On Thursday, Cecil John Rhodes fell at the University of Cape Town. His statue was removed from campus, the culmination of a month-led student-led campaign to exorcise the white colonialist from the premises.
From the first defiant protest against colonialist Cecil Rhodes in early March, South Africa has been engaged in endless debates on history and heritage, symbols and monuments, colonialism and race. It's taking place in newspapers, on street-corners and on buses.
It has also inspired a series of copy-cat statue attacks, with protestors identifying their villains of choice and proceeding to deface their statues. Over the weekend, when a group of men threw paint on a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, alleging he was racist, it put the Mahatma in the company of not just Rhodes, but other emblems of white domination: Paul Kruger, Louis Botha, Queen Victoria and King George V. Each of these has been targeted for their own peculiar villainies, but perhaps Gandhi marked a new first: the vandalism of a statue of a non-white person.
The protestors borrowed the language from the University of Cape Town campaign, reportedly demanding that “Racist Gandhi Must Fall”, before scampering off. One man was arrested and let off on bail on Monday after being produced in court. Though some reports said the men were kitted out in African National Congress paraphernalia, the ruling party was quick to condemn the vandalism.
ANC's position
Since the beginning of the debate about statues, the ANC has maintained that there must be discussions around the removals and that defacement is not the way forward. ANC head of communications Keith Khoza told Scroll.in that they were acutely conscious of Gandhi’s contributions to South Africa. “Gandhi has been held in high esteem by South Africans,” he said. “He had a huge impact while he was here. While there may be some things we don’t agree with, his contributions cannot be watered down.”
One of those contributions was inspiring Nelson Mandela in shaping the anti-apartheid struggle. Mandela’s ANC government later came to power in the first fully democratic elections of 1994.
Khoza played down the more controversial, racist remarks made by Gandhi. “The emphasis has not been on the negative remarks,” said Khoza. “We believe people are capable of erring. Those were not the centerpiece of his views, and he didn’t hold them later in life.”
Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 as a 24-year-old lawyer, eventually spending 21 years in the country. The stint was formative to his experiments with civil resistance; strategies and tactics that eventually went into crafting the Indian freedom struggle.
During his time here, he notoriously referred to blacks as “keffirs” and sought to identify Indians as distinct from black people. He saw Indians as on a higher civilisational plane from them and when championing Indian rights, chose not to make common cause with the oppressed black majority.
Tense race relations
The Johannesburg statue, depicting Gandhi as a young lawyer, isn’t the only one in the country – there are monuments in Kwa-Zulu Natal province too, where he lived for a considerable length of time. The latest defacement has done little by way of encouraging a serious debate so far on removing the statue, which was erected in 2003. But it is safe to say relations between Indians and black Africans have not been problem-free. Indians have often been accused of racist behavior, perhaps a relic of apartheid-era distinctions. At the time, racial classifications meant Indians were identified as a separate category enjoying a better position, as compared to blacks who were at the lowest end of the scale.
“The defacing of Gandhi's statue is deeply symbolic of the historically tense relationship between Africans and Indians especially when Gandhi was in South Africa,” said Surendra Bhana, a University of Kansas professor, who dealt with some of these issues in a book he co-authored on Gandhi.
Though the ruling ANC is downplaying the issue, rancour resonates among some of the black population. “As a black person who has previously read a bit about Gandhi, I say that he was no hero,” said Andile Amukelani Ndlovu, a student of Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape. “He was a hero to those who were part of his class the same way Cecil Rhodes was a hero to Europeans but a villain to blacks. He didn't fight [discrimination]; he fought against being at the same level with 'kaffirs'… In simple words he was for white domination and black oppression.”
Gandhi and even Ghandi were generating a buzz on Twitter on Monday, but the hastag “#GhandiMustFall” failed to unlock the frenzied energy of the anti-Rhodes campaign. Gandhi can hardly be classed in the same bracket as white colonialists, many people say, and it is not clear what the defacement seeks to broadly achieve.
