In case you haven’t heard about it, a “coalition” of businessmen and civic leaders in Port Elizabeth is intending to erect, at some phenomenal cost, a 30-storey-high metal statue of Mr Nelson Mandela, right in the middle of the PE harbour. Keeping its creative priorities firmly in line, the coalition is making sure everyone knows that its proposed construction will “dwarf” New York’s Statue of Liberty.
An “artist’s impression” released to the press shows what the statue will look like. Clutching a bungalow-sized book, the gigantic steel Mr Mandela will gaze
out across eastern oceans, his right arm raised in neighbourly greeting. Next to him will be a 15-storey girl-child carrying a bowl. No political metaphor is intended by her presence, she’ll be there solely for engineering reasons. She’ll be holding Mr Mandela up in case of strong winds.
The statue will be mounted atop a massive plinth, itself 45m high, which will house a “museum of freedom”, all this approached by a 60m-long “walk to freedom” — a reference to the title of the Mandela autobiography.
When it comes to blatant exploitation and unadulterated crudity of formulation, you can’t do a lot better than this. Lest the elusive 30-storey-Statue-of-Liberty-dwarfing aesthetics pass you by, lest the impeccable political affinities miss their marks, the coalition has reassured that the statue will in future years become an obligatory attraction for international tourists. For this alone the proposal must rank as both profoundly insulting and distorting. Mr Mandela, an essentially humble man, is to be represented as a grotesque “Believe-It-or-Not” wonderwork designed to attract profit for some greedy businessmen, who are not even paying for the thing. They want overseas investors to foot most of the bill. They even intend looting the bankrupt Eastern Cape budget.
It is not surprising that this appalling idea was coughed up by an advertising man, one Kenny McDonald. With his near priceless international credentials and popularity, Mr Mandela is a brand and image not be squandered. Lots of parasites can feed off him, and for a long time — more especially if he’s 30 storeys high. Great tanks of money are yet to be made.
To use an advertising cliche, the “concept” for this statue has got “white liberal” written all over it. The addition of a “museum of freedom” reeks of synthetic regret: yet another outlet for supplying well-packaged guilt to a dilating market of white consciences, vide: the Krok brothers’ Apartheid Museum, a patronising commercialisation of human misery. While they’re about it, why don’t the PE lads add a casino called Nelson’s Palace, make it a venue for international boxing matches and beauty contests? With an opportunity like this who cares about respect?
The estimated costs are phenomenal: R2-million has already been ransacked from the provincial budget for a “feasibility study”, followed by a “first stage” cost of R300-million. Final tally, who knows? Two … three billion? Imagine the scope for corruption and theft in that sort of financial lay-by.
The people behind the idea should be charged with culpable disrespect for they certainly seem bent on some sort of underlying revenge. Their giant statue will be a supreme rendition of fascist “hero” art, a perfect realisation of the “gigantism” favoured by Hitler’s aesthetic advisers. If ever erected, the Mandela statue will rank and be judged alongside the degraded vanities of the Moammar Gadaffis, Saddam Husseins, the preposterous kitsch of Mount Rushmore, the toppled gargantuan idolatry of Soviet communism, Mao’s personality-cult China. What is this one meant to be, the African National Congress’s answer to the Voortrekker Monument? If this monstrous thing is allowed, Nelson Mandela will be sorely libelled, presented as something of appeal to the most abject of populist taste.
I can’t help wondering whether the Port Elizabeth “coalition” is aware of the fundamental disparagement implicit in its proposal. Are they saying that, once he’s gone, Mr Mandela’s contributions to political and social transformation in South Africa will have been inadequate, that he will not be able to sustain his place in history without the help of a dubious Port Elizabeth fan-club?
It is interesting to note that there seems already to have been a withdrawal from the great man, himself. Far too polite to chide the Port Elizabeth enterprise openly, Mr Mandela’s spokesperson has, however, done some dainty sidestepping, distancing Mandela from approval of the exercise by saying that the final decision will be taken by the African National Congress hierarchy.
All of this in a province racked by poverty, lack of schools and clinics, its people ravaged by political corruption. If this sort of money is to be had, may it not be better spent on something more befitting the man: a Nelson Mandela memorial hospital? How many schools and rural clinics could be built, how many hungry mouths fed with just the first stage cost?
Name human enterprises after Mr Mandela and avoid presenting him as a manifestation of formidable political banality, some sort of global laughing-stock — for that is exactly what such an obscenely inappropriate monument would be.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby