The Voortrekker Monument has always been something that you prefer to forget about — if you’re black, that is.
There it is, dominating the skyline on the southern approaches to the city of Pretoria, South Africa’s once, future, and presumably eternal seat of government. It sits on one of the highest hills above
the city bowl, impossible to avoid even out of the corner of your eye as you drive inward or outward on that frantically modern highway.
If you have the additional misfortune of having to approach Pretoria during the evening rush hour, you have the dubious privilege of being able to study the distant monstrosity at your leisure as you inch through the stop-start traffic cramming impatiently into the city.
In the old days (I’m talking about as long ago as the 1960s — prehistory as far as most of you are concerned, I suppose) there used to be heated discussion about what “we” were going to do with the Voortrekker Monument once “we” had taken over the country. These wild words were given added bravado not just by the nostalgic draughts of brandy that were consumed by these exiled hotheads, but also by the fact that, at that stage, actually succeeding in “taking the country the Castro way” was a comforting dream, but a dream all the same. The actual moment of having to turn our angry dreams into realistic action was as remote as pie in the sky.
Anyway, some suggested that this hated symbol of Afrikaner power should suffer a slow, agonising death-by-dismantling, brick by brick, all the pieces thereafter to be thrown into the sea, or into the nearest bottomless lake.
Another option would be to use the thousands of bricks that had gone into the construction of the hideous edifice to build houses for the masses — although in those days, of course, we were somewhat unrealistic about exactly how many bodies “the masses” stood for, and therefore how many houses could realistically be built, even out of the extravagant proportions of the monument.
The third, and most popular, option (easy laughs coming thick and fast as the brandy miraculously evaporated from the bottle) was that the monument should be left exactly where it was, but that it should be turned into a public toilet, for the exclusive use of the black population.
Well, here we are, eight years into our brave new dispensation and the thing is still standing there, four-square on its natural, rounded, grassy pedestal, and a grim reminder of days gone but not forgotten — or, in the views of some constituencies, days that are not gone at all.
Many would argue that the triumph of apartheid is blatantly apparent in its enduring legacies — for example, suburbs that remain predominantly white, with ever-heightening walls, razor wire palisades and traffic booms keeping the inexorable approach of the barbarians at bay, on the one hand; and townships that continue to contain (or should we say restrain?) the vast majority of the (majority) black population in cycles of physical, intellectual and spiritual poverty, internalised crime, and the barest of social amenities, on the other.
Far from dismantling them, we have allowed the townships, those symbols of our dehumanisation, to keep on growing.
The Voortrekker Monument has not been dismantled, either. Nor are there any signs of its being rezoned as a public urinal for desperate truck drivers doing the Durban-Pietersburg run.
On the contrary, the Voortrekker Monument remains a place of pilgrimage for huge numbers of the volk. I know this, because, quite by accident, I visited the place last Sunday.
If the number of cars jamming a car park in a constantly self-replenishing stream are anything to go by, the monument is probably still as popular today as it was when it was unveiled in 1938. There is clearly some kind of extraordinary time-warp going on in the bosoms of a significant number of our citizens — a time-warp whose existence we ignore at our own peril and the peril of future generations.
What struck me first was how forbidding the structure is at close range. It is not going too far to say that the closer I got, the more it imbued me with a sense of loathing, but, more importantly, a sense of fear, springing from some unexpected source deep in my stomach.
The place was certainly designed to engender this gut reaction in those who were not chosen to share in the “promised land”.
But something interesting happens when you summon up the courage to step out of your car, among all those milling, thrilled pilgrims, and climb the never-ending flights of wide stone steps that stand as a final obstacle before you are permitted to enter the mighty portals of the monument.
It turns out that the imposing outline of this fear-inducing edifice is but a shell. Inside, you are faced with the famous, carved marble frieze, covering all four walls, that tells the history of the Afrikaner volk’s noble invasion of Africa and how this invasion was ultimately blessed with success through its unwavering covenant with a vengeful, Teutonic God.
The “museum” in the grand marble halls below tries to reinforce this fairy tale with a rather sad collection of early veldskoene, wooden lathes, leather-bound bibles and demure ladies’ bonnets that try to suggest the combination of hard work and piety that brought the “chosen people” to sanctuary in Pretoria in the first place.
There is also the original of the alleged hand-written compact made between the noble Afrikaner leader Piet Retief and the perfidious Zulu king Dingaan. Surprisingly, this document is written in English, the native language of neither of the supposed signatories, and it calls the Zulus “the Zoolas” — giving further support to those who argue that the whole covenant thing was a kak-handed conspiracy, anyway.
The lasting impression is that the monument, like apartheid itself, is an empty shell — all smoke and mirrors.
The alarming part is that smoke and mirrors are capable of doing a surprisingly effective job, for a surprisingly long time. And that empty shells can continue to hold a sense of fear and fascination, long after their secrets have been penetrated.
John Matshikiza is a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research
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