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SThe Legacy they left behind
The statue of Emperor Haile Selassie was unveiled outside the African Union and it has caused an uproar among Eritreans and Ethiopians. Some, including the Rastafarian community who still worship the Emperor as a god, were thrilled. Others were infuriated, recalling his suppression of Eritrean freedom or his role in the 1973-74 famine.
Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia for a little over four decades, between 1930 and 1974. In 1935 the country was seized upon by the Italians and he sought shelter in Britain. Thus making him a symbol of resistance to fascism in Africa, before he returned to the country in 1941.
A stern, detached figure, he was finally deposed by a group of left-wing military officers in 1974, who had become incensed at the lethargy with which he had dealt with the stagnation of the country and the famine they were plagued by. But years of instability and war since his assassination and burial under a restroom in his palace, have led to a reevaluation of his role and he is now seen in a more benignant light. In 2000, he was re-buried in a cathedral in Addis Ababa.
Emperor Haile Selassie is an example of how leaders have gone in and out of vogue. The movements they lead grow and wane—and with them go the repute of those who led them. His statue is recognition of his role as a champion of African freedom against colonial intervention as it stands poised at the African Union in Addis Ababa.
Fallen Heroes
In South Africa, the statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes was deposed from the University of Cape Town after students questioned his role as an imperialist. The protests didn’t end there. A whole range of works of art was either removed or completely destroyed. This led to accusations of efforts to expurgate, as the university authorities gave in to insistence from those who felt that the art devalued the subjects they portrayed.
Cecil Rhodes was once respected for his magnanimity: he gave out all the land on which the University of Cape Town was built, as well as his own house, which is still the habitation of the President of South Africa when he is in Cape Town.
Another ruined image includes Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, whose statue was obliterated prior to the Libyan dictator had been captured and killed.
Other targets of student anger have included Mahatma Gandhi. His newly erected statue was removed at the University of Ghana in Accra. The rebels argued that he had held racist views of Africans during his time in South Africa. What they failed to understand was that his position had changed and that by the time he left the country in 1914 he was no longer the racist he had once been.
Another statue removed in South Africa was one to King Shaka Zulu at the airport in Durban that is named after him. The Zulu royal family objected to the way in which he was portrayed. Seven years later there is still no transparency on when it will be replaced. The decision to celebrate Shaka kaSenzangakhona, who ruled the Zulu people (1787-1828) is contentious in itself. The military campaign he led (the Mfecane – or “crushing”) killed and displaced a vast number of people, who were piloted as far as Zambia and Malawi to escape.
Some former African leaders still have statues they commissioned standing, but in the disconsolate setting of their home dwellings, now largely deserted and unremembered. For the sake of emphasis, the statue of Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic still stands some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital, Bangui.
A similar fate has been endured by Mobutu Sese Seko, the Congolese ruler of the state he then called Zaire. His palace once touted as the “Versailles of Africa” is unsafe, inhabited by his former troops. A statue portraying his first wife, Marie-Antoinette Mobutu, stands past recollection in the palace garden.
But there is one African president whose image is still respected and admired by almost anyone: Nelson Mandela. Statues to South Africa’s first truly democratically elected leader can be found across the country, but it’s the one at Sandton in Johannesburg that is alluring to the horde. Six meters high, it towers over those who come to see it.
Onwards and Forwards
What to do about the emblems of bygone regimes is always going to be contested territory. Few countries have got this right.
One way forward is suggested by the slant taken by the former Soviet republic of Georgia. They have no reason to venerate Stalin. He was Georgian by birth but as leader of the Soviet Union, he slaughtered 200,000 of his countrymen and women. Yet in Gori, Stalin’s birthplace, they not only conserve the hovel in which he was born, but also the immense museum built to glorify his attainment.
Visiting the museum a few years ago, I asked our young guide why every exhibit is retained unscathed when his gory legacy is conventional. “Ah,” she replied. “We must preserve the past as it was, so we can learn from it. But wait until the final room.” Our escort was right. There – in the last room – Stalin’s crimes against the Georgians were laid out for all to see. The painful truth to put the sickening state of the rest of the museum in perspective.
