Pretoria - The city of Tshwane has placed police guards around the statue of Paul Kruger in Pretoria’s Church Square and made plans to clean it after it was targeted by vandals, who covered two bronze sentries in green paint, mayoral spokesman Blessing Manale said on Monday.
“We think we will start on Tuesday morning. We don’t want to use chemicals that will affect the actual material underneath.”
Manale said 10 police officers were standing guard around the statue of the Transvaal republic president after the sentries were smeared in paint as passers-by captured video footage late on Sunday. The raised figure of Kruger, which was moved to the square in 1954 and unveiled by then prime minister DF Malan, escaped largely unscathed.
“Private citizens have video footage and we have already handed it over to the police,” Manele said.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, who last week vowed to tear down all statues of white minority leaders in Pretoria, said they were not sure who had targeted the statue but wanted to commend them.
“I know there are community members who have embarked on an action to deface these symbols and I think we should commend them,” said Mandisa Mashego, the party’s acting chairwoman in Gauteng.
On Monday morning, EFF national spokesman and MP Mbuyseni Ndlozi posted a call on his Twitter account to remove the statue of Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town, reading: “Jan van Riebeeck must fall: he is situated in Adderley Street, Cape Town.”
Ndlozi declined to comment on the defacing of Kruger’s statue but told ANA: “All these statues must go down. We need to craft a new symbolism to remember and commemorate the colonial and apartheid past that is not based only on icons of white supremacy like Jan van Riebeeck and Paul Kruger but shows freedom fighters, black and white, who opposed it.”
Monday marked the 363rd anniversary of the Dutch colonial administrator’s arrival in the Cape.
The EFF has intensified its calls for the removal of statues of colonial and apartheid rulers in recent weeks against the backdrop of the student campaign at the University of Cape Town for the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes.
Last week, the ANC Youth League also called for the removal of Kruger’s statue in Pretoria. Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa responded by saying he viewed the call as a necessary part of the national debate around representation of the past.
Several onlookers were at the scene in Church Square on Monday, using cellphones to take photographs.
Pretoria resident John Tengwa said the defacing was “disrespectful” to South Africa’s heritage.
“The perpetrators are destroying valuable history. I think this is done by misguided, misinformed politicians,” he said.
Kruger was the president of the South African Republic from 1883 to 1890.
ANA