Abstract
Are bronze statues an appropriate way of memorializing key individuals in post-colonial
Botswana or is it simply a borrowed idea from the colonialists? Considering that these
edifices already exist within our landscape, how can we manipulate them to tell their story
to the future communities to come? This thesis will begin by investigating the ‘Three
Dikgosi monument’ which is a bronze statue in Gaborone, Botswana and then connect it
to several existing monuments in the Central Business district (CBD) of said city. This will
be done while creating specific loci of memorial spaces to connect these monuments and
highlight different ways of memorialising in the urban fabric of Gaborone. The interest in
this site draws from my experience with memorial statues that only capture one part of
the narrative and try and sell it to its people which I believe to be partial.
Sabine Marshall (2017:675) notes how there is a disjuncture between existing monuments
and how the public perceives them, especially in the context of South Africa. She describes
monuments as “edifices that try so hard to be noticed yet they virtually repel our gaze”. This
is most common with the younger generation as many of the youths are unable to engage
with these statues because they have no meaning attached to them. Anitra Nettleton
(2019:51) argues that currently, monuments have lost their symbolic importance and are
merely viewed as a public sculptures which diminishes their importance in embodying
past events and values. Gamedze (2015) also notes that statues are both a continuation
of the pre-1994 iconography; (with regards to South Africa) this is because of how they
have a similar aesthetic to their predecessors rather now with different figureheads. I also
argue that re-enacting bronze statues of past individuals is a somewhat watered-down
method of representing public memory.
Nettleton (2019:51) mentions that in commemorating key past figures, one does not
have to indulge in the “neo-romantic realism of bronze figure sculptures and should
strive to achieve more thoughtful, context- centred, and community-inspired memorials
than tired remakes of colonial prototypes which is what this thesis attempts to do. Tafuri
(1976:172) explains how the instruments of the capitalist’s cover-ups have been used to
dazzle the public and co-opt it into accepting monuments as the universal languages of
emancipation and progress. This is evident in the Three Dikgosi monument in Gaborone
where a form of ‘nationalised identity’ has made people abandon their former ethnic and
localized identities to a great extent as Morton & Ramsay (2017) discuss in their paper.
This research aims to discover alternative context- specific ways of memorializing in
the urban landscape within the context of Gaborone and highlight specific ways of
remembrance for the particular tribes involved. Through studying Catherine Dee’s
Critical and Visual Studies Landscape, I will employ the use of “Visual Narratives” through
poetry and a combination of “Dialogic Drawings” and “Art as enquiry” through the forms
of technical drawings and surrealist imagery respectively. This is to emphasise as Dee
(2004:22) highlights how places in the landscape are conceived and made and thereafter
perceived and understood. In the “Visual Narratives” research method, Dee (2004: 24)
explains that this basically is concerned with telling the stories of landscapes through
narrative. In here I will adopt the use of narrative poetry which will tell the story of the site
through the verses of a poem. Similar to a novel, a narrative poem has plot, characters
and a setting which in this case is the chosen site.
Liz Stanley (2020) notes that statues and memorials are both largely unseen and also
omnipresent aspects of urban landscapes. She adds that their presence adds value to the
cityscape in how it is understood much as their specific histories may be misrepresented
or poorly documented. This could be because of the lack of engagement with the public
during the design and planning phase of these edifices. Gamedze (2015) states that
without re-imagining our public spaces, we are inevitably trapped by a linear history
with a rotten origin and bronze is simply a symptom of that. She adds that “…Bronze
symbolises a regime, a triumph over land. It spurs action within people who look at
bronze figures and do not see themselves reflected back.” This demonstrates how by
mimicking western imagery, these statues are denied the right to a cultural representation
and memorialisation.
Since Botswana gained independence, its communities have been in a co-current and
continuous dialogue with the past and present. Similar to South Africa, stories that were
once buried and censored are becoming more central to an evolving public space as
Judin (2021:7) highlights. This is a positive sign in beginning to ‘decolonise’ spaces in
Southern Africa. It is important for African countries to tell their narrative concerning its
traumatic political past. However, what happens when colonialism is embedded into the
very thinking of its colonies in that the architecture that they now create continues to relive
its tyrants past? What happens when the statues designed are to resemble that of
the oppressor and hence its very own people are unable to interact or engage with it?
This leads to my final question; what would a space of memorialisation look like if it was
a space that allowed the public to create and recreate its own formulations of memory?