But perhaps the mixed reaction is also because post-Rhodes, statue vandalism has become passe now – after King George in Durban, Kruger in Pretoria, Queen Victoria in Port Elizabeth and Botha in Cape Town. When the debates have been dominated by white imperialism and colonial wrongs, targetting Gandhi seems more about jumping on the bandwagon.
“When they touched Rhodes, I knew that there was more to come,” said Cape Town councillor Yagyah Adams, a member of the Cape Muslim Congress, chuckling over his own prophetic powers. “For vandalism you don’t need a reason. We are entering a twilight zone, things are getting bizarre.”
He attributed some of the anger to possible ethnic jealousy towards the prosperous Indian community and also to a sense of growing black African nationalism. “It starts against whites, then Indians, then coloured people,” he said. "We must stop this."
No explosive outrage
Although Gandhi's legacy is once again under scrutiny, the episode has not sparked off any tectonic historical revisions because none of the information is particularly new. Post-apartheid South Africa has already been over that before. “Nearly 60 years after his assassination, only now is the paint being spilt?” asked Jonathan Meyer, a Cape Town resident. “He was a flawed man, but this is common knowledge… Gandhi’s racist attitude towards South African blacks in his twenties is no secret.”
Rather, Meyer echoed some of the jaded cynicism that has set in after more than four weeks of statue vandalism. “Quite frankly, this is just part of the [insert controversially famous person honoured by statue] Must Fall campaign,” he said. “I personally feel this is just Rhodes statue opportunism.”
What the Rhodes movement did was galvanise the national conversation surrounding transformation, heritage and history, extending to raise questions about various leaders of all colours. As columnist Verashni Pillay, wrote in the Mail and the Guardian two weeks ago, perhaps redefining, rather than removing monuments, is the way forward.
“Every historical figure can be contested,” she wrote. “We could argue to take down South African statues of Mahatma Gandhi, who wasn’t exactly the best friend to this country’s black majority. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 10 or 20 years, in a more radical time, those voices calling Nelson Mandela a sell-out swell into a majority and demand the removal of the many public symbols and statues in honour of our first democratic president.”
From the first defiant protest against colonialist Cecil Rhodes in early March, South Africa has been engaged in endless debates on history and heritage, symbols and monuments, colonialism and race. It's taking place in newspapers, on street-corners and on buses.
It has also inspired a series of copy-cat statue attacks, with protestors identifying their villains of choice and proceeding to deface their statues. Over the weekend, when a group of men threw paint on a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, alleging he was racist, it put the Mahatma in the company of not just Rhodes, but other emblems of white domination: Paul Kruger, Louis Botha, Queen Victoria and King George V. Each of these has been targeted for their own peculiar villainies, but perhaps Gandhi marked a new first: the vandalism of a statue of a non-white person.
The protestors borrowed the language from the University of Cape Town campaign, reportedly demanding that “Racist Gandhi Must Fall”, before scampering off. One man was arrested and let off on bail on Monday after being produced in court. Though some reports said the men were kitted out in African National Congress paraphernalia, the ruling party was quick to condemn the vandalism.
ANC's position
Since the beginning of the debate about statues, the ANC has maintained that there must be discussions around the removals and that defacement is not the way forward. ANC head of communications Keith Khoza told Scroll.in that they were acutely conscious of Gandhi’s contributions to South Africa. “Gandhi has been held in high esteem by South Africans,” he said. “He had a huge impact while he was here. While there may be some things we don’t agree with, his contributions cannot be watered down.”
One of those contributions was inspiring Nelson Mandela in shaping the anti-apartheid struggle. Mandela’s ANC government later came to power in the first fully democratic elections of 1994.
Khoza played down the more controversial, racist remarks made by Gandhi. “The emphasis has not been on the negative remarks,” said Khoza. “We believe people are capable of erring. Those were not the centerpiece of his views, and he didn’t hold them later in life.”
Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 as a 24-year-old lawyer, eventually spending 21 years in the country. The stint was formative to his experiments with civil resistance; strategies and tactics that eventually went into crafting the Indian freedom struggle.
