Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and memorials in a post-apartheid South Africa

This book comprises eight essays that consider the politics and polemics of monuments in Africa in the wake of the #RhodesMustFall movement in 2015. The removal of the Rhodes statue from UCT main campus is the pivot on which the discussion of monuments as heritage in South Africa turns. It raised a number of questions about the implementation of heritage policy and the unequal deployment of memorials in the South African and other postcolonial landscapes. The essays in this volume are written by authors coming from different backgrounds and different disciplines. They address different aspects of this event and its aftermath, offering some intensive critique of existing monuments, analysing the successes of new initiatives, meditating on the visual resonances of all monuments and attempting to map ways of moving forward. Read more