ABSTRACT
The remembrance of older people is a player in the larger narrative which is now told in South Africa. The remembrance of the people who could not speak because they lacked a public audience, reaches far beyond facts and truths of formal committees. Remembrance of elderly people is deeply inscribed in their bodies and their ways of life. The complaint about lack of respect is not the 'common' complaint of one generation about the other. In South Africa, the only safe place for remembrance has been 'inside the story', so that the personal has become the political and the story became history. In South Africa, there is a vogue of oral history and storytelling as a site for healing memories and making identity. The stories of older people will become commodified; they will become 'tapes-to-sell.' The stories are not only used for therapeutic purposes, or for reasons of respect.
