expressions of the 
two women are not properly visible because of the elevation of the statue. So 
they do not communicate with any onlooker. And, as Emily Hobhouse cor-
rectly observed, the child does not »directly [bear] the aspect of emaciation 
and death«. The statue does not confront one with the suffering of victims of 
war, but rather conveys the longing for an abstract restitution. The elevation 
of the group alienates them from a public. 
The bas-relief side panels bear this out. The right hand panel portrays 
the chaos of the destruction of farms and forced removals to concentration 
camps. The composition has no focal point, which underscores icono-graphi-
cally the experience of displacement it portrays. In a certain sense the panel 
itself is perpetually displaced: being on the right hand side of the major group 
of the memorial it is not in the favoured »reading position«, whereas, if one 
should have »read« the depiction of war suffering in a chronological sense, 
this panel should have been to the left of the main group, and the death scene 
should have come »later« in the spatio-temporal sequence. Furthermore, this 
panel is most of the time literally in the shadow of the rest of the memorial 
(fig. 6). 
The composition of the left hand panel is intriguingly classical: it has a 
receding focal point in low relief (the dying child in the tent), with the fore-
ground figures, the survivors, in high relief and framing the picture. There is 
a spatial continuity between the onlooker outside the picture and the specta-
tors outside the tent in the picture: both categories of »public« partake in the 
grievous event of a child dying in a concentration camp (fig. 7]. But, once 
again, the emaciation of the dying child is not clear to see. For all the unin-
formed visitor might know, people are just looking at a sleeping child in a 
tent. What is sculpturally emphasized, however, is the grief-strickenness of 
the onlookers. They stand immobilized, they can only look on, they cannot 
relieve anything. The spatial continuity between the onlooker and the figures 
in the bas-relief (linked with the chronological continuity between the on-
190 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
' V O O R V R Y H E I D V O L K EN V A D E R L A N D 
Fig. 6: Anton van Wouw: Right bas relief of The Women's Memorial. 1913. 
(Photo: War Museum of the Boer Republics, Bloemfontein.) 
Fig. 7: Anton van Wouw: Left bas relief of The Women's Memorial. 1913. 
(Photo: War Museum of the Boer Republics, Bloemfontein.) 
191 
Johan Snyman 
lookers and the figures in the picture at the time of the unveiling of the me-
morial), taken together with the elevation of the main statue, makes this me-
morial to »broken-hearted womanhood« and »perishing childhood« a monu-
ment to endurance through and in spite of grief. It is a monument not only to, 
but also for the grief-stricken survivors. 
This becomes clear when one reflects on the so-called incompetence of 
the sculptor. If Rodin could have carried out the commission for this memo-
rial, the sculpture would not have landed on a pedestal. As in The Burghers of 
Calais, the onlooker would have confronted at eye-level the expression of 
various dimensions of human suffering. To achieve this communicat ion of 
the expression of suffering, Rodin's figures would have been more dynamic 
(instead of being completely immobile like Van Wouw's), utilizing the ex-
pressive features of the anatomy of the body in different kinds of postures. 
Rodin's figures would have been less heavily clad and much more tense. 
(That is, if one takes it for granted that he would not employ a similar ap-
proach to this topic as he did for the Balzac Memorial.) 
Van Wouw's alleged inability to render suffering in such terms as Rodin's 
accorded well with the cultural background of the public for whom this me-
morial was commissioned. If Rodin's Balzac memorial caused an outrage in 
France, and if his Calais memorial was controversial, his possible portrayal of 
Boer suffering would not have been acceptable in South Africa at that time. A 
significant reason was the conflict of interest between Emily Hobhouse ' s urge 
to commemorate the victims, and the Boer people 's need for a monument . A 
tug of war, so to speak, ensued: to whom did (the recollection of) the dead 
belong? Where should they be located in history - on the side of the Boer 
people, or on the side of humanity? For what cause did they die? 
