Charlottesville, Virginia: the history of the statue at the centre of violent unrest

The statue of Robert Lee in Charlottesville.
Shutterstock

The violent scenes in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of one woman and left many more injured began as a dispute over a statue of General Robert E. Lee, which sits in a local public park. However, the controversy feeds into a much wider debate that is as old as the United States itself. So who was Lee and why does a memorial to him trouble so many people?

The meeting of white supremacists in Charlottesville was originally held under the pretext of demonstrating against plans to remove the statue. The Charlottesville city council voted in February for it to be removed from the recently renamed Emancipation Park (formerly Lee Park). The decision came as part of a movement to challenge the ubiquity of Confederate symbols in the South.

These statues, for their opponents, signify the oppression of African Americans under slavery and the Jim Crow segregation laws. They serve as daily reminders of the vulnerability of black people. The message of such monuments is the same to many of their defenders, even if their interpretation is different. To the white supremacists who gathered on the streets of Charlottesville, the statue of Lee represents white military and political power.

In the decades after the Civil War, memorials celebrating the south’s valiant effort and glorious defeat appeared all over the region. They embodied the myth of the “lost cause” – the idea that the war had been fought to defend states’ rights, rather than slavery. In this interpretation, the south only lost because of the industrial might of the northern “aggressor”.

This doctrine came to prominence during the Jim Crow era when whites implemented racial segregation through violent, extra-legal and then legal means. The lost cause memory was used to justify and enforce white supremacy.

For many, the Confederate memorials continue to represent this repression. They are a celebration of southern identity as white. Since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, the slogan “BLM”, as well as the names of victims of police shootings have appeared on memorials around the country. “Black Lives Matter” was sprayed on Charlottesville’s Lee statue in the days following the Charleston church shootings in 2015. Along with calls for the removal of Confederate flags from civic buildings there have been increasingly vocal, and successful, demands to reconsider the place of monuments in public spaces.

Who was Robert E. Lee?

The statue in Charlottesville is of Lee atop his horse, Traveller. The Confederate general and native of Virginia holds a hat in one hand and his horse’s reins in the other, his sword ready at his side.

It was unveiled by Lee’s great-granddaughter at a ceremony in May 1924. As was the custom on these occasions it was accompanied by a parade and speeches. In the dedication address, Lee was celebrated as a hero, who embodied “the moral greatness of the Old South”, and as a proponent of reconciliation between the two sections. The war itself was remembered as a conflict between “interpretations of our Constitution” and between “ideals of democracy.”

Here was the states’ rights argument. The south fought a noble war over its right to self-determination, rather than an effort to keep millions enslaved. Lee, claimed one of the speakers, “abhorred slavery”. In his position as commander of the Confederate Army of North Virginia, Lee represented military endeavour rather than a political struggle to uphold human bondage.

This has made Lee a powerful symbol of the Confederacy. He allowed white southerners to ignore the central role of slavery in the war. They could forget that the southern states seceded in order to uphold slavery and that their defeat meant freedom to millions of enslaved people. There was no space for black memories of emancipation in the south’s public spaces. Confederates were white and their monuments were celebrations of whiteness.

Lee is one of the most frequent figures to be memorialised in statues, aside from the common soldier. In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center catalogued all publicly supported spaces dedicated to the Confederacy, finding 203 examples named for Robert E. Lee. Streets, highways, counties, cities, parks, monuments and 52 public schools are named for the Confederate general. Up until 2015, Lee’s birthday was officially marked in five states.

The same year as Lee’s statue appeared in Charlottesville, Virginia passed laws which strengthened definitions of who was “colored” and who was “white”, and which reinforced the law prohibiting interracial marriage. Then, two years later, the state passed a law to enforce racial segregation in places of public entertainment.

The monument to Lee served the same purpose as the legislation – to remind African Americans of their perceived place and inferiority. White nationalists gathered to protect the statue in 2017 because they wanted to celebrate its message. Like the original creators and supporters of the Lee monument, they sought to celebrate a white supremacist vision not just of the past, but of the present.

Jenny Woodley, Lecturer in Modern American History, Nottingham Trent University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Striking in al-Ándalus: why Islamic State attacked Spain

Spain plays a relatively inconsequential role in the fight against Islamic State.
Reuters/Sergio Perez

Despite its (relatively) low body count and primitive execution, Thursday’s terrorist attack in Barcelona shocked many local and international onlookers. The Islamic State (IS) group was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, in which a van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on Barcelona’s famed Las Ramblas strip. At least 13 people are dead, and around 100 have been left injured.

The location and targeting of the attack deviates from IS’s previous efforts. These have typically focused on punishing countries directly involved in military operations against it in Syria and Iraq.

