Statues Defaced As South Africans Protest Colonial-Era Symbols

People visit the defaced statue of Paul Kruger in Church Square, Pretoria. The statue of Paul Kruger, a president of the Afrikaner-led Transvaal Republic before the Anglo-Boer war, and four figures of townspeople around him, were splashed with green paint in Pretoria’s Church Square on April 5. Photographer: Stefan Heunis/AFP via Getty Images

The Economic Freedom Fighters, South Africa’s second-biggest opposition party, said its members were among people who defaced statues in protest over symbols that remain from the country’s colonial and apartheid past.

The statue of Paul Kruger, a president of the Afrikaner-led Transvaal Republic before the Anglo-Boer war, and four figures of townspeople around him, were splashed with green paint in Pretoria’s Church Square on April 5. Statues of Britain’s King George V in Durban and Queen Victoria and the Horse Memorial in the coastal town of Port Elizabeth were also vandalized over the Easter holiday weekend. In March the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town was smeared with human excrement.

Bloomberg report continues:

The “statues should be taken down,” Moafrika Mabongwana, EFF deputy chairman for Tshwane, the municipal area that covers the capital Pretoria, said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We don’t agree that these statues should be put in public places. We aren’t saying that history should be erased. All the statues should be identified and taken down.”

In the 17th century Dutch and French settlers arrived in what is now South Africa’s Western Cape province. Later the British arrived and Rhodes helped to expand the U.K.’s influence as head of the provincial government and by funding an expedition that led to the colonization of what is now Zimbabwe. The government that created apartheid laws came into power in 1948 and the country’s first all-race elections were held in 1994.

While some towns and street names commemorating apartheid and colonial-era leaders have since been changed, many historical symbols have remained.

Building Resistance

“If you want to change these statues, defacing them is exactly the wrong way to go about it because it builds resistance,” JP Landman, a Johannesburg-based independent political and economic analyst, said in a phone interview.

After paint was thrown on Paul Kruger’s figure, the Star newspaper pictured three members of AfriForum, an organization focused on protecting the rights of Afrikaners, protesting at the base of the statue with a sign that read “Ons gaan nerens,” which means “We are not going anywhere.”

Kruger’s statue is now being guarded by police and any further damage to the figure may result in prosecution, Blessing Manale, Tshwane’s mayoral spokesman, said in a phone interview. There’s also a team of people cleaning the statue, he said.

The main political opposition party to the ruling African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance, condemned the EFF’s “senseless” destruction of statues in a statement on Monday.

‘Painful History’

The University of Cape Town meets on Tuesday and Wednesday to decide on whether or not to move the statue of Rhodes, who donated the land that the university’s main campus sits on. University Vice Chancellor Max Price has said he believes the statue should be moved.

“The calls for Rhodes and other statues to fall are a symptom of the underlying problem of a lack of transformation in the institutions and in society in general,” Zizi Kodwa, national spokesman for the ANC, said in an e-mailed statement. “South Africa must continue to engage on how best we preserve this painful history so that we never forget in support of our young democracy. We must also debate the meaning our different people attach to these symbols.”

The ANC doesn’t support the destruction of property and feels that future generations need a reference to history, Kodwa said in an interview.

“The mistake made is that more layers of history and statues and memorials weren’t added after apartheid ended,” Alana Bailey, deputy chief executive officer of Pretoria-based AfriForum, said in a phone interview. “We feel a national debate is needed before expenses are incurred and changes are made. I feel political leadership is lacking on all sides.”