The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

once stood in central Pretoria, was officially authorised at the end of 1994 to commence
work on a 23 metre‐high “Mandela monument”. In a project headed by the
multimillionaire brothers Sol and Abe Krok, who had made their fortunes in corrosive
skin lightening creams, and envisaged to cost R50‐million in private sector funds, the
bronze cast gigantic monument was to be modelled on then president Nelson Mandela’s
hand as a “beacon of freedom” for South Africa. The disembodied hand “breaking out of
jail bars” was expected to be “the biggest sculpture in the world”. The monument would
also include 40 plaques depicting the “history of the Freedom struggle in South Africa”, an
eternal flame in an amphitheatre, a statue of Mandela himself, and a wall with the word
‘Freedom’ written in 100 languages. A viewing balcony and a “museum of apartheid”
covering 1 400 square metres were also part of the plans. 92
After strong public criticism, particularly from cultural critics in the world of art, plans for
the “Madiba statue” were put on ice. Critics of the initiative contended that the envisaged
monumental arm echoed with a “rhetoric of totalitarian art” and was the “wrong image”
for nation‐building. In its “dumb, numbing gigantism”, the planned monument was “the
language of dictators, not liberators”. According to Neville Dubow, it bore a “chilling”
resemblance to the Victory Monument in Baghdad, which had commemorated Iraq’s war
against Iran. The critics also challenged the planned monument on aesthetic grounds. It
contained “an uncomfortable juxtaposition of realism and abstraction” and was “banal in
its symbolism”. It was also a product of “the language of kitsch ... the instant sell ... [and]
the theme park”. 93
For the critics, it was the lack of artistic merit of the proposed statue as well as the process
by which it was initially approved which were the problems, not the concept itself of a
presidential sculpture or freedom monument. Instead of a “scheme ... devised by an
individual”, what was required was research, consultation and negotiation as well as
public participation and scrutiny. An acceptable monument needed to be the work of
“people who know something about art”. For Neville Dubow, this was important because
92 Cape Times, 1 April 1996; Mail and Guardian, 29 March to 3 April 1996.
93 Cape Times, 4 April 1996; Mail and Guardian, 12‐18 April 1996.
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