Dismantling colonial monuments in African cities - the example of Bissau. Is an empty plinth still a monument?

Abstract

This article examines the fate of colonial monuments in Africa during the post-colonial period, especially the monuments that the Portuguese erected in Bissau in West Africa. The discussion is preceded by a detailed analysis of the sources that describe the iconoclasm of colonial monuments in selected African cities and a thorough description of the field studies conducted by the authors in Guinea-Bissau in 2020. As new African states replaced former colonies, the removal of European monuments in their capitals became a widely discussed topic. Some expressly political colonial monuments were removed at the time of formal decolonization, others have fallen down over the years, and yet others still stand. What distinguishes Bissau from every other postcolonial capital in Africa is that, while all its colonial monuments were dismantled after 1973, most of the plinths on which they stood have remained. These empty plinths are a symbol of decolonization – sui generis monuments of dismantled monuments. They speak volumes about the nature of the transformations that have taken place in recent decades. The new way of commemorating people and events in the symbolic and political landscape of Bissau, viz. murals created on the grassroots initiatives of young Bissau-Guineans, is also examined.