Emily Hobhouse was, for her time, a very emancipated woman and, 
although from a religious background (she was the daughter of an Anglican 
vicar), a free thinker. Knowing that the practice of concentration camps dur-
ing the Anglo-Boer War contravened the Hague Convent ion of 1899, and 
that the British military authority was covering up many of the atrocities and 
commiting many other atrocities unwittingly through neglect and logistical 
incompetence, she recorded meticulously incidents and even statistics about 
the camps. She could be called the initiator of investigative journalism in 
South Africa for having photographs taken to record the extent of famine 
and illness in the camps. Having them published in Britain could persuade 
the British electorate to press for an early end to the war [fig. 8). In the course 
of the war, approximately 26,000 women and children died in these concen-
tration camps - that is approximately 10% of the white populat ion of the 
former Boer republics at the time. Emily Hobhouse also started to keep record 
192 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
of concentration camps for blacks, but, under colonialist (i.e., racist) rule, the 
facts were inaccurate and very hard to come by. 
The Boer women, acting against an unwritten rule of Victorian society 
to have respect for the dead and make no effigy of them, also had photo-
graphs taken of their dead children, but only if they were not emaciated. The 
purpose of these photographs was to preserve a recollection of the child, 
especially for the father and husband who was fighting on commando or was 
in exile in Bermuda, St. Helena, India or Ceylon. Understandably, the women 
wanted to retain the most positive recollection of the children that was possi-
ble under the circumstances (fig. 9 & 10). 
Victorian composure prevailed in grief, as is also evident from many 
letters f rom the concentration camps. Most letters illustrate the fact that the 
Fig. 8: Abraham Carl 
Wessels photo-
graphed in the 
Bloemfontein Con-
centration Camp. 
(Photo: War Museum 
of the Boer Repub-
lics, Bloemfontein.) 
193 
Johan Snyman 
Boer people were by and large an agricultural, non-urbanized community 
who could not avail themselves of the amenities of urban culture such as 
artistically appropriate expressions of emotions. That accounts for the fact 
that there are virtually no artistic renditions or representations of concentra-
tion camp experiences by the victims themselves. One has also to take into 
account the effect of military censorship on letters f rom the concentration 
camps: the precise conditions of these camps were forbidden topics to men-
tion to the outside world. Therefore the letters were very stereotyped, and 
conceived only as a form of rudimentary communicat ion. The rhetoric of 
Victorian society dominated the letters, some of them with excruciatingly 
sad news. In a sense the form of the letter suppressed the content. The first 
page was usually framed in black, so the addressee knew he (usually he) was 
receiving bad tidings. But the greater part of the letter was taken up by writerly 
Fig. 9: An unidentified 
occupant of the 
Bloemfontein Concen-
tration Camp. (Photo: 
War Museum of the 
Boer Republics, 
Bloemfontein.) 
194 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
formali t ies . A let ter f r o m a concent ra t ion c a m p sounded much like the fol-
lowing (in t rans la ted form): 
My beloved and never forgotten husband, 
I am allowing myself to take up the pen to inform you about the well-being of 
all our beloved ones, hoping to hear the same from you. Thank you for your 
last letter which reached us two months after you wrote. (Alternatively: I have 
not heard anything from you since ..., but got some news about you from 
Uncle X who saw you last at ...) Do you still have enough money? There is 
not much news to relate from the camp. (What followed then was usually an 
extensive report on the health and well-being of relatives and friends. On the 
last page of the letter the real news was broken:) A week ago our little son/ 
daughter/children/old father/old mother died after a terrible suffering of in-
flammation. Now I must say good bye with the pen, but never with the heart, 
and with a kiss of love. 
