OPINION - I remember during the #FeesMustFall era when many statutes of colonial era figures were defaced and a few damaged. Such was the anger that even libraries were put to the torch.
After the murder of George Floyd, which has exploded into a worldwide protest movement against racism, statues became the latest targets - mostly statues of colonial racists whose ideology led to bloodshed and freedom struggles.
South Africa has had its fair share of those whose statues were quietly removed from the unwanted gaze and either restored to museums or private collectors.
In the UK, right-wingers defended statues of slave owners and public figures whose ideologies promoted racism.
Authorities rushed either to board them up or remove them from Trafalgar Square. The remaining larger-than-life statues, just as they did during their lifetimes, now scowl with contempt and derision at those who came after them and who see what they contributed towards as being linked to the current problem of racism.
And so the protesters turn on these statues as if destroying them will, as in the case of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes, erase from history what they wrought upon latter day generations.
Yes, they are monuments to staggering hypocrisy and deceit, let alone amnesia. Just as, if you travel along Margaret Mncadi Avenue (Victoria Embankment) you are bound to encounter the statute of Dick King, a colonial-era settler whose forces were besieged by Boers at the Old Fort and who, along with little-known indigenous African Ndongeni, rode to seek help from their fellow colonialists forces in Grahamstown, a 14-day journey.
That statue is an indictment of racists who plundered and wrecked the lives of Africans and later people of mixed or Indian origin. Travel south and you are bound to traverse Kingsway, named to honour him.
But history has all but forgotten Ndongeni, as it has about the Padavattan Six, and yet we have monuments and reminders of Struggle stalwarts with buildings and streets named after them.
Saber Ahmed Jazbhay Durban
Daily News