Controlling for Consensus: Commemorating Apartheid in South Africa

According to the literature, commemorations of difficult pasts can be categorized into two main types, fragmented and multivocal—both of which serve to express, if not to enhance, social conflicts. Our analysis of the first apartheid museum in South Africa, however, points to a commemorative type that aims at agreement, not through disagreement and debate but through overarching consensus. That consensus is constructed through a large degree of control in terms of the form and content of the mnemonic object. Having outlined the techniques used to control for consensus, we briefly explore the social context of the commemorating society, which informed and enabled such a mnemonic construction.     

Trends in Violent Crime and Public Concern

Socially, the most damaging of all the effects of violent crime was said to be its indirect ‘terrorising’ effect, generating public fear and disrupting the functioning of the community. The blame for aggravation of this effect is often placed on over-reporting and sensationalization by the mass media. The study aimed to determine if there is an objective basis for a growing public concern about increases in crimes of violence in New South Wales, or if this concern is a product of certain forms of publicity given to violence, and to identify targets for social intervention. A formal analysis of a decade's trends in violent crimes against the person and property crimes showed the following: among adults more males commit murder and major assault, and more females major assault; among juveniles, more males commit assault, serious robbery, and malicious damage, and more females assault and malicious damage; more offences of major assault, robbery, and arson are reported to the police, but there is no increase in reported rapes and known homicides; there is no increase in the vandalization of school property; the only judicial reflection of public concern about violent crime is a slight increase in the length of sentence given for robbery. In a critical discussion of the findings, increases in violent crime reported to the police were singled out as justifying public concern. The most serious concern, however, is warranted by the increasing juvenile violence which is consistent with trends observed in most Western countries. The difficulty was pointed out of translating this concern into social action, in the absence of any coherent theoretical or empirical framework within which to identify priority targets. There is a need for a multifactorial approach to provide a rational basis for dealing with the problem of violent crime.