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Toppled Statues and Fallen Icons: Negotiating Monuments to British Imperialism and Afrikaner Nationalism at Post-Apartheid Universities

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Toppled Statues and Fallen Icons: Negotiating Monuments to British Imperialism and Afrikaner Nationalism at Post-Apartheid Universities Toppled Statues and Fallen Icons: Negotiating Monuments to British Imperialism and Afrikaner Nationalism at Post-Apartheid Universities Brenda Schmahmann Some time prior to March 2013, when I was in the happy position of taking up a professorship at the University of Johannesburg, a sequence of events took place that marked the beginnings of my interest in the topic of this inaugural address. As they pertained to a council chamber, it seems particularly apt that I should recount them to an audience gathered in such a space – albeit in one different in style and history to the council chamber concerned. Background: A Council Chamber, Some Portraits and a Tapestry In late 2008, when I was a professor at Rhodes University, I wrote a letter on behalf of the institution’s Gender Forum to its vice-chancellor at the time, Saleem Badat. Mooting for the relocation of various portraits of former vice chancellors and chairs of council which had been hanging in the council chamber of the university since the 1960s, the letter focused on the possible inappropriateness of displaying images of uniformly white and male figureheads in such a context. Although I had in fact envisaged this letter simply for consideration by the vice chancellor himself, it ended up being submitted to faculty boards for their consideration also. There it became the subject of heated argument. Sabine Marschall (2010: 142) suggests that many white South Africans are reluctant to condone any adjustments to the placement of inherited art not because they necessarily share values associated with the works in question but rather because they perceive such acts as “threats to their sense of cultural identity and their future in the country”. This tendency unfortunately played out in this instance. When I attended faculty board meetings to respond to the document, it became evident to me that the suggestion to relocate the portraits was misunderstood by some as just the first move within a larger agenda to eradicate signs of each and every contribution made by white men. But it also became clear to me that, for many who were concerned about speeding up transformation through shifting objects displayed at the university and who therefore supported the proposal fully, ideas about representation were grasped in narrow and hard-line terms. While the original letter had taken issue with the display of the portraits in that particular context rather than intending to question the value of portraiture per se, many who 1 supported the proposal viewed the portrait tradition itself as simply Eurocentric and of no value. When I expressed regret that the institution had no museum for institutional histories to which the portraits might be relocated, a number of those in favour of the proposal agreed with me. This was not, however, because they shared my perception of such a museum as a dynamic space for discursive engagement but rather because they conceived of it as a type of Derridian archive – that is, a place that enables forgetfulness in the sense that it consigns uncomfortable histories to oblivion (see Derrida 1996). It was a salient lesson to me that evaluating art in light of transformative agendas is slippery terrain. Although the debate was protracted, it ultimately had a happy outcome. In May 2010, it was agreed that the portraits of university leaders be relocated outside the council chamber, and that I chair a working group to present ideas to Senate and Council on possible replacement works for the council chamber itself. I had meanwhile in fact already come up with what I thought was a compelling idea for the chamber and, having obtained the necessary support for it, we were able to implement it promptly. We commissioned a work exploring the history of Rhodes University from the Keiskamma Art Project, a community project in the village of Hamburg in the Eastern Cape (one that was initiated by Carol Hofmeyr, a master’s graduate of the Visual Arts Department at this university). A collective which, apart from Hofmeyr, is comprised of isiXhosa-speaking members, the Keiskamma Art Project had, six years earlier, produced its memorable Keiskamma Tapestry which is on permanent loan to Parliament and parodies the Bayeux Tapestry. Literary theorist, Linda Hutcheon (1985) identifies ironical inversion – or a process in which repetition is used to emphasise difference – as key to the genre of parody. This is true of the Keiskamma Tapestry where reference to the Bayeux Tapestry’s engagement with the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is used to highlight the impact of Britain’s own invasion of South Africa via the Frontier Wars that were fought against the amaXhosa in the Eastern Cape. The idea for the Rhodes University Tapestry was that it