Abstract: Remembered as an "unsung heroine" in Mark Kaplan's documentary Betrayal and in the memorial statue designed by Ruhan Janse van Vuuren, the life of the South African political activist Nokuthula Simelane emerges as part of a layered memory landscape, illustrating the unique visual languages of these heritage markers and the citational practices resonating between them. In my reading of these memorial objects, I emphasize the crafting of performative voices, the narrative voices of her family who were actively involved in the commemorative process as well as the lyrical voices featured in the film's signature song and in the poem inscribed on the statue's pedestal. Designed, I argue, to solicit a participatory response from the secondary witness, this emphasis on the affective and embodied presence of the witness requires that they work toward the necessary literacy to interpret commemorative objects and toward a recognition of their implicated subject position in the betrayal of justice for Nokuthula Simelane.
Marie Krüger (2026) studied this question.