ABSTRACT
On one of the coldest nights of the South African winter, celebrated Afrikaans poet and author, Antjie Krog, gave the keynote address at the Sunday Times Literary Awards in Johannesburg. It was June 2015, just over 18 months after Nelson Mandela’s death, and literary circles and university campuses were convulsing. A few months before, at the University of Cape Town, a student flung faeces at a statue of arch-imperialist and maverick Randlord, Cecil John Rhodes, setting off a movement which, in the age of Twitter, was quickly dubbed #RhodesMustFall. After students occupied the university’s administration building and disrupted a council meeting, the university authorities relented and removed the statue. Rhodes became the symbol of a movement that agitated for the ‘decolonisation’ of the university landscape which, 21 years after full democracy, remained dominated by white academics.1 Nearly overnight, statues of colonial figures across the country were defaced. When Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in Johannesburg was splashed with white paint, there was shock and outrage. However, angry black activists pointed out that Ghandi, who has been celebrated in South Africa for pioneering nonviolent protest and civil disobedience during his time in the country, was also racist towards black people, and insisted that he did not deserve any honours or commemoration.2 Previously heroic icons were not being spared, but instead subjected to calls for a comprehensive revision of both the past and the present.
