THE sight of people toyi-toying on the toppled statue of Dr Hendrik Verwoerd in Bloemfontein would naturally inflame Afrikaner sensitivities. But removing the graven image of a man who more than any other historical figure stands as a symbol of the country’s apartheid past surely does not warrant the hysteria being whipped up around the issue.
Verwoerd can hardly be described as ever having been a popular hero in a country where, for decades, his policies dictated the repression of the majority; it could be argued that his appeal for most Afrikaners had also faded by the time his statue bit the Bloemfontein dust last week.
South Africans share no common past. As the ANC’s chief whip in the Senate, Bulelani Ngcuka, pointed out: “My heroes are my colleague’s villains, and their villains are my heroes.” Removing Verwoerd’s statue reinforces Afrikaner fears of the wholesale destruction of their culture. But this is patent nonsense: a people’s way of life can hardly be said to reside in images of stone, or agglomerations of paint and canvas. Indeed, it could be argued that the survival of Afrikaner culture will be boosted by the desire to topple Verwoerd’s hero status, rather than protect it.
The right place for busts of Verwoerd is a museum built to remind us of the past, to ensure our children know and understand it, in line with President Nelson Mandela’s injunction: “Never, never, never again.”
For the majority of people in this country, the continued public presence of apartheid icons is a finger rooting around in the wounds dealt by the past. These wounds have yet to heal; the ANC, by pledging to consult its government of national unity partners before any further cultural dismantling, is taking care it does not inflict any new injuries in its efforts to mend past hurts.
In this context, it is as inappropriate to torment Verwoerd’s memory as it is absurd to try to preserve it intact.
Surely it is time to stop expending energy on arguments over the right of old symbols to remain and re-direct it towards creating new images that reflect not so much where we once were but how far we’ve come.