But how reliable are its claims of responsibility? And why was Spain chosen, given its relatively inconsequential role in the fight against IS?

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Further reading: Barcelona attack: a long war against Islamic terrorism is our reality

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The validity of IS’s claims

Verifying the culpability of terror attacks can traditionally be a tricky affair. Given that organisations that engage in terrorism are doing so from a position of weakness, there is always an incentive to lie in order to bolster mystique and inflate the image of threat.

But in this regard, IS seems to differ from previous groups. It has typically been reliably truthful in what it claims to have been its actions.

One Australian example of this can be found in the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege. The perpetrator, Man Haron Monis, proclaimed he was acting under IS auspices. But despite this declaration, and the potential propaganda victory it could bring, IS resisted such advances and distanced itself from the incident.

While IS would go on to posthumously praise Monis’ actions, it never made any explicit claims to having organised or directed them. No pre-existing relationship was found in the subsequent inquest.

This incident, along with many others, seems to indicate that while IS claims a butcher’s bill of heinous activities, it doesn’t tend to overtly lie about them.

Such a policy, while initially appearing counter-intuitive, maintains IS’s perception as a trustworthy source of information. This is particularly important in recruitment efforts, and makes it difficult for governments to challenge the IS’s claims in counter-propaganda.

For IS, maintaining a twisted sense of chivalrous virtue remains paramount.

Spain and the clash of civilisations

The Barcelona attack also reflects IS’s view of the world as a civilisational clash.

Described as a “reluctant partner” in the anti-IS coalition, Spain has resisted entreaties to join military efforts. Instead, it has opted for what it sees as a less risky role – providing logistical aid and training to local Iraqi forces, as well as preventing homegrown attempts to support IS abroad.

Spain’s limited role in the fight, particularly in contrast to other terror victims such as France and the US, might lead one to expect it to be relatively low on IS’s hit list.

But in terms of IS’s conflict narrative, Spain represents just another manifestation of a hostile Western civilisation in a state of war against the Islamic community. This leaves it more than open for reprisals.

At a spiritual level, Spain also holds a special place in IS’s mythology. Once a part of the Islamic empire, al-Ándalus, as it is known in Arabic, is seen by many IS ideologues as a natural territorial part of the end-state caliphate and currently under direct occupation by infidels.

Shock and bore

Terrorist reprisals like this attack are likely to intensify temporarily against Western targets throughout Europe and further abroad over the coming months and years, as the IS is systematically deconstructed on its home turf in Iraq and Syria.

IS remains heavily dependant on an image of defiant dynamism and a commitment to challenge the international status quo, which it claims subjugates the chosen community. As its ability to function as a “state” continues to decline, it will increasingly seek to maintain such a mystique through acts of spite against those that have prevented it from achieving its goal of a “caliphate”.

Despite a likely future increase in terrorist attacks, IS also risks a growing public disinterest and apathy toward its activities.

As one commentator has written, the banality and nontheatrical nature of IS’s approach to terrorism – particularly in contrast to al-Qaeda’s keen eye for spectacular symbology – has left many onlookers less than impressed and far from terrified.

Ben Rich, Lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Hangberg residents protest for better living conditions

Demonstration started when community learnt that about R100 million was being spent on nearby informal settlement

Text by Sune Payne. Photos by Ashraf Hendricks.
18 August 2017

Residents of Hangberg in Hout Bay blocked Harbour Road on Friday.

Residents of Hangberg in Hout Bay protested blocked Harbour Road on Friday with burning rubble. Police at one point fired two stun grenades to disperse a small offshoot of protesters who were blocking one side of the road. Residents screamed angrily in response.

Claudine Adams, who lives in Hangberg, said the protests started after people learnt at a community meeting on Thursday night that the City of Cape Town would be spending about R100 million upgrading the nearby Imizamo Yethu informal settlement. “We the women of Hangberg decided at that point that we would strike today,” Adams said.

Anna Strauss has been living in Hangberg for 42 years. She says she lives in a low quality house that she shares with eight other people. “We have no electricity and have to use an outside toilet. During the cold, the houses are so cold that it seems like there’s water dripping from the walls,” she said.

Hangberg residents explain the community’s concerns to their councillors.

Protesters said that they want title deeds, proper housing with electricity and the removal of community leaders who they believe do not communicate the City’s plans properly with them. Kevin Davids, Hangberg Informal Development Area Chairman, said: “There’s a lot of promises made by the City that were not met.” He said rental flats by the City are not affordable for pensioners and disabled people.

