The City of Johannesburg’s Member of the Mayoral Committee for Community Development, Chris Vondo said he welcomed debates sparked by the presence of statues, memorials and monuments in ‘our society’ and in the public spaces that define ‘us as a people’.
However, he voiced his disappointment at the destruction that took place recently with some of the statues being vandalised.
“Regrettably this has taken on a destructive nature with some of the statues vandalised or defaced. Indeed, an enriched democratic discourse is characterised by continuous reflections on all symbols that shape and define society’s sense of identity and nationhood,” he said.
Vondo said it was the view of the City that underpinning the quest for national reconciliation and nation-building, and in the fostering of social cohesion, South Africa’s present would continuously be defined by the past. “A past of conquest and dispossession, a past of conflict and struggles for a new nationhood,” he said.
Vondo stated that the heritage of the past and the new one born of the present, does not suggest or reflect the permanence of conflict and division. He added that it proudly asserts and affirms unity in diversity.
He said it reflected a mature society that has openly dealt with its past and which draws lessons from that past to shape a new social order.
“Equally, a reconciling society is reflected by the radical changes of its national symbols reflecting both the past and the present,” Vondo said.
He said the City’s policy of memorialising its complex histories is reflected in three definite directions.
Vondo said Joburg firstly embraced memorials that would have been divisive in the past and had them rededicated so that they embraced the diverse experiences of its people. “One example is the Cenotaph at Beyers Naude Square which initially commemorated the First World War, but today also includes a dedication to all who lost their lives as result of struggles for national liberation,” he said.
The second strategy has been to mark the spaces that commemorate the atrocities of the past with the Hector Pieterson Memorial being of significant importance. Vondo said the use of memorials allows for a memory landscape that avoids triumphalism but humanises those who were wronged in the past.
The third strategy is driven through the policy of public art which animates and stitches together the landscape of Joburg to bridge the spatial divide of the past and to humanise those areas that were in the past imagined as reservoirs of cheap labour.
Vondo said the City will continue to protect and re-interpret a layered history and, importantly, add new works which help re-define collective identity and the future.