Your never forgetting wife/mother/aunt. (In the Dutch-Afrikaans of the time 
Fig. 10: Photo of a girl aged 18 who died in the Bloemfontein Concentrat ion 
Camp. It was her last wish that a r ibbon embroidered by herself with the flag 
of the Zuid-Afr ikaansche Republ iek (Transvaal) be tied to her breast, and that 
her corpse be pho tog raphed in this way. The photo had to be sent to her 
exiled fa ther in Ceylon. (Photo: War Museum of the Boer Republics, 
Bloemfontein.) 
195 
Johan Snyman 
this was written in the formal mode, and the letter was signed formally with 
initials and surname.) 
The inabili ty to express their grief in an a p p r o p r i a t e f o r m was substi-
tuted by the apparent ly trivial but very m i n u t e r ec rea t ion of a o n c e hab i t ab le 
geography by musing about the w h e r e a b o u t s of re leat ives . T h a t se rved as a 
restitution of a lost everyday world. O n the o ther h a n d , the inabi l i ty to give 
rhetorical ly appropr ia te express ion to grief was e n h a n c e d by the pervas ive-
ness of a very pious, albeit fatalistic, religiosity a m o n g s t the Boer popu la t ion . 
T h e news in the letters is regularly in te r spersed with phrases i n t e rp re t ing 
their fate as a pun i shment f rom God for unspec i f i ab le sins, acquiesc ing like 
J o b in their fate: »The Lord gave, and the Lord ha th t aken away; b lessed b e 
the N a m e of the Lord,« or »Shall we rece ive good at the h a n d of the Lord , 
and shall we not receive evil?« 
It is safe to conclude that grief and m o u r n i n g was suppressed r a the r 
than vented in the Calvinist Boer cul ture of the t imes. W h a t r e m a i n e d a n d 
was fostered, especially after the war , was a sense of injust ice and humil ia-
tion. U n d e r the reconcil iat ion policy of Louis Botha , the f o r m e r Boer genera l 
who b e c a m e Prime Minister of the newly c rea ted U n i o n of South Af r i ca in 
1910, this sense of loss deve loped into a sub t e r r anean e te rna l g rudge : ins tead 
of being used to inculcate r e m e m b r a n c e of the dead , the war e x p e r i e n c e of 
the Boer peop le was polit icized and t r a n s f o r m e d into an i n d e x of inde l ib le 
h a r m done by the imperialist ic British, extol l ing the re fo re a terr ible p r ice for 
the country. The idea, then, of a m e m o r i a l to the w o m e n and ch i ld ren w h o 
»paid« with their lives in the concent ra t ion camps was rece ived f avou rab ly as 
an oppor tuni ty for the survivors to »pay« their »debts« to the pe r i shed gen-
eration. O n e way of »making good« to those w h o h a d lost their l ives was to 
elevate t hem to the rank of mar tyrs for f r e e d o m , a n d t he r eby al leviate (at 
least for the survivors) the inflicted humi l ia t ion of be ing r o b b e d of eve ry th ing 
dear. T o r m e n t e d and emacia ted figures c o n f r o n t i n g o n e at a m e m o r i a l wou ld 
have of fended the taste of the publ ic w h o s u p p o r t e d the erect ion of this edi-
fice. In a very short t ime the memor ia l was conver t ed , in spite of a pe rvas ive 
iconoclast ic Calv in ism, in to a shr ine : n o t on ly w e r e the ashes of E m i l y 
H o b h o u s e interred at the foot of the obel isk, b u t the »father of the na t ion« 
(the last pres ident of the O r a n g e Free State, M a r t h i n u s T h e u n i s Steyn), the 
»hero of the war« (General Chris t iaan de Wet) , as well as the »man of God« 
(Reverend J . D . Kestell) were bur ied wi thin the p rec inc t s of the memor i a l . 
