Memory as weapon

In the conclusion to his memoirs on the apartheid-era destruction of Sophiatown and the brutal removal of its black inhabitants, Don Mattera (2009, p. 152) paints a picture of a township that was left “buried deep under the weight and power of the tin gods whose bulldozers” decimated hopes and dreams, leaving in their wake the “dust of defeat”. But that is not the last picture with which he leaves his readers: in a sudden change of mood, Mattera switches to defiance, saying there is “nothing that memory cannot reach or touch or call back”, for “memory is a weapon” that can grasp “that place where laws and guns cannot reach” so he believed “it was only a matter of time and Sophiatown would be reborn” (Mattera, 2009, p. 152).

Mattera would probably be the first to admit that memory does not offer complete salvation. In a seemingly discordant and hanging last sentence of the book—a sentence that leaves the reader begging for more, Mattera (2009, p. 152) acknowledges that, with the destruction of his Sophiatown, “the world became alien and I felt lost”. In that manner, at least, Mattera acknowledges the gulf that lies between reality and memory, hopes and present circumstances, the past remembered and the future desired.

If memory is a weapon, as Mattera suggests, then memory must necessarily be kept sharpened, ready to be wielded, in warning, in attack or in defence. If memory is a weapon, it is, by definition, able to wound—even to wound fatally. Whom the weapon wounds, is a function of the size, number and potency of the weapons, as well as the prowess and tactics with which they are deployed. All of these dangerous possibilities notwithstanding, without memory, not even the most minimalist view of salvation would be conceivable. It is mainly in this sense that Mattera considers memory to be a weapon. In this way, the physical destruction of Sophiatown did not translate (and should not be allowed to translate) into either its permanent deletion or complete banishment from history and memory. Hence, Mattera (2009, p. 152) could insist that “it was only a matter of time before Sophiatown would be reborn”.