Driving through the town of Burgersdorp in the Eastern Cape, visitors will pass a park called Burger Square with a collection of monuments in it. One of the monuments (actually two, but if you keep on reading you will understand) is a monument to the Dutch language which is mainly out of what the Afrikaans language developed. The statue, made from Carrara marble and built in Italy, was originally erected in 1893 in honour of equal rights of Dutch and English to be used in the Colonial Parliament.
The original statue was damaged and removed from its base in 1901 by British Troops during the Anglo Boar War. After the war the British Government was pressured by the inhabitants of Burgersdorp to pay for a replica to be made to replace the missing one. The new monument was unveiled in 1907. The original monument was found, minus the head, buried in King William's Town in 1939. It was brought back and erected next to the new monument where it stands today.