Tired of African muscle yet?
I didn't think so.
This time we'll work our way through the countries of East and South Africa.
1. In Ethiopia most of the population speaks Amharic, an Afro-Asiatic language related to Arabic and Hebrew. Poverty and puritanical religion have minimized public art, but I like the Ethiopian-Cuban Friendship Memorial. It shows two stylized men, one comforting the other, with his head on the other's shoulders.
2. War-torn Somalia isn't even a country anymore, but it still managed the Dhagax Tuur monument, a young man on a very high tower running toward the future.
3. Uganda, site of dictators, genocide, and "kill the gays" laws, has a lot of statues of smiling despots, but only one with beefcake: the Commonwealth Monument in Kampala.
4. A stylized, muscular rider, calling his people to war, from Malawi.
5. I knew a guy from Zambia. You never saw such a snob. But the Freedom Statue in Lusaka, a 50-foot tall guy breaking his chains, is one of the more impressive on the subcontinent.
More after the break.
6. The Republic of South Africa is the most gay-friendly of any country in the subcontinent, and one of the most gay-friendly in the world, with same-sex marriage, job and housing protection, adoption rights -- gay men can even donate blood, which is illegal in the United States.
And there is a surprising amount of beefcake art, such as this muscular rider on the Rhodes Memorial overlooking Cape Town.
7. The naked men holding hands are Castor and Pollux, brothers from Greek mythology, atop a building in Pretoria.
8. The Diggers Memorial in the Ernest Oppenheimer Gardens, Kimberley, commemorates miners with a display of six muscular men holding up a fountain.
9.I visited Durban in 2000, and met the Hottest Guy in the World. But I didn't see the 10-foot tall, realistic statue of Shaka, renowned king of the Zulu nation, outside the airport. It was erected in 2010.
But there are several other images of Shaka in South Africa.
10. A loose-slate construction of a reclining man, naked, with penis, outside the Apple Mac Headquarters in Johannesburg.
It's called "Homage to Hermes," by sculptor Angus Taylor.
He has others installed near Cape Town, and in Belgium and Canada.
11. Jan Smuts was a famous South African statesman. There are several statues of him in the country, including this nude, stylized version outside the art museum in Kimberley.
Americans might have a special interest in the Smuts Memorial because, through a linguistic accident, in American English "smut" means "pornography."
See also:
Top 10 Public Penises of Africa; and
The Hottest Guy in the World.
