Exchanging symbols: monuments and memorials in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In the essays in this book the authors tackle policy questions, aspects of history and some of the new monuments aimed at redress in the present South African climate. It is to be hoped that a reading of this book will inform the decisions made by politicians and culture brokers when they spend taxpayers' money on the erection of monuments. It would be refreshing if the artists commissioned to make such monuments could look at African traditions of figuration and commemoration which fall outside the monumental, and if the artists could be professional and theoretically informed of the ways in which monuments are commissioned, planned and accessed.