The Freedom Front+ has laid a formal complaint over the destruction of a Great Trek memorial at Standerton, party leader Dr Pieter Mulder said on Sunday.
Mayor Queen Radebe-Khumalo ordered the destruction of the memorial, which was in front of the municipal offices, apparently with the approval of the Mpumalanga African National Congress.
Mulder said his party had laid a complaint with the Commission for Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Language Rights.
”The FF+ is convinced the Standerton’s mayor and the provincial ANC breached the Constitution with the instruction to destroy [the memorial],” he said in a statement.
”What is worse, is that several days later, senior ANC leaders have still not thought it necessary to condemn the incident.
”When the Makhado statue in Limpopo was damaged with paint a few years ago, I personally immediately condemned it in public.”
The Afrikanerbond has also said it will take up the matter with the mayor and Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan.
The memorial was built for the 150th celebration of the Great Trek, in 1988, when 13 ox wagons travelled through South Africa as part of the celebrations.
It consisted of a large concrete slab with the tracks of an ox wagon preserved in it.
”That piece of thing means nothing to us. It’s just a piece of cement with tracks. I do not even know where it comes from,” Radebe-Khumalo was quote as saying by Beeld. – Sapa