The Caricaturisation of South Africa’s National Symbols
Letepe Maisela
History is replete with examples of how the African dignity over centuries has been impaired and insulted by those powerful nations from the Northern Hemisphere, who conquered and subjected Africans to foreign rule.
The earliest form of such subjugation was through slavery.
Millions of Africans were captured from African villages and shipped to the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean Islands, to supply free labour to sugar plantations and other forms of industries of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Stripped of their human dignity they were subjected to all forms of debasing treatment.
Any complaint or resistance was met with even harsher treatment.
Those who were caught trying to escape plantation life were summarily lynched and hung in public, in front of an approving and cheering civilian audience.
Colonialism followed after the abolishment of slavery.
The focus was now at capturing no longer individuals but countries on the African continent and imposing foreign European cultural values, whilst looting their natural resources, which were shipped across the oceans for further enrichment of their own countries.
The African subject of colonialism had fewer rights and his or her status was just slightly above that of previous slaves.
This culminated with the famous Berlin Conference of 1884/85 where Europeans countries met to formalise the so-called scramble for Africa, resulting in the continent being carved up like a pot-roasted leg of lamb, leaving each colonial power with a juicy piece.
It was during this era in South Africa around the 19th century, that a Khoisan woman named Sarah Baartman was ferried across to Europe, where she was exhibited in freak shows due to her perceived overdeveloped female anatomy.
When she died in France on December 29, 1815 she ended up in a French Museum where her cast body was exhibited to the curious public.
The democratic South Africa finally got their wish when the remains of Baartman were finally transported back home just recently on May 6, 2002.
Today a Municipality in the Eastern Cape – Sarah Baartman District Municipality, is named after her, restoring whatever little shreds of dignity was left in her as ‘the African Venus’.
Germany has recently admitted to committing the first genocide of the 20th Century in Namibia, where over 100 000 Herero and Nama people were killed in an orgy of ethnic cleansing.
Apparently German colonial regime in Namibia had repatriated thousands of skulls of those killed to Germany, only to return the last batch just now in 2018.
The gory despatch of skulls was merely to assert German racial superiority, while rubbing the dignity of families of the slaughtered ones into the hot Namibian desert dust.
The above anecdotes of African suffering under those who militarily conquered their countries in the past, is merely to illustrate how the African pride was continuously trampled upon historically.
What one did not expect was that in this country even after the democratic era that started in 1994, our African pride and dignity continue to be violated.
That is why an innocent walk through the commercially vibrant Mandela Square in Sandton, shocked me back to the realisation that the struggle for rebuilding our dignity as an African nation is far from over.
That is when I came across the mummified images of both former president Mandela and mother of nation Winnie, decked in best Xhosa traditional attire, right in the centre of the Square, for some passerby’s to pose for selfies with, smack in the middle of so-called Mandela Month.
I was more shocked than amused.
Exhibiting our revolutionary struggle icons in this degrading manner that reduced them to posthumous fashion models, left me aghast.
It instantly brought back to me unsavoury images of Sara Baartmaan in that Museum d’ Histoire Naturelle d’Angers in France.
This ought not be happening in our democracy in these modern days.
Just imagine the uproar it would cause if in the United States of America former President John F Kennedy and wife Jacqueline, could be exhibited in that manner in Times Square or the late Martin Luther King and wife Coretta.
What mostly concerns me is the indifference and deafening silence from the broader public against this violation of Mandela and ipso facto South African dignity, for cheap commercial gain – all this done under the pretext of celebrating Mandela Month and his legacy.
What could justify the silence from the Mandela Family, Nelson Mandela foundation, Civil Society, Government and all those empowered to preserve the posthumous dignity, image, reputation management and legacy of Madiba and Mama Winnie, in the manner that it should not amount to the vilification of them as our national symbols.
I harbour this niggling suspicion that the persistent dehumanisation of the African in past centuries, has led to the desensitisation of the African psyche.
We as a nation seem to have gradually abandoned that right to seek reparations, therapeutic or financial, for the damage caused throughout history in the form of slavery, colonialism and in our case apartheid, to the African psyche.
Actually instead of being angry at history we’d rather become angry with ourselves.
While the Jewish nation asked and received reparations after the Holocaust, the African nations still have to place an order for theirs to be processed.
That includes us from past Apartheid South Africa as well. Our unsensitised nature is further betrayed in how our so-called democratic government has up to now displayed lack of political will to prosecute Apartheid killers, responsible for the callous murders of the likes of Steve Biko, Cradock Four and more others.
We have the right to be angry and do something about it.
It’s in that spirit that I urge the Sandton City Management to remove this embarrassing and inhuman display of our historical struggle icons and for our relevant authorities and Civil Society to hold those responsible to account for this national insult.
Letepe Maisela is a management consultant and published author of four books. The latest, a fiction novel tagged Sperm Donor was published in December, 2019.