Supra Mahumapelo, the Premier of South Africa’s North West province and staunch ally of President Jacob Zuma, is the man leading the way. He wants to build a statue on the remote spot where police arrested Zuma on his way to Botswana with uMkhonto weSizwe recruits, the armed wing of the ANC, in 1963. It would stand in the dusty rural town of Zeerust, in the north of the country. Zuma spent 10 years on Robben Island, after the run-in with police on this spot, but protesters don’t seem to care.
“We are disappointed the Premier wants to erect a statue, he’s spending more time in planning what he is going to do with the statue, rather than spending time dealing with corruption. We will call upon Barutsi people in Zeerust not to allow a statue on their soil. The statue of Jacob Zuma will go nowhere to solve their critical need for services, as water supply fails daily, waste water treatment plants lie unusable and broken, and the inhumane bucket system still plagues our people. We need service [delivery] rather than statues. We are saying the Premier must reconsider this and listen to the plight of the people. Mahumapelo’s priorities are clearly disturbingly skewed to praise Jacob Zuma, rather than to deliver to the people,” says Joe McGluwa, the provincial leader of the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
McGluwa says the Premier is acting as a law unto himself by planning to honor Zuma – who has been in power since 2009 and has 783 pending criminal charges.
“He spoke about celebrating the lives of all those who were in the struggle. President Zuma is still alive and there’s no need to erect a statue for him. Even worse, he has been linked to a number of corrupt activities. The president of this country, better known as JZ 783, doesn’t deserve a statue, he’s a broken president, he broke the law, he broke the constitution, he acted in contrast of his own oath. The honorable thing is to retreat from what they are doing.”
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), another opposition party in the province, acknowledged Zuma’s role in the liberation struggle, but they are also against the statue.
“Zuma is not exemplary and has multiple cases of fraud. Why must we honor him, why must we celebrate him? He’s broken his oath of office, he must leave that office for an honorable man to occupy,” says Betty Kedisaletse Diale, the EFF provincial leader.
“We will make sure that the statue is swiftly removed. It will not be erected while we are members of the legislature. We will fight it until the end,” she says.
The DA claims it has done its own cost analysis and demands the North West province reveals how much this statue will cost. The DA says there’s a tender out for R6 million ($457,000), but Mahumapelo denies this.
“Where the opposition gets their exaggerated figures, I don’t know. We said six meters, not six million rand. We can’t spend that money. It will be wasteful expenditure. The decision was taken in 2009, it was before my time. I have the responsibility to implement. We are going to honor the families who helped liberation fighters. We want to talk to those who are still alive to have audio and visual records of this historic event,” Mahumapelo told journalists minutes after his state of the province address in Taung.
Mahumapelo says it concerns him when people say they don’t want the statue because they want services.
“There must be a win-win situation. People must have water, but we cannot run away from the fact that in South Africa there were freedom fighters. We cannot erase the history of people who experienced torture. Other countries are honoring their leaders. Why shouldn’t we?” he asks.
Mahumapelo, who calls himself Supranomics, said the statue will create more jobs in tourism.
In Ventersdorp, 150 kilometers from Zeerust, stands another controversy.  A six-meter statue of struggle hero JB Marks cost R4 million ($305,000) and left his family irate. They say the North West government did not consult them.
JB Marks left South Africa in 1963 for Russia to lobby the international community to support the struggle against apartheid. He died in exile in 1972, and his body was repatriated and reburied in his hometown of Ventersdorp, on March 22, 2015. The statue was to be unveiled on the same date this year.
So statues appear destined to divide. In the North West province alone there are two statues, two issues, and two groups of angry people.

