By Rasvanth Chunylall
On 9 March, something happened at the University of Cape Town that stirred the nation’s consciousness. A student, Chumani Maxwele, threw human waste on a statue of Cecil John Rhodes in protest against white supremacy. The furore has seen countless discussions on race, class and even the feminist movement.
But what economic impact would the removal of these remnants of white supremacy and colonialism have on the country’s tourism sector? The destruction could see our country’s tourism take a hit. In Zimbabwe, Rhodes also remains a highly contentious historical figure. Despite this, Zanu-PF youth, the ruling party’s youth body, recently changed their stance from exhuming Rhodes’s remains after learning about the amount of tourism he generates for the country.
And, what of literary tourism – the preoccupation of this project? By definition this form of tourism depends on a link between what has been written and the tangible, physical elements that tourists can visit. In South Africa, literary tourists in search of spots described in literature are hindered by the renaming of tourist sites and spaces that no longer reflect what has been written. When Sherin Ahmed writes in The Good Luck House about a character’s work in Field Street, a literary tourist interested in tracing her life and her work would find this street does not exist anymore. Instead they would need to search for Joe Slovo Street. A literary tourist fascinated by Imraan Coovadia and Aziz Hassim’s descriptions of the community depicted living in Grey Street would find it no longer exists. Of course these are minor quibbles. A literary tourist can easily search for the new names of their sought after spots online and many structures still exist that hint at what Grey Street use to be like.
The problem lies in deliberately destroying monuments that literary tourists may have an interest in. Take Ernst Gideon (E.G.) Malherbe for example. He was an acclaimed academic and principal of the University of Natal – now the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). However, he has also been considered racist for using the K-word (uncritically) on more than one occasion (1) and this recollection of Mac Maharaj does him no favours:
I was active in student affairs and faced expulsion two or three times. The first time was during my first year. With forty other students, I stayed away from a function for non-white students only that was to be addressed by a visiting dignitary from abroad. I recall that everything was turmoil ahead. I was afraid for my future, for my desire to study, but on the other hand, I was repelled by the arrogance of the white principal, Dr E.G. Malherbe, who insisted we should apologise for our actions. In the end we didn’t get expelled. I think that Malherbe balked at the idea of expelling forty-one students in one go.
(2)
The library named in honour of him at UKZN could easily become the source of a #Malherbemustfall campaign in the same way as Rhodes. However, destroying it would simply reduce landmarks for those interested in his life after reading his autobiography, Never a Dull Moment, or the biography of Maharaj. More importantly: an attempt to erase Malherbe’s history would also risk reducing the struggles Maharaj and other students faced under his rectorship.
On a personal note, I agree that transformation does need to take place. As a person of colour I see few monuments that celebrate my history in the province of my birth. However, destroying the problematic ones we have is not the answer. We need to engage critically with them so that literary tourists of today and tomorrow are given the full extent of our complex and often painful history.
References
(1) Nicholas, LJ. 1997. ‘Reviews’, South African Journal Of Psychology. 27, 4, p. 273, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 3 April 2015.
(2) O’Malley, P. 2007. Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa. Durban: Viking Adult. Pg. 67
