South African National Parks should follow the lead of South Africa’s former High Commissioner to London, Cheryl Carolus, when deciding on the future of Paul Kruger’s statue in the Kruger National Park, says the Democratic Alliance (DA).
In a statement DA member of Parliament Sydney Opperman said: ”We should add to our nation’s rich and diverse cultural heritage and never tear down what we have.
”This is the policy she [Carolus] followed at South Africa House [in London’s Trafalgar Square] … and it is the same policy we should follow at home,” he said.
”We should look after what we have and search for appropriate ways to honour those South Africans who have never been commemorated for their contributions.”
SA National Parks CE Mavuso Msimang told Business Day that the statue did not add value to conservation. There were apparently no plans to change the name of the park.
New National Party KwaZulu Natal leader Renier Schoeman said the decision was bad and served no purpose.
The chief executive of trade union Solidarity Flip Buys on Tuesday issued a request to the Minister of Environmental Affairs Valli Moosa to intervene at the Kruger National Park.
Solidarity said it was in talks with management in order to find out the reasons why statues are to be moved out of the park.
The trade union said its legal representatives were also looking at the possibility of taking legal action in order to stop the park removing the statues.
Union representative David Durie said the current problem was that the decision to remove the statues has nothing to do with the management of the park, but was rather a political game by the government.
Solidarity said it has asked the minister to stop the removal of the statues immediately and to first undertake proper research in order to establish the reasons why the statues needed to be removed and if there was support from the community for such a step.
SANparks plans to store the statue together with that of Piet Grobler, who played a central role in the early management of the park and Lieutenant Colonel James Stevenson-Hamilton, who was its first curator. – I-Net Bridge