Give Us Water  Not Statues

Ahmed Kathrada looked frail, but fit and always on the move, as he trod the concrete of his former prison. In the so-called Rivonia Trial, Kathrada was accused number five alongside Nelson Mandela and eight others. They were charged with sabotage and faced death. Instead a young Kathrada and his co-accused were shipped to Robben Island to serve life imprisonment in 1964.
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“We found out only later that life was to be life,” he says.
Kathrada spent 18 years of hardship and humiliation on Robben Island, followed by spells in other prisons, before he was released in 1990. Now 85, he is one of three survivors of the trial.
As South Africa celebrated 21 years of freedom, in April, Kathrada was back on the island wearing a black baseball cap with the words ‘Long Walk To Freedom’. A sign that this was a trip laden with symbolism. Upon disembarking on the ferry, he rejected a shuttle and walked for about 200 meters to the jail that robbed him of his youth.
As he spoke, standing on concrete patch prisoners used as a tennis court, he held his old cell key in his left hand; to his right was Christo Brand, the jailer who kept his eye on Mandela. Brand was 18 years old when he joined the prison as a warder, he’s now a manager at the island’s museum.
“We have our jailer among us,” smiled Kathrada.
Being a prisoner was no laughing matter. Alongside Kathrada was Vusumzi Mcongo, a former prisoner and now a tour guide on the island.
Mcongo told FORBES AFRICA the guard dogs would attack prisoners when they worked in the quarry. If the prisoners fought back they were punished. Officers thought more of the dogs than the humans they guarded.
“Black prisoners wore shorts because were regarded as boys and the Indians had long trousers,” says Mcongo.
Kathrada was back on Robben Island, now a World Heritage Site, because Google had launched a virtual tour application. It means anyone in the world can tour Robben Island for free.
This is a world away from the years that Kathrada and fellow prisoners spent on the island before they were released in the 1990s; they were still living in the 1960s.
“The technology revolution passed us by. The warden came to us and said ‘we received a fax from Pretoria, you are getting released’, after slight jubilation we asked ‘what is a fax?’” says Kathrada.
When Kathrada came out of prison he had never seen a motorway, nor a computer, not even an ATM.
“Not being able to see or interact with children for 20 years was possibly the most difficult thing to endure during my time on the island. There’s a poetic justice that children in classrooms all over world will now be able to visit Robben Island using this technology,” says Kathrada.
Kathrada, his friends called him Kathy, was a librarian in prison and earned an honours degree in history; he also became a father figure.
“There was a 15-year-old boy here, he was sentenced to 10 years. He did his matric here, his BA here, he started his B Juris here but completed it outside. Today, he’s the Deputy Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court – Justice Dikgang Moseneke – that was the boy,” says Kathrada proudly.
Long before Kathrada and his comrades were arrested, Xhosa Chief, Makana Nxele, was in chains on Robben Island. Nxele led a Xhosa regiment against the British in the Eastern Cape and was captured in 1819. In 1820, in an attempt to escape, Nxele swam from the island; guards caught him when he reached the beach at Blouberg, near Cape Town. The armed guards forced him to swim back. On the way back he drowned. You can google the rest.

Cyberspace Creeps Up  On The Island of Tears

Nelson Mandela, the artist, was born in 2003, with an introspective set of signed charcoal lithographs, 21 in all, completed under supervision. They harked back to Robben Island.
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Pains were taken to ensure that the pieces weren’t forged. The paper he drew on was watermarked. The prints also carry an embossed stamp of two joined hands. Hours of footage were shot, showing him hard at work on the pieces, to prove that he did in fact create them.
In the South African art market, the pieces have done exceptionally well selling for around $13,300, 10 times their value on release. They are expected to appreciate over time, a rarity in African art. At a London auction, a handprint lithograph, with an authenticated signature, sold for almost $27,000.
It’s good business that has brought some problems. Almost all of this art is going to end up outside of Africa.
“There is demand, mostly from foreign collectors. Most of our sales, around 80 percent, are to international buyers,” says Andre Blignaut from the Clock Tower Gallery in Cape Town, one of the two major dealers and authenticators of Mandela’s art.
Soon after Mandela’s hospitalization, forgeries of ‘no particular skill’ were said to litter the market. Fakes were selling at $4,500 apiece.  However, significant proof, beyond the inspections of a small group of Mandela art experts, of whether the pieces were counterfeit has yet to surface.
“It’s the name behind the art, that’s why they are valuable. A lot of artists are trying to capitalize on Nelson Mandela but this doesn’t mean it’s good. Good art sells, there is a lot of poor art out there,” cautions Blignaut.
At the same time, public art is also hijacking Mandela’s legacy status. The recent unveiling of a tribute sculpture known as Perceiving Freedom on the Sea Point promenade in Cape Town is causing controversy. It is an enlarged metal and plastic model of a pair Ray-Ban sunglasses looking on to Robben Island. Critics decried the piece as ‘advertising masquerading as art’.
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Rebecca Hodes, who wrote on the offending sculpture, warns: “In consenting to its installation, the City of Cape Town has made itself complicit in the corporate abuse of public land and in the hijacking of one of our greatest national icons for private gain.”
As South Africa remembers its national treasure, a year after his death, issues of how best to preserve his legacy must be understood and then resolved.

Tag: Robben Island

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Give Us Water Not Statues

Cyberspace Creeps Up On The Island of Tears

Nelson Mandela, The Artist