Thei r graves, and the authent ic p resence of their r ema ins , serve to r e m i n d 
the visitor of a trinity of civil virtues: love of the f a the r l and , b raveness , and 
unwaver ing faith. T h e lives of the peop le c o m m e m o r a t e d are ensh r ined in 
196 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
the m e m o r i a l as the ideals of the survivors. T h e survivors part icipate in the 
lives and dea ths of the p e o p l e c o m m e m o r a t e d by hav ing the latter re-pre-
sented and re-cast in the image of their exper ience of hardship . Thus is the 
expe r i ence of h a r d s h i p t r a n s f o r m e d ex post factum into the virtues of endur-
ance , of hope , and of res t i tut ion. T h e memor ia l becomes a nationalist shrine. 
5. F r o m aesthet ic ideology to mora l imperat ive: Saving the W o m e n ' s 
M e m o r i a l f r o m its inst i tut ional izat ion 
I m e n t i o n e d prev ious ly a clash of interests be tween Emily H o b h o u s e 
and the Boer peop le . She w a n t e d a memor ia l to »broken-hear ted woman-
hood« and »per i sh ing ch i ldhood ,« they wanted a vehicle of restitution. Emily 
H o b h o u s e u n d e r s t o o d this well. In her dedicat ion speech she ment ioned com-
pass iona te ly »the s u p r e m e offer ing [that] was made, the supreme price [that] 
was paid«. »[The Dead] will live within us not as memor i e s of sorrow, bu t of 
heroic inspiration.« A n d she e x h o r t e d the Boer people : » W h e n you r e m e m b e r 
the ill done , r e m e m b e r also the a t o n e m e n t made« (Hobhouse , 1984: 404-5). 
He r text, for the occas ion , a l lowed for popular sentiments. 
But he r text c o n v e y e d other sent iments as well. T h e cl imax of her speech 
con ta ins these words : 
»Your visible monument will serve to this great end - becoming an inspira-
tion to all South Africans and to the women in particular. ... 
For remember, these dead women were not great as the world counts great-
ness; some of them were quite poor women who had laboured much. Yet 
they have become a moral force in your land. ... 
And their influence will travel further. They have shown the world that never 
again can it be said that woman deserves no rights as Citizen because she 
takes no part in war. This statue stands as a denial of that assertion. ... 
My Friends: Throughout the world the Woman's day approaches; her era 
dawns. Proudly I unveil this Monument to the brave South African Women, 
who, sharing the danger that beset their land and dying for it, affirmed for all 
times and for all peoples the power of Woman to sacrifice life and more than 
life for the common weal« (Hobhouse, 1984: 406-7). 
W h a t strikes one as r emarkab l e is the elegant, u n a b a s h e d feminism of 
Emily H o b h o u s e , and the consequen t direct ion of he r part icularizat ion and 
universa l iza t ion. A l though ha rd ly anyth ing novel , that is phi losophical ly the 
in teres t ing po in t abou t he r in terpre ta t ion of the history of the suffering of the 
Boer w o m e n and ch i ld ren . Emi ly H o b h o u s e elevates the Boer w o m a n to the 
ranks of the Universal W o m a n ' s struggle for recognition. A n d the Boer woman 
fo rms pa r t of a who le wh ich t ranscends herself: she fights along with other 
w o m e n in tha t pa r t of the wor ld . T h e m e a n i n g of he r struggle is not paro-
chial, b u t universa l . It is a cont r ibu t ion towards a greater solidarity of human-
197 
Johan Snyman 
kind. T h a t is what makes her struggle mora l , and allows the Boer w o m a n to 
teach others a lesson in history which speaks accross the poli t ical divide be-
tween Boer and British, be tween whi te and black. But it is exac t ly this po in t 
that has, very significantly, been censored - omi t t ed - in later c o m m e m o r a -
tive issues of Miss H o b h o u s e ' s dedica t ion speech . I quo te the censo red pas-
sages (indicated by []) at length: 
»In your hands and those of your children lie the power and freedom won; 
you must not merely maintain but increase the sacred gift. Be merciful to-
wards the weak, the down-trodden, the stranger. Do not open your gates to 
those worst foes of freedom - tyranny and selfishness. [Are not these the 
withholding from others in your control, the very liberties and rights which 
you have valued and won for yourselves? ...] 
