Symbols – only meaning is the one you choose
AFTER reading Xolela Mangcu’s article “A chilling lesson from America’s dark symbol” (SD, June 27), we should put the American Civil War into perspective. It was never about slavery. Although Abraham Lincoln did support the abolition of slavery, the war was about preserving the United States. Especially as the industrialised north was in financial difficulty and could not afford the prosperous, cotton-growing South seceding from the union.
Great Britain, whose textile mills depended upon that cotton, gave its support to the Confederacy (the southern, slaveowning states) as a matter of economic necessity.
Part of the aid went to the construction of the raiding ship Alibama, which proved highly effective in disrupting the Federal (northern) supplies.
During part of its career, the Alibama operated from Saldahna Bay and captain Raphael Semmes and the ship’s company were welcomed by and well treated by Cape society.
This is the origin of the song Daar kom die Alibama. There is an irony in that the composers of the ditty were themselves freed slaves or the children of freed slaves.
That the Confederate flag flown by the Alibama symbolised the slave-owning Confederacy would not bother anybody until after the war.
Also consider that in four of the northern states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware), slavery was legal. Slavery was also legal in Washington DC.
US president Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation only “freed” the slaves in the (then) unconquered Confederacy, not throughout the union.
In spite of this, “Old Glory” (the flag of the United States of America) is considered the flag of freedom by the same people who consider the Confederate flag the flag of racism and oppression.
To protest against one and not the other is, at best, a selective history. Neither flag has any meaning except what people, subjectively, choose to give it.
In quoting Mark Anthony’s tribute to Julius Caesar, Mangcu is selective. Yes, “the evil that men do” does live after them but, to complete the quote, “the good’s oft interred with their bones”.
Mark Anthony went on to describe all the good Caesar had done, something conveniently overlooked by Brutus when he defended his and his fellow conspirators’ decision to assassinate Caesar.
In the same way, much has been said about the bad that Cecil John Rhodes did, yet without him the country we call the Republic of South Africa would not exist. Neither would Zimbabwe or Zambia.
Move all the statues you please, we live in his most enduring legacy, even though he did not live to see the fulfilment of his ambitions. Should we break up the country and give each of the traditional kings, as sovereign monarchs, the territory (and only that territory) that their ancestors ruled before Rhodes?
On the topic of monuments in the Eastern Cape, in East London itself, the war memorial outside the City Hall was financed by public subscription as a tribute to the fallen. Not only is the statue of Steve Biko now outside the City Hall, but there is also one of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Incidentally, the City Hall is built on Waterloo Square, commemorating the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the clock tower is known as the Victoria Tower as it was built during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (60 years as monarch).
If there was also a statue of the Queen, would people feel oppressed?
In Cape Town, the Malay community looked at the orb (symbol of the monarch’s role as Defender of the Faith) and dubbed the statue “Die missus met die spanspek”. They had the sense to recognise that a symbol is merely a symbol and has no more power over them than what they allow.
A similar coming together and celebration of histories is on the Esplanade, where the German Settlers, the International Man and Heroes’ Park tell different aspects of the city’s history. All our histories are intertwined. The Cenotaph at the top of Oxford Street commemorates the fallen of World War One, with plaques added at the Lynch Gate to commemorate the fallen of World War Two.
I remember that, back when I was a Boy Scout, wreaths were laid by the German ex-servicemen and by the Jewish ex-servicemen. Nobody cared that Germany had been “the enemy” or harked on the horrors of the Holocaust. For friend and foe alike, the monument remembers fallen comrades, not past animosity.
In the regimental museum of the Buffalo Volunteer Rifles is the Iron Cross awarded to a former German soldier and later curator of East London Zoo, Hans von Ketlejard, and the citation is signed by Adolf Hitler. Proof that former foes can move on if they are not hung up on lifeless symbols.
Presently, the Remembrance Day service incorporates the fallen of the SADF/ SANDF, Transkei Defence Force, Ciskei Defence Force, Umkhonto weSizwe and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army.
The Cenotaph has come to symbolise all who gave their lives for South Africa. This has been a deliberate choice.
A symbol is merely a symbol and has no more meaning or power than what people give it.
Hitler’s statues may have been pulled down, yet the German autobahn (freeway) and people’s car (Volkswagen) are used daily throughout the world by people who would be horrified to be considered Nazis.
Further, for the sake of historical accuracy, Leningrad and Stalingrad did not change their names to St Petersburg and Volgograd; they reverted to their original names after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Perhaps people were acknowledging that the Tsar had already abdicated in favour of a democratically-elected parliament and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was against democracy, not autocracy.
Be that as it may, the reason that nobody in South Africa complained about those statues coming down, as Mangcu noted, is because we are not Russian and what Russians choose to do is their business.
Symbols are important, but they are never a reason for continuing hatred or victimhood. When symbols have that much power over people, it is because people have given up their individual dignity.
Life is not about symbols. Life is about people. Encourage people to embrace their dignity and self-respect as humans and the symbols will change their significance accordingly.
Dave Rankin is an East London resident and a keen history student