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Dealing with symbols and memories of oppression

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LAST week I was in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The approach to Grahamstown had been at night and quite uneventful.
The sun had set on us well before Bloemfontein.
The return journey was, however, in broad daylight, masikati machena chaiwo, leaving no room for the country to conceal its country’s dark side.
Before departing Grahamstown we acknowledged the cleanliness of this town.
It is a university town proud of its historic origins not least the British connection.
This is a town constantly reminding its residents and visitors of 1820 and 1904.
The former is a date of spiritual and political significance in the white search for domination and supremacy in South Africa.
The latter is a reminder to the founding of Rhodes University as a small outpost of British Imperialism in South Africa.
Either side of the road to East London we could not help notice a common feature of South African farms; white and expansive.
This white statement of intent is only occasionally broken by the appearance of a shanty African town, servicing white master.
From this side of liberation you feel for your Mzansi comrades. You begin to appreciate Malema anger; dubula ibhunu.
East London was as expected. So was the next town, Aliwal North.
There was even a small town named Settlers. Brutal facts laid bare in the form of colonial monuments, a celebration of the wagon wheel.
As if to remind us that these wagon wheels carried and moved the white frontier further north.
I was reminded of the wagon wheels that brought Robert Moffat and his kith and kin to Inyathi in Mzilikazi country.
Creating a wagon trail that became a precursor to the Pioneer Column invasion via Tuli.
The monuments reminded me of a feeble attempt at same, back home, at the Halfway House near Headlands along the Harare Mutare road.
Luckily these colonial relics today look a spent force, neither celebratory nor able to intimidate the indigenes.
In their silence they seem to acknowledge the Great War Hunzvi and Chinoz fought.
By the time we made it to Johannesburg we had had enough of competing British and Afrikaner histories.
African history and heritage was clearly missing.
The only exception was some district or municipality named after Chris Hani and in Johannesburg a monument to elusive prosperity for blacks.
Off course Nelson Mandela’s image is all over the place.
You cannot help the feeling that the Mandela image has been appropriated as a symbol of white wishes. On the way to Pretoria Jan Smuts remained stubborn.
Nearly 20 years after the supposed end of apartheid. In the same way Pretoria has stubbornly resisted Tshwane, much like Petersburg saying no to Polokwane.
Just like the way Louis Trichardt has withstood Makhado. Musina, rubbing off our liberation perhaps is the odd on out.
From Polokwane to the border only the Tropic of Capricorn stood its neck out. Mapungubwe, that revered precursor to Great Zimbabwe, stood unacknowledged.
I lamented poor Limpopo, very much unMalema like.
By the time I crossed the border I had become less forgiving to self.
Can Beit Bridge be given an African face? Does Masvingo recall its place in our ancient history and the early liberation struggle?
Like the pioneer attempt to blow up Rhodesia Railways. Passing through Chaka nothing reminded me of the Lion of Chirumhanzu.
In Chivhu the Wedza/Buhera and Gutu roads had nothing to show for the production line that gave us some of the land’s finest generals.
Thirty-three years after independence we hardly have monuments erected in honour or memory of a historic past.
At least we have moved mountains in obliterating the vulgar monuments of our sad past.
We await to see monuments celebrating our liberation.

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