would also involve an ironical inversion of the Bayeux Tapestry. If the medieval work represented an event that had resulted in the privileging of Norman cultural ideas over those of the English, its parody would enable critical reflection on the impact of Britain’s own imperialism on Rhodes University. It should be noted also that the building including the council chamber is on the exact site of the Old Drostdy, the key structure in what had been the military headquarters of the British colonial government prior to it becoming the site of the university. The inclusion of a work by isiXhosa-speakers in this particular locale thus enabled a metaphorical re- 2 occupation of the space by people who had been divested of not only their lands as a result of the Frontier Wars but also any agency within a new cultural order. There is a detail in the Rhodes University Tapestry which is especially pertinent. Its fourth panel, which examines the university in a post-apartheid era, makes reference in its top border to the portraits that were previously in the council chamber as well as their removal. The work thus records a history of display within the very room where it is located. More particularly, this imagery prompts questions about how works of art which are symptomatic of social exclusions in prior periods might be treated within a new dispensation. Toppling Monuments Since the demise of the Soviet Union, huge sculptures of Lenin or Stalin have been toppled from their pedestals, ending up broken, like the ideals they stood for, in sculpture parks that have been established to contain them. But, until recently, South Africa had not seen this kind of response to art works associated with ideologies that have fallen out of favour. In the immediate post-apartheid context, where the focus was on reconciliation, it was instead felt that different cultural groupings should each have opportunities for people and incidents pertinent to their histories to be commemorated. Although universities have sometimes removed small artworks or (as with the portraits at Rhodes University) have relocated them, they have tended for the most part to leave alone large sculptures and monuments. But events earlier this year at the University of Cape Town involved a departure from this approach. As this audience will recall, about a dozen protestors gathered in front of a large and imposing sculpture of Cecil John Rhodes on the 9th of March. Calling for the removal of the work as well as an end to racism they argued to be operative at the university, the group’s protest culminated in one participant tossing a bucket of human excrement over the sculpture. This event ignited a large-scale protest. On the 11th of March, the university’s SRC issued a formal statement which clarified students’ perceptions that the retention of the work was symptomatic of the lack of transformative actions being taken by the institution. Developing into the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign, the protest included occupation of the university’s Bremner Building, which houses its executive. UCT’s Senate was almost unanimous in their decision to permanently remove the sculpture of Cecil John Rhodes from campus – one that was ratified by the university’s Council on the 8th of April. Working in co-operation with National Heritage, the sculpture was moved into an off-campus venue for safekeeping on the 9th of April where it would 3 remain while decisions were made what to do with it. That step may well have been the only feasible one the institution could have in fact taken in the context of a protest that was rapidly escalating in scale and intensity, and I would therefore want to emphasise that my purpose here is not to suggest that UCT acted inappropriately. But I am unconvinced that the removal of objects deemed offensive is in fact an ideal strategy to be followed under less pressing circumstances. What I want to do here is to, first, suggest some difficulties with removal I have in principle, and thereafter to explore some more creative – and I think more productive – engagements with inherited objects that have happened on South African campuses. Difficulties with Removal Eusebius McKaiser (2015) draws attention to “the aesthetic and moral assault on one’s entire being that occurs when a black person walks across a campus covered with statues and monuments that celebrate colonial conquerors as heroes”. But while recognizing that monuments of this type are indeed often experienced as profoundly offensive, it also needs to be acknowledged that, for many, their removal is not motivated by concerns about revising visual culture on campuses, as such: instead it is seen as the first step toward, or as being symbolic of, other kinds of changes that are perceived to be more fundamental – and artworks are actually perceived as relatively inconsequential within this larger set of aims. One consequently needs to be mindful that one does not end up denuding campuses of objects to meet the demands of individuals who are not particularly concerned about the visual domain.
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