Memorial war mural counters xenophobia
ON A WALL not far from the Bezvalleykensington border red poppies now catch the late afternoon sun.
They are so new that the odd passer-by cutting through the small park that sits boxed in between Albertina Sisulu and 9th Avenue still stops to take in the mural.
“It is beautiful and I like it,” says John Gitau, who for the last month watched artist Drew Lindsay work on the mosaic. Every day Gitau, a Kenyan national, would stop by and ask Lindsay how he was doing.
Others also stopped. Lindsay shared his lunch with some, another man began referring to him as his Godfather.
Those red poppies are a reminder of a long ago war that a different generation of men from the Bezuidenhout Valley had to fight.
Lindsay has finished it just in time for Armistice day that will be commemorated on Wednesday.
The mural was commissioned to remember those who lost their lives during World War I, and to replace the Bezuidenhout Valley war memorial which once stood on the site. The war memorial was moved just a couple of months ago to Bezuidenhout Park, after years of neglect and vandalism.
The list of those who died during World War I in Bez Valley and Kensington is on that memorial.
But in the 100-odd years since World War I, Bez Valley has changed.
The white working-class residents who once worked the mines scattered across the Rand are gone. In their place are African migrants, Kenyans, Congolese and Nigerians. What the two different generations would have had in common is that they would have been able to pick out landmarks. Langermann Koppie to the east and the ridge to the north that forms the lip of the valley in which they live.
Lindsay wanted to make the mural relevant to them too.
“This should be inclusive for all,” he says.
What Lindsay wants memorialised is a tragedy that affected him deeply. This was the xenophobic unrest that erupted just last year.
“The riots were three blocks from me, it really touched me. The politicians have all but forgotten about it but we need to acknowledge it.”
Just over the hill in Fairview foreigners and locals clashed. A video clip shared on social media showed Congolese arming themselves with machetes from the boot of a car. The
Fairview fire station could be seen in the background.
Gitau was lucky when the unrest started. The Kenyan happened to be in the North West Province, he missed the worst of it.
The poppies appear to float on the mural, that perhaps represent the rootlessness of the people who stay around the park. There are the homeless people who sleep in the park. And even those who have roofs over their heads, many live transitory lives.
Through the mosaic runs a winding path, that Lindsay suggests shows how we are all connected.
“Umuntu ngomuntu ngabantu – to be human is to recognise the humanity of others” a passage on the mural reads.
Only time will tell if the mural will survive any future attacks of vandalism. But Gitau doesn’t want to take any chances. He wants a fence erected around the new mural, to protect his new friend’s creation.
“In the end we are all Africans,” he says.