Figure 1.0: Video QR Code

German Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who survived the Holocaust, is the author of the new quote (derived from Kant), which serves to counteract the command of the original script while still leaving it legible (Hökerberg, 2017). Hökerberg (2017) argues that such an initiative offers a new interpretation of the monument not based on a schism between groups and instead proposes a critical reconciliation. Steyn and Vally (2018) presented the example of South African history where some past events are viewed and regarded as ‘a nightmare’. They speculate that some memories can be transferred using architectural designs and be translated and reinterpreted into the present to bring them to conscious memory for interrogation.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, many statues globally that had anything to do with colonial or racial injustice were defaced, relabelled, removed, or destroyed. It was like a wave swept across the global village. This wave of action prompted debates about why statues are erected and why they must be changed and recontextualised from time to time. To this end, in October 2021, authorities in Mexico City moved the statue of Christopher Columbus that was on the city’s most prominent boulevard to a less prominent site and replaced the statue with a statue of an indigenous woman (a replica of a pre-Columbian statue known as the Young Woman of Amajac). Some of the reasons for this action were to rewrite Spain out of Mexico’s history, diminish the Spanish role in the country’s founding and culture, and elevate women because of under-representation (Agren, 2021).

In light of the background, this study aimed to focus on the potential of making alterations to selected colonial architectural inheritances in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The SADC was formed in 1992 by heads of government as a transformation of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC). The main focus of the SADC is “to advance the cause of national political liberation in southern Africa and to reduce dependence, particularly on the then-apartheid South Africa” (Gettleman, 1993:461). An investigation of these potential alterations assists with the formulation of procedures and policies for the reformation, rethinking, and repositioning of these legacies.

The Casa del Fascio frieze has 57 panels of variable widths, is 2,75 metres high and has a total length of 36 metres. Figure 1.2 depicts the affixing of an illuminated