[image: Monument revives apartheid-era animosities] Thursday August 13th 2009
In his South African diary, *David Beresford* visits Freedom Park, a giant and controversial monument to the dead in wars and skirmishes dating back to the 15th century, that stands opposite the Voortrekker monument which commemorates the 19th-century Battle of Blood River – the Boer victory against the Zulus. He finds that both asre now reviving apartheid-era animosities Thursday August 13th 2009 [image: Lead article photo]<http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1203&catID=17> The Voortrekker monument in Pretoria. Photograph: Themba Hadebe/AP On a hilltop, on the outskirts of South Africa’s administrative capital of Pretoria, a grisly memento of South Africa’s apartheid war lies inside a glass cabinet. It is a Walkman-style cassette recorder together with a pair of burst headphones. A caption identifies it as the remains of the booby-trapped parcel bomb that killed an anti-apartheid lawyer, Bheki Mlangeni, in 1990. The idea was that the recipient of the parcel would put the headphones on and then push the play button, triggering the device. The killers had known the bomb would work; they had tried it on a pig’s head and it had blown the animal’s brains away. The exhibit is part of Freedom Park, a giant and controversial monument to the dead in wars and armed skirmishes dating back to the 15th century. It stands across a valley from the Voortrekker monument and in a sense complements it. The Voortrekker monument was built in 1938, in commemoration of the 19th-century Battle of Blood River – the Boer victory against the Zulus. Freedom Park is far more inclusive. It honours those killed in the apartheid struggle; the two world wars; the Boer war (or South African war as the designers like to remember it for the sake of inclusivity); the colonial wars; the victims of slavery; the victims of attempted genocide against the Bushmen. In fact, military clashes are recorded all the way back to that moment in the 15th century when a group of Khoikhoi, or Hottentots, are believed to have stoned the Portuguese expedition of Bartolomeu Dias, upon which Dias is said to have killed one with a crossbow. Freedom Park was built in imitation of the Vietnam memorial in Washington, with 65,000 names carved in soapstone. Historians have tried as far as possible to identify individuals, but at times have been reduced to a brief description of an incident – “shot 31 Bushmen”. But the Freedom Park monument is hugely controversial because the authorities have so far excluded the names of members of the old pro-apartheid security forces, the South African Defence Force (SADF), who are blamed for many of the atrocities of the apartheid era. Ex-members of the SADF are incensed, claiming it was the sacrifice of their colleagues that saved South Africa from communism. They point out that the names of Cuban troops killed fighting South African troops have been incorporated. There are other issues between ex-members of the security services and former insurgents about the names. The SADF object to the inclusion of people who were part of the liberation struggle, but died of natural causes – complaining that the rest of those honoured all died directly as a result of the conflict. They object to the word genocide and insist that references to slavery emphasise the role of traders who sold their own people; they demand to know why South Africans who died in the Korean war are not there if the dead of two world wars are. Those responsible for Freedom Park were always going to encounter considerable problems after they decided to honour South Africa’s dead combatants One example is Dimitrios Tsafendas. He can be said to have changed the course of South African history by stabbing Hendrik Verwoerd – the “architect of apartheid” – to death. Before his death in a mental asylum, busloads of mainly black tourists used to visit Tsafendas: a pilgrimage to the man they believed gave them their liberation. But a judge found him to have been mad. Some ask: should a man be honoured on a wall of remembrance for what was an act of madness? Last month the CEO of the Voortrekker monument, General Gert Opperman, announced that they were going to build their own wall of remembrance on which the names of those members of the SADF who had died would be recorded. The wall would be built 100 metres from the Voortrekker monument and money would be raised entirely by donations. The man leading protests over Freedom Park, Kallie Kriel – CEO of AfriForum, which describes itself as “a civil rights initiative” established by the rightwing trade union, Solidarity – said of the row: “We cannot allow that all who were part of the struggle are blindly portrayed as heroes while the rest are criminalised. This argument of ours definitely is not an effort to gloss over, or justify everything done by organisations in the past. It, however, is an effort to ensure that the other side of the matter is also presented in a balanced manner and in context.” The former minister of arts and culture, Pallo Jordan, drew a parallel between German soldiers under Hitler and members of the SADF, saying the distinction had to be made between those who fought for freedom and those who fought against it. But perhaps the strongest argument of them all is the mute one put up by that tape recorder in a glass cabinet. <http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=categorylist&catID=17> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
