Pretoria, Tshwane

Pretoria

On a trip to Pretoria two weeks ago, my friend and I visited Church Square. It was a hot day and stately Victorian buildings stood sentinel to the beautiful park; the Palace of Justice, the Old Capitol Theatre where my mother used to watch films as a child, the Old Post Office towering over immaculate lawns and flowerbeds, over humans lounging on the lawn, plying their trade as roving photographers, their Canon printers standing by to deliver the moment in tangible form.  Prize place in the very centre of the square is a statue of Paul Kruger, Boer hero leader and President of the South African Republic, father of a nation to some. Beneath him on the plinth are Boer soldiers, bearded men with hats and a bush-worn look about them.

What made me stop and sink into a pure South African moment, was observing the black families posing with the statues, the little children sitting in the laps of the old Boer soldiers with their sad eyes, staring to the horizon. I wondered if the families knew who they were photographing, I’m sure they did, and I wondered why they were so enthusiastic about photographing them, when the government is determined to tear the statues down, relocate them or replace them with more contemporary heroes.

It was moving, to see the citizens of South Africa appreciating the gardens and the memorials. It always feels as if something deeper is at work here, with that kind of interaction. One could dismiss the people posing and photographing as uninformed, or simply appreciating the formidable monument; I could have asked them but I was not sure what to ask, and didn’t want to be insulting, patronising, strange.

I am somewhat attached to the picture of the little black girl posing in the lap of the Boer soldier and how it looked as if she belonged there, she was perfectly comfortable, and he was protecting her. Is there room for manipulation of mythology here? Is there space for this interpretation?

Is there any opportunity to acknowledge those Boers who perhaps have and do contribute to the establishment, growth and the wellbeing of the nation, and that perhaps, it would not only be possible, but also respectful, courageous to leave them there, and in doing so open up cultural possibilities beyond the aching habit of standard apartheid discourse? To perhaps consider, if we don’t control every aspect of our perception and impose yet another ideology onto our citizens, and if we  leave some of it open to the unpredictable flows of life, what might emerge, if we let go of our dogma, what would evolve?

Some kind of weird alchemy that goes beyond what is and what and how we perceive it should be, perhaps.

I would like to open these questions, to open the door to the confined space that our ideology affords us. Sure, this democracy provides a far more breathe-able country to live in. On one hand it is a reaction to an atrocious system that, thank God, is relegated to museums and memory, wafts of it still evident depending on where you stand. The ideology provides safety from that system, but what lies beyond it? What could we expand into, I wonder, that is not simply safe, but authentic?  What if it were true, as an ex boyfriend once said to me, that we are all valid?