LOOKING BACK

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 50 YEARS AGO

A row is brewing over the new Smuts statue in Cape Town. Immediately after it was unveiled yesterday by the State President, Mr JJ Fouché, one of South Arica’s best-known artists, Mr Erik Laubscher, described it as “bad” and “embarrassing”. Mr Laubscher, of the Ruth Prowse School of Art, said in his opinion the new statue, sculpted by Ivan Mitford-Barberton, was not an artistic improvement on the Sydney Harpley statue unveiled in 1964. “The new work is stiff, badly proportioned and lacking any interpretive feeling of Smuts. In fact, it is seldom that a monument so lacking in essential understanding of human form and proportion has been erected in public and given such prominence.” — January 27 1974

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 25 YEARS AGO

President Nelson Mandela has ordered an investigation into how a crooked lawyer was appointed to one of South Africa’s top diplomatic posts. The inquiry follows a national outcry over the appointment of Ramesh Vassen as Consul-General of India. Nine months ago, the highest court in the land declared him too dishonest to act as an attorney. Mandela’s spokesman, Parks Mankahlana, said the president had recently ratified the appointment, acting on the recommendation of the Department of Foreign Affairs. “We assumed that Foreign Affairs had done their homework,” said Mankahlana, adding that an investigation would begin as soon as Mandela returned from his European trip. Douglas Gibson, the Democratic Party’s justice spokesman, said the failure was either a cover-up of a “struggle” lawyer’s wrongdoing or evidence of “rank incompetence”. — January 31 1999