On the 5th August 1962, just outside the sleepy town of Howick in the Natal
midlands on the road to Johannesburg, an Austin Westminster was stopped by
police. The tall man in the passenger seat dressed in a white chauffeur jacket
insisted he was David Motsamayi but the police recognised his as Nelson
Mandela, the most wanted men in South Africa. He spent the next 27 years in
jail.
At the site of his capture, a
monument has been erected to commemorate this momentous event.
The
focal point of the Capture Monument is a three-dimensional sculpture by the artist Marco Cianfanelli comprising
an odd assortment of 50 upright metal poles cast into cement in an ostensibly random
arrangement.
Viewed
from afar, they appear like charred trees standing forlorn in a
burned-out plantation forest, or telephone poles clumped together for no
apparent reason.
Viewed
closer, from various angles, the crenulated stakes appear like prison bars, hiding
well whatever meaningful message they might contain.
Then,
with just a slight shift in perspective; a step (or roll) around the corner,
the Monument is fully revealed...
“I always knew that someday I would once
again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.” (Nelson Mandela)
from
prison bars
emerged a face;
we saw
ourselves
in
the other
RIP, Nelson Mandela, 18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013
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