Extract I was watching Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba complain bitterly about the discourteous reception he’d had from disaffected Alexandra residents. It had been a “will-he, won’t-he visit” week as calls for the mayor’s presence in the troubled township, closest neighbour to Africa’s financial and business hub, Sandton, grew ever more insistent.
The angry men and women of Alexandra, enraged by the lack of service delivery and the proliferation of shacks in an already over-inhabited neighbourhood, had bayed for the presence of the DA-appointed mayor. He refused to be baited into addressing them, a stand-off that had the protestors fuming and Mashaba sniffily standing high on his dignity.
In the end, the mayor came to the impoverished township to chair what they called an Integrated Development Planning session. In the end, it was too little too late and the residents variously sang over Mashaba, drowning out his attempts to speak, or booed him, heckling and hurling insults.
After all, he’d used his own pejorative language when he accused them of being drunk.
Contempt filled the air as odd bits of paper flew in the mayor’s direction, along with a plastic water bottle.
Of course, President Cyril Ramaphosa took the Mashaba-created gap and visited the residents of Alexandra. It being election season, and all, he saw Mashaba and raised him 10-fold, causing more tension by saying he thought the mayor would have been the first one to address the questions and needs of his townsfolk.
You can tell the election is mere weeks away. There has been a build up of palpable tension with the outbreak of protests across the country. There is the expediency we have all come to expect of political parties: they’re good. Everyone else has failed to do their job, is bad, is no good at governing, blah blah blah.
And so, on Monday evening, I tuned out of the Mashaba rhetoric on eNCA and switched one channel down to Sky News, just in time to catch the presenter saying: “We’re getting news now that the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is on fire.”
An image on the screen; flames leaping out of the roof of that exquisite old building. I got a lump in my throat. My hand went to my mouth, and stayed there for the next few hours as I watched one of the world’s most iconic landmarks burning.
Some people have resorted to looking for signs to explain what was, essentially, an accident that happened during a major renovation to this 850-year-old Grande Dame
Like everyone who was mesmerised by the sight of the burning cathedral, I felt a sense of despair and hopelessness.
This building has stood on an island in the Seine for 850 years, since the 13th century. It has borne witness to the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the First World War, the Second World War…
And on a Monday evening, in mid April in 2019, something sparked what turned into a conflagration.
It’s Holy Week. Sunday was Palm Sunday, a commemoration of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem celebrated by Catholics with the blessing of crosses made of palm leaves. It’s the holiest week in the Catholic Church’s calendar. And one of the most important Catholic cathedrals in the world is on fire?
People have been trying to make sense of it.
“German far-right tries to link Notre-Dame to anti-Christian attacks,” screamed an AFP headline, reporting how intolerance against Christians was being blamed for the inferno. (The French say there is no evidence of arson.)
“Notre-Dame fire ignites the West’s far right” the Washington Post headline ran.
Some people have resorted to looking for signs to explain what was, essentially, an accident that happened during a major renovation to this 850-year-old Grande Dame. Others have buried their beliefs in mysticism, and called this fire a message from above — to mend our ways/clean up the planet/feed the hungry/take care of the animals/stop eating meat … take your pick.
Someone posted on Facebook how the terrifying gargoyles perched atop Our Lady [of Paris] Cathedral had been removed just days before the fire for cleaning. These mythical winged beasts, the Facebook-poster wrote, were there to protect the Cathedral. With them gone, well, we all know what happened.
I have a sense of ownership of Notre-Dame. I went to mass there every time I was in Paris
Someone else began making crass jokes: “Nobody knows how the fire started, but they have a hunch”, the reference being to the Hunchback of Notre-Dame — the hapless character Quasimodo from Victor Hugo’s play about a half blind and deaf 20-year-old bell ringer of Notre-Dame. The misshapen, hunchbacked young man rarely ventures outside the Cathedral because he is despised and shunned for his appearance, and has as his only friends the terrifying gargoyles. There were other less charitable posts — delight in the destruction of an imperialist Western landmark and some savage criticism of so-called Catholic colonialism.
Universal structure
Here’s the thing: I think that most of us agree there are certain monuments and buildings and certain historical figures and icons we regard as universal and believe that they belong to us all. Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr are among the people the world claims as their own.
Notre-Dame is a universal iconic structure that falls into just such a category: a building that belongs to us all.
It has sat there for centuries, marking history for us, reminding us of the passing of time, of the big events of the past 850 years.
I have a sense of ownership of Notre-Dame. I went to mass there every time I was in Paris. I stood in the shade of its walls and looked up at Stryga, the most famous Notre-Dame chimera, the Spitting Gargoyle facing the Eiffel Tower. And shivered.
I feel the same way about the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, which commemorates the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. I shiver there too, remembering man’s inhumanity to man.
Somebody told me we should be grateful that the Notre-Dame fire was not the result of arson. How could we forgive anyone for wanting to destroy something that is such a huge part of our history?
An image emerged after the smoke had cleared … a glowing, unscathed gold cross still standing in the rays of light amid the destruction.
A friend, who is not a believer but who loves architecture and was grateful that they’d saved the structure said: “The symbolism in Easter week is enormous. Death. Rebirth. Hmmm ... That cross,” my friend said, “could convert any heathen.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.