The protesters wanted to see Mayor Patricia de Lille, but were instead addressed by Hout Bay Councillor Roberto Quintas and PR Councillor Bheki Hadebe. A handful of protesters got into a car and said they were going to the mayor’s office. The protest then dispersed in the early afternoon.
Quintas told GroundUp: “I am aware of the community’s grievances.” He said that when he met them last week, he told them that they needed to prepare a presentation on the issues they want addressed. He said that another meeting with residents would be held in mid-September.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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False start to Parliament’s state capture probe

“The key thing here is that we need to get the money back as soon as possible”

By Moira Levy and Sune Payne
17 August 2017

Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

When exactly is Parliament’s own version of a probe into state capture going to leave the starting blocks? Wednesday’s meeting of the Committee on State Enterprises was yet another false start. Billed as a probe into Eskom, it was underwhelming.

Most of the time was taken up with a convoluted discussion on who should be permitted to serve as evidence leader for this inquiry and who gets to guide proceedings and provide technical support to the Committee.

Could this be a delaying tactic, or is it a way of ensuring that hearings are too boring to draw any public interest?

Committee members appeared keen to get going, with comments reminiscent of the “Pay back the money” chants we have heard in Parliament before.

Committee member Steve Swart from the ACDP said, “The key thing here is that we need to get the money back as soon as possible” and Narend Singh of the IFP wanted to urgently get to the bottom of corruption within State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) because that amounts to “robbing hard-earned taxpayers” and “stealing our money”.

The DA’s Natasha Mazzone said an inquiry into state capture was needed because it affects the economy and everyone in South Africa. SOEs lie at the heart of the South African economy she said. “These companies affect the everyday lives of South Africans.”

It is unusual to speedily reach consensus in any multi-party committee, but this one — made up of four committees — immediately agreed on one matter: it wants money that has been lost to corruption and state capture to be repaid, and soon.

That’s about all that could be agreed on, aside from the fact that another meeting will be scheduled soon. Even the parliamentary legal staff seemed confused about who will lead proceedings as they felt this could compromise MPs’ oversight powers when the inquiry gets underway.

The EFF’s Floyd Shivambu wanted to know where the National Prosecuting Authority was, and why it was not represented at the meeting.

A committee chairperson has still to be appointed and at its earlier preparatory meeting it became clear that there was no qualified evidence leader to assist the committee. That led opposition leader John Steenhuisen to point out that an investigation of this nature will require an advocate experienced in litigation. He suggested that Parliament take on an advocate from outside if it cannot source one employed by Parliament.

Steenhuisen said at the time that the committee will need technical experts, researchers and an extensive infrastructure. “Parliament has a constitutional duty to investigate the damning state capture evidence. In order to properly fulfil that duty‚ parliamentary committees need to be properly resourced to handle such in-depth investigations.”

The concern of under-resourcing was exactly why the DA had argued strongly and lobbied for the formation of a single all-encompassing ad hoc committee to investigate state capture‚ he added.

Lack of resources was also identified as a problem by the acting committee chairperson, Zukiswa Rantho. Speaking to GroundUp/Notes from the House she said, “This Committee has [been given] the same resources as any other committee of Parliament, but because we have this huge job we need more resources. We need experts, people who deal with finances, people who deal with technical issues of law that we as parliamentarians don’t know.”

Rantho explained that the inquiry by the committee would look at the issues raised in the leaked Gupta emails that provided detailed evidence of state capture. It will be investigating big SOEs, particularly Eskom, but also Denel and Transnet. “SOEs are very big companies in South Africa and they deal with big budgets [from] government. [For example,] Eskom is a huge company that deals with huge amounts of money, which is taxpayers’ money. Therefore it is very important for South Africans to know what is happening with this committee,” she said.

Former public protector Thuli Madonsela proposed a judicial commission of inquiry into the extent and detail of how the state is being undermined when she released her State of Capture report in October 2016. But her proposal for the Chief Justice to appoint a retired judge to head this commission was rejected by President Zuma, who also said he was never given an opportunity to respond. He has taken the matter to court. No further action can be taken until the legal process has run its course.

Civil society, meanwhile, got on with its own investigations. The South African Council of Churches, the State Research Capacity Project and the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse have released their own findings. Government’s response has been that anyone with knowledge of wrong-doing should lay criminal charges.

Parliament’s unique response came in the form of a written instruction, from the House Chairperson of Committees, Mr Cedric Frolick, for the Home Affairs, Mineral Resources, Public Enterprises and Transport Portfolio Committees to engage with the allegations “within the parameters of the Assembly Rules governing the business of committees and consistent with the constitutionally enshrined oversight function of Parliament”.

