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Figure 3.3: Church Square and surroundings
more than a century’s absence of church infrastructure from the square, the name Church Square has prevailed.
The square has not experienced significant structural changes since the last addition in 1954 of the statue of Paul Kruger (one of the most dominant political and military figures in South Africa during the nineteenth century and who is known as the father of ‘Afrikanerdom’).
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The Tshwane Rapid Transport system (TRT) station located between the Old Raadsaal and the Standard Bank Building confirmed the square as a transport node, and unfortunately obscured the vista of Paul Kruger Street to Pretoria Station (Clarke & De Villiers, 2015).
Figure 3.3: Church Square and surroundings
Source: Adapted from Google Maps (2021)
Political protests in and around the square prove that it is still loaded with political meaning and still viewed in the same bracket with colonialism and apartheid. While some political parties and activist organisations object to the offensive concept of Church Square and wish to destroy images of past powers (such as the Paul Kruger
statue), other Afrikaans people and beneficiaries of colonialism protect their cultural heritage and memory. For example, the city of Tshwane (previously Pretoria) changed street names in an exercise to transform the city into an ‘African City’ (Van der Vyver, 2018).
The present Church Square is modelled on the layout of Trafalgar Square (south) in London and the Place de la Concorde in Paris and was designed by Vivian S ReesPoole in 1912 (Information board on site, 2021). This design won a competition for the redesign of the gently sloping site. The layout separated traffic and pedestrians and created the terraced layout and the central-lawned park circled by traffic. The layout created an opportunity for locating a monument at the very centre of the city that was once occupied by a fountain and eventually by the statue of Paul Kruger. According to Clarke and De Villiers (2015), the statue was originally intended for the square but rather located further to the west.
The statue of Paul Kruger was created by sculptor Anton van Wouw and has been on the square since 10 October 1954. The further discussions in this section focus on the position of the statue that is on the central axis of Pretoria and on the height of the plinth and the statue (Figures 3.4 to 3.9).
