Marianne Merten Statues of Cape Town’s colonial history stand cheek-by-jowl with symbols of the new South Africa for example Parliament but memorials commemorating the anti-apartheid struggle are mostly off the beaten tourist track. An abstract creation by renowned Cape artist Tyrone Appolis commemorates the October 1985 “Trojan Horse” killings in Athlone on the Cape Flats. Ten policemen hidden in a South African Railways truck opened fire on protesting schoolchildren, killing three youths aged 11, 16 and 21. Another piece of abstract art marks the spot where police killed and planted weapons on seven young men, known since as the Guguletu Seven, in March 1986. The statue stands near the corner of NY1 and NY111 the apartheid-era numbered “native yard” system after which the majority of streets in the township are still named. Back in the Mother City, Parliament the symbol of the new South Africa is surrounded by symbols of the old. At the gates of Parliament, Boer general and statesman Louis Botha sits astride his horse, facing the mural commemorating South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 and the adoption of the Constitution. On the other side of the national legislature, Cecil John Rhodes points towards the north in memory of his Cape-to-Cairo dream; “Your hinterland is here,” says the plaque. The statue stands in the Company Gardens, which started off as the vegetable patch for under-nourished sailors of Jan van Riebeeck’s times. Nearby Queen Victoria stares over Parliament Lane towards the Slave Lodge (formerly the South African Cultural Museum) where slaves were kept until auction time, and the statue of Jan Smuts, the Anglo-Boer South African War general and later politician. For another interpretation of imperialism, there is always the Bart Simpson in Africa statue. The piece, studded with several heads of the American no-hope youth symbol, stands taller than life on the foreshore side of St George’s Mall, the initial controversy forgotten amid the flower sellers’ touting.
The recently opened Robben Island steel-and-glass ferry terminal at the V&A Waterfront shopping mall was named in honour of Nelson Mandela who spent almost two decades on the island. Want to combine a bit of shopping with a bit of politically correct sightseeing? It is a brief walk from the shops selling African curios and local wines to the ferry terminal and from there it’s a short catamaran ride to the Island. And by late next year tourists can also get that island feel. Robben Island authorities are planning to upgrade the guest house and other overnight facilities previously reserved for delegates to conferences on the island for use by ordinary Joe and Jane Doe.