In the light of the accusations involving a number of ministers he wrote to the chairpersons to request “immediate engagement with the concerned ministers to ensure that Parliament gets to the bottom of the allegations”. No specific deadline was set for submission of findings of their investigations, but Frolick requested that the four committees report their recommendations to the House urgently.

Once the committees have done a thorough investigation they will make recommendations that could have either civil or criminal implications for those found to be implicated.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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Hard bargaining, not another magic plan, will get South Africa's economy growing

South Africa’s Finance Minister, Malusi Gigaba, needs more than the 14-point plan to revive the economy.
REUTERS/Rogan Ward

Finance ministers in today’s South Africa should be judged not by whether they have plans to rescue the economy themselves, but by their plans to get others to help them to do it.

South Africa’s new finance minister Malusi Gigaba recently unveiled a 14-point plan to revive the economy. He did this as part of his campaign to restore trust in the economy, partly damaged by the cabinet reshuffle in which he replaced a minister respected in the market place.

The plan has not achieved the desired effect – credit ratings agencies and commentators have rejected it, labelling it a restatement of existing government commitments which will do little or nothing to grow the economy.

On one level, the complaint is accurate. Gigaba’s plan, like the governing African National Congress’s economic discussion document, fails to move out of the rut which currently hobbles the economy. It, too, assumes that the solution lies in doing what is currently being done better rather than in doing things differently.

In particular it has nothing to say about how to include millions who are shut out of the mainstream economy. It’s difficult to see how South Africa’s economy can achieve sustained growth until and unless this problem is addressed.

On another level, the complaint that Gigaba did not come up with a plan which will rescue the economy misses the point – that, given the balance of power in South Africa, no government plan could rescue the economy on its own. Government promises to revive the economy should be judged not on whether they tell the country that the government – on its own – has come up with a cure, but on whether it has a credible plan for ensuring that all the key economic actors play a role in negotiating change.

Bargaining is the key

Those who expect the government to solve the economic problems on its own believe, of course, that government created them on its own. In this view, South Africa’s economy worked well until politicians came along and damaged it. All that’s needed is for politicians to behave differently and the economy will again function as it should.

But growth levels are too low to offer a better life to all, and other obstacles which ensure that South Africans do not all enjoy rising living standards, didn’t emerge when the current president took office or even in 1994, when the governing party took over the reins. To take one example: unemployment began rising in the 1970s, a quarter century before apartheid ended. The economy has always excluded most people – what we see now continues patterns set decades ago.

The government obviously does have a role in addressing these problems. But it’s not the only source of the problem and so it cannot be the only source of a solution. Some of what business or labour or the professions or educational institutions do is also responsible for the problem. And so they all need to become part of a solution by changing some of what they do.

While this picture of all the parties coming together to work out solutions sounds attractive, getting them to the table is difficult. And finding solutions will be even harder because they are deeply divided on what the problems are, and so on what the solutions may be.

Any particular idea for change will force one or other party to give up something in order to reap dividends later. Naturally, they all think that the others should do the sacrificing.

So a process which placed the economy on a sustainable path would require some hard bargaining and would need to continue for quite some time. It’s this bargaining process, not a magical government formula, which will place the economy on a new growth path.

Rebuilding trust

The government clearly has a key role in triggering the process of bargaining. This is precisely what the National Treasury seemed to be doing under Gigaba’s predecessor, Pravin Gordhan.

Its attempts to stave off a downgrade by ratings agencies began an exchange between government, sections of business and labour which may have developed into a negotiation about change. The chief priority for Gigaba – or any other finance minister – is to revive the process which ended when the cabinet reshuffle destroyed the trust which made it possible.

Gigaba’s plan does contain two points which might begin the revival. One is a commitment to a financial sector summit, the other a promise to resume talks on a mining charter.

Both may well fall short of what is needed. The summit idea repeats a flaw in government thinking on bargaining with business which has been evident for decades. It assumes that deep –rooted problems can be solved, and deep divisions healed, by a grand summit which gets the parties into a conference venue for a few days to hammer out a joint declaration.

This has been tried repeatedly and, each time, the declarations sounded good but were ignored. This is hardly surprising: precisely because the divisions are deep, they cannot be bridged at one event. Change is likely to need a process – not a summit. This should take as long as needed and concentrate on reaching agreement on what can be agreed, and building from there.

It is possible, however, that both initiatives could be the start of a productive process in which parties will be willing to negotiate changes which entail giving something up provided they get something in return. This is far more likely if this process too is not left to government alone.

Gigaba’s plans for negotiation may be improved, and so may move the economy towards growth which includes many more people. But only if commentators and interest groups treat them with the same seriousness they now reserve their hopes for a magic government plan to save the economy.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.