Should we pull down the statue of Oliver Tambo at Oliver Tambo Airport in Johannesburg? This thought crossed my mind as I read a two-page article in the Sunday Times last week about the attack on statues following the BLM (Black Lives Matter) demonstrations.
It posed the central problem: “What deeds must a person perform, what ethics must a person adhere to and what enduring example must such a person have set, for them to be on a pedestal?”
An interesting question. But more interesting was the identity of the author. It was Dali Tambo, Oliver’s son.
How about a statue of Julius Caesar? He was probably the most brilliant soldier of all time and laid the foundation of the empire of the Western world. He was also a mass-murderer, who killed women and children without compunction. His greatest military accomplishment was the subjugation of Gaul, which he did for money, power and fame. In doing so, he probably slaughtered 20% of its people.
Christopher Columbus? European conquest of the Americas followed his voyages. This caused a massive expansion of Western civilisation. It was a catastrophe for the native people, who had been living there for at least twelve thousand years.
I see no logic in the tearing down or defacing of statues by BLM. They attacked the statues of those who fought to abolish slavery in the American Civil War, such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant and Hans Heg. They did not attack the statue of Steven Douglas, who supported slavery and ran against Lincoln for the presidency.
In South Africa, the statue of Cecil John Rhodes, perhaps the most arrogant and vulgar of all British Imperialists, was pulled down at UCT. But the same people who pulled it down revere all of Rhodes’ imperial ambitions. He thought the English language far superior to African languages and wanted it to be universal. They agree; they want English not African languages. They want to fight colonialism by embracing Rhodes’ colonial culture at the expense of African culture.
How about the most important soldier in South Africa history, King Shaka Zulu? He founded the Zulu Empire and revolutionised warfare here. You can see his effects two centuries later throughout the population of southern Africa. He was a great man. He was also a brutal killer, responsible for the worst violence in our history, the Mfecane, where populations were slaughtered or sent fleeing in terror as far as the present Zimbabwe. (He has some parallels with Caesar, including his death.) Should he have a statue?
And how about Oliver Tambo? He was president of the ANC from 1967 to 1991, the most important years of its existence. In 1976, following the Soweto uprisings, the ANC realised it had lost support among black people. It resolved to regain it by terror. Under Tambo, following visits to Communist Vietnam, the ANC embarked on “The People’s War”, a campaign of indiscriminate terror against ordinary black people to terrify people into supporting the ANC and destroying black opposition. It did not want to end apartheid; it wanted to stop anybody else ending apartheid. It sought power, not freedom. It brought the ANC to power in 1994, three years after Tambo’s death.
Tambo seemed to approve of the beatings, torture and killing of black people at the ANC’s Camp Quatro in Angola. Worse was the ANC’s attitude towards the education of poor black children. This had ghastly consequences during the People’s War, and wrecked the lives and hopes of poor black children since 1994. The slogan “liberation before education” sounded throughout the People’s War. It was better to have no education than education under white rule. Better for whom? The ANC thought it was better for poor and working-class black children, whose education it stopped. But it was not better for the ANC elite’s own children, who were sent at huge expense to posh private schools in Europe, with white teachers, taught in a European language. One such child was Dali Tambo.
Necklacing, the roasting to death of people with a petrol-filled tyre, was not invented by the ANC but strongly supported by them. Oliver Tambo and other discreet ANC leaders supported it quietly; or at least they didn’t condemn it. Winnie Mandela supported it boldly. Poor black children could be necklaced if they were caught trying to go to school in South Africa, while Tambo spent a lot of money sending his own children, including Dali, to expensive private schools in Europe.
Today the ANC condemns poor black children to dreadful state schools controlled by SADTU, whose political support it needs, while sending their own children to posh private schools with mainly white teachers. Surely Tambo bears some responsibility for this legacy?
Tambo is proof, like so many other people whose lives are celebrated through statuary, that many represent good and evil simultaneously.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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Photo by Maarten Brakkee on Unsplash