... [We in England are ourselves still but dunces in the great world-school, 
our leaders still struggling with the unlearned lesson, that liberty is the equal 
right and heritage of every child of man, without distinction of race, colour or 
sex. A community that lacks the courage to found its citizenship on this broad 
base becomes a 'city divided against itself, which cannot stand'.] 
[We too, the great civilized nations of the world, are still but barbarians in our 
degree, so long as we continue to spend vast sums in killing or planning to kill 
each other for greed of land and gold. Does not justice bid us remember 
today how many thousands of the dark race perished also in Concentration 
Camps in a quarrel which was not theirs? Did they not thus redeem the past? 
Was it not an instance of that community of interest, which binding all in one, 
roots out racial animosity? ...] 
Philosophical ly speaking, Emily H o b h o u s e takes the s tand of a m o r a l 
universalist . There are universal mora l pr inc ip les which i m b u e h u m a n ac-
tions in t ime and in places with mora l m e a n i n g w h e n the act ions con t r ibu te 
towards the eventual realization of these pr inc ip les (cf. Robe r t s 1991: 273). 
Such pr inciples are, amongst others, the grea t ideals of the En l igh tenmen t , 
including liberty as an equal right. This mora l i ty legit imizes itself t h rough its 
pu rpor ted mora l weight, its capacity to e x t e n d itself un rese rved ly . N o excep-
tion should be allowed. W h a t is good for the par t icu lar can only b e good if it 
would be good for all. T h e moral i ty of o n e specific event or act ion is cont in-
gent upon its relat ionship with the universal pr inc ip le , i.e. w h e t h e r it can be 
an instance, an exemplary e m b o d i m e n t , of tha t pr inc ip le . W h e n the act ion is 
without precedent , or unrela ted to any universal pr inciple , its mora l re levancy 
(if at all) is difficult to assess. But w h e n the act ion in its un iqueness sets an 
example which should be imitated, it e m b o d i e s the mora l p r inc ip le in an 
original sense. This explains the p r e p o n d e r a n c e of the he ro as a cultural topos 
in Emily H o b h o u s e ' s thinking and in the cul ture of war m e m o r i a l s until af ter 
Wor ld W a r I. The idea of the he ro e m b o d i e s m o r a l a n d aesthet ic pr inc ip les 
198 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
at the same t ime. P e r h a p s it is at this junc ture that feminis t readings of the 
W o m e n ' s M e m o r i a l (cf. C loe te 1992, L a n d m a n 1994) have a point, but, then, 
I t h i n k , fo r t h e w r o n g r e a s o n . T h e W o m e n ' s M e m o r i a l - f r o m Emi ly 
H o b h o u s e ' s v i ewpo in t - was no t to enshrine the Afr ikaner nationalist male 
p e r c e p t i o n of the volksmoeder. Feminists would have a point , however , if they 
raise the issue of the h o n o u r i n g of the m e m o r y of Emily Hobhouse . It is 
def in i te ly a t ravesty to have had the n a m e of a moral universalist, and a 
pacif is t at that , be s towed on a D a p h n e fighter class submar ine of the South 
Af r i can Navy . It is a tel l ing instance of the deafness of the Afrikaans domi-
n a t e d poli t ical e s t ab l i shment to the principles of Emily Hobhouse , a deafness 
that was even intel lectual ly eng ineered - by polit icians w h o extolled the vir-
tues of J a n F.E. Cel l iers ' man wat sy man kan staan. 
