South Africa. A land where no statue is safe and heritage means diddly-squat to anyone. Apparently we’re a nation of people who can lay blame to a large piece of moulded bronze. Just in case you, like me, turned off the news for Easter weekend, let’s bring you up to date:

 [Paul] Kruger’s bronze statue in Church Square in Pretoria had blobs of lime green paint splashed over it on Sunday.

Much like the poop throwers at UCT, the guys who did this are proud and certainly not in hiding and it’s no surprise that it was the EFF. I mean, just last week “the party set alight a war memorial in Uitenhage and threatened to remove the Paul Kruger memorial”.

If that is not obvious cause for a new “statue protection department” within the SAPS ADT, then I don’t know what is.

This, from Tshwane Deputy Chairperson for EFF Moafrika Mabogwana:

We are going to destroy all the statues that represent colonial apartheids white supremacy and we’ve identified Paul Kruger as the first statue that we are going to destroy. We are not going to wait to submit petitions and memorandum we are going to destroy that statue one way or another.

Malema has also allegedly told EFF members in Langa, Cape Town that “South Africans should tear down symbols which reminded them of apartheid, including the statue of former prime minister Louis Botha outside Parliament”.

Right, ADT. There’s your warning.

Blessing Manale, the Tshwane Metro spokesperson, said that “security had since been tightened at several points around the capital city which have historic statues”.

I hope they start a screening process at the gates of the Kruger National Park, because obviously that land should be “returned”, right?

The only good news out of this story is that the green paint managed to miss Kruger himself, instead landing on some other poor dude. Not very good aim, EFF.

[Source: ENCA HERE and HERE and News24]