AfriForum slams EFF proposal to remove colonial and apartheid statues, says Afrikaner heritage under threat
Cecil John Rhodes Memorial on Devil's Peak in Cape Town. The EFF has made a proposal for colonial and apartheid statues to be removed from across the country.
Image: Henk Kruger / Independent Newspapers
Lobby group AfriForum says it will do all “in its power” to prevent the removal of colonial and apartheid-era monuments and statues from across South Africa.
The group was reacting after the EFF tabled a parliamentary motion on Friday calling for their removal from public spaces.
The organisation said it viewed the proposal as a direct attack on Afrikaners’ right to exist in the country.
Ernst van Zyl, AfriForum's head of public relations said that the move was part of the EFF's demolition culture.
“Politicians who have proven that they cannot build anything, like the EFF, are simply encouraging destruction and violence. Because the EFF has failed to build even one promised school, they are now focusing instead on promises to tear down statues,” said Van Zyl.
“The removal of part of the community's symbols, statues and heritage is a shameless attempt to strip away this group's identity and right to exist. History offers numerous examples of cases where the physical suppression of or violence aimed at specific communities was preceded by similar actions.
“If, according to the EFF, there is no place for statues of Louis Botha or Paul Kruger or the Voortrekker Monument, the place of the Afrikaner is also in serious jeopardy,” he said.
IOL reported that EFF chief whip Nontando Nolutshungu, who presented the motion, framed the issue as part of South Africa's ongoing struggle to break free from the legacy of white supremacy.
“The unresolved question of colonial memory and its poisonous symbols stood unchallenged on Friday,” she told MPs. "They are not neutral symbols of history. They are monuments of colonialism and material reminders that although the political regime of apartheid has been formally defeated, the ideological, cultural, and economic structures of conquest remain intact."
Nolutshungu argued that the placement of these statues was designed to normalise oppression and to impose psychological dominance over generations of black South Africans.