Johannesburg – South Africa needs proper policy to safeguard historic monuments and statues, the ANC national general council (NGC) social transformation commission said on Sunday.
Chairwoman Lindiwe Sisulu told journalists at the ANC’s NGC meeting in Midrand, Johannesburg, monuments and statues were part of South African history and policy would enable government to protect them.
“Up to now, responses from government has been that they are all part of history, but we must have proper policy in that regard,” she said.
Various statues and monuments have recently been defaced or vandalised as people demanded that they be removed.
Among these were the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign at the University of Cape Town, where students staged protests demanding that colonial leader Cecil John Rhodes’s statue be removed from campus.
Former Boer war-era South African Republic president Paul Kruger’s statue, situated in the Pretoria CBD, was defaced for the second time last week.
On women’s issues, the commission recommended that all government departments account and state what they did to empower women.
The commission also called on the ANC Women’s League to recruit younger women.
“The ANCWL should make more efforts to attract younger women; a young women’s desk should be established with the league to spearhead that campaign,” said Sisulu.
African News Agency