A public space to debate and discuss how to memorialize past human rights abuse so that it will never again occur.

Create a log-in (Existing members log-in)

Trojan Horse Memorial

South Africa

Two separate memorials have been built to commemorate this 1985 massacre.

» View a live map of this site
» Read the latest discussion
» Save this site to my favorites

Trojan Horse Memorial

In October 1985, heightened tensions between anti-apartheid demonstrators and police came to a head in the Cape Town suburb of Athlone. Eleven days after the government declared a state of emergency in other parts of the country, police hidden in the back of a South African Railways truck fired directly into a crowd of about a hundred people at an intersection on Thornton Road. Michael Miranda, 11, Shaun Magmoed, 16, and Jonathan Claasen, 21, were killed. Thirteen others were injured. because it was an ambush, the incident would become known as the “Trojan Horse Massacre.” Thirteen policemen were eventually subpoenaed and prosecuted for the attack, but they were all acquitted in December 1989.

In March 2000, the city of Cape Town commissioned the artist Tyrone Appollis to build a memorial to the Trojan Horse incident. However, in a rush to unveil the monument on South Africa’s Human Rights Day, Appollis was given only four days and a small amount of money to complete his work, which took the form of a stone and concrete model of a Trojan Horse. Because the planning process was so hasty, many victims and their families felt they were not adequately consulted. As a result, the original Trojan Horse Memorial was criticized by some segments of the community for which it was built—in particular, the apartheid victims support group Khulumani.

Over time, the original memorial fell into disrepair. In May 2005, in an effort to rectify the errors made int he first memorial process, the City of Cape Town announced a design competition for a new memorial to the Trojan Horse incident. The Human Rights Media Center and ACG Architects won the bid for the new design. The old memorial was removed and a new one erected in its place. Yet, in spite of the earlier experience, the City of Cape Town again pushed for a very rushed planning process, which only lasted a few months. In the end, victims’ families did approve the new memorial, although the extent to which they were consulted during the design process is unclear. The new memorial was unveiled to coincide with South Africa’s Heritage Day, September 24, 2005, almost twenty years after the shootings.