T h e thrust of Emily H o b h o u s e ' s in terpre ta t ion of the Boer woman ' s suf-
fe r ing as a symbol of the universal w o m a n is to hold the Boer woman up as 
an e x a m p l e no t only for the surviving Boer people bu t also for the world to 
emula te , should s imilar c i rcumstances obtain. True to the classical concep-
tion of the subl ime, he r aesthet icizing concept ion of tragic hero ism assumes a 
s t rength of the ind iv idual , the perseverance of the subject, despite the »irre-
sistible power« of the »general«. T h e individual - the he ro - embodies a far 
g rea te r and exa l ted subs tance which can t ranscend its own historical limita-
t ions. 
But the re is s o m e t h i n g ambiva len t in the idealist concept ion of the hero 
( someth ing Bee thoven real ized with the dedicat ion of his Thi rd Symphony 
and the subsequen t revis ion of that dedicat ion). Does the he ro represent the 
a t t a inmen t of universa l i ty , or is the he ro only a symbolical embod imen t of 
the universa l? In the first ins tance the hero is monumenta l i zed , in the second 
ins tance the h e r o is func t iona l for the commemora t i on of the universal sig-
n i f icance of a his tor ical act ion. T h e recept ion of the W o m e n ' s Memoria l un-
der the c i rcumstances of 1913, and the subsequent institutionalization of that 
r ecep t ion in Af r ikane r cul ture , favoured the t rend of monumenta l i z ing the 
suf fer ing of the Boer w o m e n and children, turning it into a me taphor of sac-
rifice that gives the descendan t s a right to claim the land: 
If one could call it sweat for the hero to fight for the fatherland, and, loaded 
with fame, sacrifice himself for freedom, nation and country, what respect 
does the tender woman command who, herself already in the claws of death, 
sees one beloved after the other entering their graves! And yet, she exhorts 
her husband and sons proudly not to be concerned about her, but to persist in 
the struggle! (Pres. M.T. Steyn, quoted in Van der Merwe, s.a. [but probably 
written between 1926 and 1941]:6.) 
In this way the W o m e n ' s Memor ia l expresses a universal ized impera-
199 
Johan Snyman 
tive: it mobilizes the Boer people to see a particularized significance in the 
suffering of their kin. This is an unders tandable reaction, and did indeed 
serve as a consolation, especially in 1913. But it is clear how this interpreta-
tion of the meaning of historical suffering is immediately restricted: it ignores 
the recorded fact (by Emily Hobhouse, in her war diaries, and explicitly re-
ferred to in her dedication speech) that according to official figures, 13 315 
Africans also died in English concentrat ion camps (Spies, 1977: 266; cf. 
Hobhouse 1902: 350-355), and it blots out the moral dimension of this com-
memorative sign, i.e. to remind people of the horror that once was and that 
may never occur again, not only to them but also never by them. The cen-
sored reprint of Emily Hobhouse's dedication speech in 1963 thus confirms a 
tendency that was started by the process of the institutionalization of the 
Women's Memorial, i.e. to monopolize the meaning of the suffering of the 
war for whites only. Evidence for this can be found in Van der Merwe's 
undated brochure, written some time between 1926 and 1941: even the latter 
shuns all references to the suffering of black people during the Anglo-Boer 
War. By disavowing the memory of 13 000 black concentrat ion camp vic-
tims, the Afrikaner circumvented the issue of black sacrifice for the sake of 
soil and freedom. By the same token Afrikaner nationalism internalized im-
perialism, rather than expurgating it. That would also be the reason why 
many Afrikaners would still insist on the uniqueness of the Boer concentra-
tion camp trauma - it affords them a claim to political power which they 
have earned collectively through the suffering of (some of) their forebears. It 
usually comes as a shock to them to hear of black concentrat ion camp vic-
tims, as well as the record of even greater sufferings not so long after the 
Anglo-Boer War and not so far removed f rom the former Boer republics. 
