This week's return of Game of Thrones was as splendid as I imagined it would be and came with the added bonus of an answer to the statue crisis that's struck South Africa.
It was unbelievably trippy because it's as if the show predicted exactly what we've been going through. The very week after the Rhodes statue was removed, Khaleesi destroyed the
Harpy statue in Meereen - the city she's liberated from slavery.
The Harpy statue represents the culture of the former oppressors who've been overthrown by Khaleesi in Slaver's Bay. The area was the hub of the slave trade and the Harpy was an important symbol to them. Which is why Khaleesi and her ever-loyal Unsullied army pulled it down in a most impressive display of TV special effects.
As it plummeted to the ground it was as if the show was screaming:
this is when you need to bring down statues. We know that Khaleesi's the breaker of chains, the mother of freedom and if she says it needs to go then it
needs to go!
It made a bold and dramatic statement about the conditions under which a statue has to go: if it represents anyone who's oppressed others then it
has to go. It doesn't matter what else they did - even if they did positive things too - the fact is they oppressed people - they stole people's freedom -
the most important thing in the world.
Which means the answer to our statue crisis is very simple because it's the only question we need to ask: did the person in this statue oppress people in any way? If the answer is "Yes," then it needs to go.
If we do this with the Rhodes and Paul Kruger statue and every other statue in South Africa, the decision about what to do with them will be simple.