A group of Capetonians on Tuesday gathered outside parliament to protest against the statue of Louis Botha, the first prime minister of the Union of SA.

The protest organised by the Black People’s National Crisis Committee resulted in a brief scuffle with police, which had barricaded the area.

A man could be seen approaching the police, repeatedly asking why they had touched him. One police officer could also be heard instructing others to take the man behind the banner or he would end the picket.  

The man and a police officer  could heard arguing in Xhosa, one saying, “You must also go home satan.”

Police could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

In a statement, the group said: “Apart from the gruesome realities of being black in SA, there is a cognitive battle around the monuments in SA which continue to demonstrate the power relations between the master and slave, the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed. To us it is not only colonial but it reinforces the idea that a foreign invader can continue having a conquered society represented in their own image.”

It urged “self respecting black people to come out in their numbers in front of parliament. We want to  make it unequivocally clear that our demand for the removal of our colonial monuments, starting with the Louis Botha statue, fall onto deaf ears. We black people of this country will take them down with our bare hands.”