What are statues good for? Winning the battle or losing the battleground?
Authors: Goodrich André , Bombardella Pia 
Published: December 2016

In South Africa the practice of toppling statues is as old as the practice of erecting them. The most recent episode in this history began in 2015 with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the University of Cape Town, from where it rapidly spread to sites throughout South Africa. Confronted with the fact that 97% of South Africa’s 3500 declared heritage sites related to white values and experiences at the end of the apartheid era and that there has been little progress towards crafting a more representative heritage landscape, one cannot dispute the Rhodes Must Fall assertion that South African statues anachronistically honour the leading figures of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past. Observing that public debate around the statues was rapidly polarised into two camps, those who would defend the statues and those who would destroy them, this paper argues that neither option sufficiently addresses the multiple meanings of statues. By examining the changing public-history discourses of the 20th century we propose a third approach grounded in post humanist arguments about the limitation of critique and the promise of care as an ethical, affective and practical pursuit. We argue that this post humanist approach to the question of what to do with statues in South Africa is capable of transforming them from fetishised objects of offence or of heritage into points around which new publics can gather and through which the historical ontology of contemporary power dynamics can be accessed, interrogated and acted upon in order to build new forms of citizenship. In Suid-Afrika is die praktyk van standbeelde omgooi net so oud soos die praktyk om hulle op te rig. Die mees onlangse episode in hierdie geskiedenis het in 2015 in Kaapstad begin met die Rhodes Must Fall veldtog by die Universiteit van Kaapstad en daarvandaan het dit vining versprei na plekke dwarsoor Suid-Afrika. Gesien in die lig van feit dat teen die einde van die apartheidera 97% van Suid-Afrika se 3500 erfenisplekke verwant was aan blanke waardes en ervaringe en dat daar min vordering was met die daarstelling van ‘n meer verteenwoordigende erfenislandskap, kan mens nie wegkom van Rhodes Must Fall stelling dat Suid-Afrikaanse beelde ‘n anachronistiese verering is van die leidende figure van Suid-Afrika se koloniale en apartheidsverlede. Gegewe dat die openbare debat vining gepolariseer geraak het in twee kampe, naamlik diegene wat die beelde woul beskerm en diegene wat hulle wou vernietig, is die argument wat aangevoer word in hierdie artikel dat nie een van die opsies voldoende handel met die veelvuldige betekenisse van beelde nie. Deur ‘n ondersoek te doen na die veranderende diskoerse oor openbare geskiedenis in die 20ste eeu stel ons ‘n derde benadering voor, wat ingebed is in post-humanistiese argumente oor die beperkinge van kritiek en die moontlikhede van sorg as ‘n etiese, affektiewe en praktiese benadering. Ons argumenteer naamlik dat die post-humanistiese benadering tot wat mens moet doen met beelde in Suid-Afrika is om hulle te omvorm van fetisjistiese voorwerpe wat aanstoot gee of van erfenisvoorwerpe tot plekke waar nuwe publieke kan vergader en waardeur die historiese ontologie van kontemporêre magsdinamiek benader, ondersoek en oor gehandel kan word om nuwe vorme van burgerskap te bou.