The mortality figures on the side of the indigenous populat ion of the Boer 
republics is nearly eclipsed by the death toll of the genocide on the Herero 
and Nama in German West Africa (today's Namibia). From 1904 to 1907 65 
000 Herero and 10 000 Nama were driven into the desert by the colonial 
German authority, to die there of hunger and thirst. That was the colonialist 
response to an uprising (Chalk &Jonassohn 1990: 230-248). And the concen-
tration camps of the Anglo-Boer War had their precursors in the reconcentrados 
of the Spanish-Cuban War of 1896, in which more than 100 000 Cubans lost 
their lives (Spies 1977: 148). To wrest the meaning of the concentration camp 
history from its nationalist mould may offer a way to the search for justice. In 
stead of fetishizing a historical instance of suffering by elevating it to the ultimate 
instance of suffering in a limited universe of suffering and injustice, war memorials 
should facilitate the ability to recognize suffering whenever and wherever it may oc-
cur. 
200 
Suffering and the Politics of Memory 
It is for the sake of the search for justice that the true war memorial 
functions as Mahnmal. It speaks silently on behalf of a »we« regardless of 
gender, class or race, and it seems to say that as a particular people we have 
come to know what suffering entails, and we shall never let it happen again, 
neither to ourselves nor to any other human being. The future course of history 
has to be different f rom what is commemorated by this monument. 
Bibliography 
Adorno, T.W. (1967) Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 
Adorno, T.W. (1973) Gesammelte Schrifien, Bd. 14. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 
Adorno, T.W. (1978) Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. 
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 
Adorno, T.W. (1984) Aesthetic Theory. Tr. by C. Lenhardt. Routledge & Kegan 
Paul, London. 
Adorno. T.W. (1972) Gesammelte Schrifien, Bd. 8. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 
Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Polity Press, Cambridge. 
Beardsley, J . (1989) Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape. 
Abbeville Press, New York/London/Paris. 
Chalk, F. & K. Jonassohn (eds.) (1990) The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses 
and Case Studies. Yale University Press, New Haven. 
Cloete, E. (1992) Collaborative confinement: The case of the twentieth century 
»Afr ikaner« w o m a n . SAVAL Confe rence Papers XI, April 1992, 
Broedrstroom/Potchefstroom; p. 60-71. 
Danto, Arthur C. (1987) The State of the Art. Prentice Hall Press, New York. 
Du Toit ,J .D. (1962) Versamelde Werke. Deel VIII. Dagbreek-Boekhandel, Johan-
nesburg. 
Feig, Konnilyn G. (1979) Hitler's Death Camps. The Sanity of Madness. Holmes & 
Meier, New York. 
Geyer, C.F. (1982) Kritische Theorie. Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno. Alber, 
Freiburg/München. 
Haas, P.J. (1988) Morality after Auschwitz. The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic. 
Fortress Press, Philadelphia. 
Har tman, G.H. (ed.) (1994) Holocaust Remembrance. The Shapes of Memory. 
Blackwell, Oxford. 
Hobhouse, Emily (1902) The Brunt of War and where it fell. Methuen & Co, Lon-
don. 
Hobhouse, Emily (1984) Boer War Letters. Edited by Rykie van Reenen. Human 
& Rousseau, Cape Town. 
Landman, C. (1994) The Piety of Afrikaans Women; Diaries of Guilt. University of 
South Africa, Pretoria. 
201 
Johan Snyman 
Roberts, B. (1991) Those Bloody Women. Three Heroines of the Boer War.John Murray, 
London. 
Schmucker, J.F. (1977) Adorno - Logik des Zerfalls. Frommann-Holzboog, Stutt-
gart. 
Spies, S.B. (1977) Methods of Barbarism? Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the 
Boer Republics January 1900-May 1902. Human & Rousseau, Cape Town. 
Van der Merwe, N J., S.a. (probably written between 1926 and 1941) DieNasionale 
Vrouemonument. S.l. 
Veber, Jean (1901) Les Camps de Reconcentration au Transvaal. L'Assiette au 
Beurre no. 26. 
Young, James E. (1993) The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. 
Yale University Press. 
202