During his time here, he notoriously referred to blacks as “keffirs” and sought to identify Indians as distinct from black people. He saw Indians as on a higher civilisational plane from them and when championing Indian rights, chose not to make common cause with the oppressed black majority.
Tense race relations
The Johannesburg statue, depicting Gandhi as a young lawyer, isn’t the only one in the country – there are monuments in Kwa-Zulu Natal province too, where he lived for a considerable length of time. The latest defacement has done little by way of encouraging a serious debate so far on removing the statue, which was erected in 2003. But it is safe to say relations between Indians and black Africans have not been problem-free. Indians have often been accused of racist behavior, perhaps a relic of apartheid-era distinctions. At the time, racial classifications meant Indians were identified as a separate category enjoying a better position, as compared to blacks who were at the lowest end of the scale.
“The defacing of Gandhi's statue is deeply symbolic of the historically tense relationship between Africans and Indians especially when Gandhi was in South Africa,” said Surendra Bhana, a University of Kansas professor, who dealt with some of these issues in a book he co-authored on Gandhi.
Though the ruling ANC is downplaying the issue, rancour resonates among some of the black population. “As a black person who has previously read a bit about Gandhi, I say that he was no hero,” said Andile Amukelani Ndlovu, a student of Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape. “He was a hero to those who were part of his class the same way Cecil Rhodes was a hero to Europeans but a villain to blacks. He didn't fight [discrimination]; he fought against being at the same level with 'kaffirs'… In simple words he was for white domination and black oppression.”
Gandhi and even Ghandi were generating a buzz on Twitter on Monday, but the hastag “#GhandiMustFall” failed to unlock the frenzied energy of the anti-Rhodes campaign. Gandhi can hardly be classed in the same bracket as white colonialists, many people say, and it is not clear what the defacement seeks to broadly achieve.
But perhaps the mixed reaction is also because post-Rhodes, statue vandalism has become passe now – after King George in Durban, Kruger in Pretoria, Queen Victoria in Port Elizabeth and Botha in Cape Town. When the debates have been dominated by white imperialism and colonial wrongs, targetting Gandhi seems more about jumping on the bandwagon.
“When they touched Rhodes, I knew that there was more to come,” said Cape Town councillor Yagyah Adams, a member of the Cape Muslim Congress, chuckling over his own prophetic powers. “For vandalism you don’t need a reason. We are entering a twilight zone, things are getting bizarre.”
He attributed some of the anger to possible ethnic jealousy towards the prosperous Indian community and also to a sense of growing black African nationalism. “It starts against whites, then Indians, then coloured people,” he said. "We must stop this."
No explosive outrage
Although Gandhi's legacy is once again under scrutiny, the episode has not sparked off any tectonic historical revisions because none of the information is particularly new. Post-apartheid South Africa has already been over that before. “Nearly 60 years after his assassination, only now is the paint being spilt?” asked Jonathan Meyer, a Cape Town resident. “He was a flawed man, but this is common knowledge… Gandhi’s racist attitude towards South African blacks in his twenties is no secret.”
Rather, Meyer echoed some of the jaded cynicism that has set in after more than four weeks of statue vandalism. “Quite frankly, this is just part of the [insert controversially famous person honoured by statue] Must Fall campaign,” he said. “I personally feel this is just Rhodes statue opportunism.”
What the Rhodes movement did was galvanise the national conversation surrounding transformation, heritage and history, extending to raise questions about various leaders of all colours. As columnist Verashni Pillay, wrote in the Mail and the Guardian two weeks ago, perhaps redefining, rather than removing monuments, is the way forward.
“Every historical figure can be contested,” she wrote. “We could argue to take down South African statues of Mahatma Gandhi, who wasn’t exactly the best friend to this country’s black majority. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 10 or 20 years, in a more radical time, those voices calling Nelson Mandela a sell-out swell into a majority and demand the removal of the many public symbols and statues in honour of our first democratic president.”
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