Defining a sphere of influence: Karel Landman’s centenary monument

Challenging Legacies in Post-Colonial and Post-Socialist Notions of Place

Abstract

Located on a cleared koppie called “Kolrand” in the Eastern Cape, the Karel Landman Monument (KLM) was designed by Gerhard Moerdijk. Its foundation was laid on 16 December 1938, and the monument itself was unveiled a year later. But rather than being a straightforward outgrowth of the celebrations that surrounded the Centenary of the Great Trek, it is revealed that the KLM was mired in controversy about Karel Landman’s standing as a “Voortrekker” and the monument’s legitimacy. It is argued also that, despite seeming unusual, it deploys visual tropes that can be discerned in other monuments that emanated from the Centenary Trek. Furthermore, it is proposed that its visual language is tied into Afrikaner imaginaries that held sway in the late 1930s. In its inclusion of a globe and its treatment of the trek motif within it, the KLM is underpinned by a conception of South Africa’s place in the world that is at odds with a British imperialist vision of the Cape and Egypt as civilising points at either end of a dark hinterland. It would seem instead to be tied into conceptions of the heartland of Africa as an abode in which the white Afrikaner enjoys a God-given predominance and may perhaps even be linked to conceptions of Monomotapa which were an influence on Moerdijk.