Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and Memorials in Post-Apartheid South Africa brings together eight chapters, authored by scholars from diverse disciplines. Authors consider how, why, and to what the cultural landscape must change in order to reflect the postcolonial and post-apartheid South African state. The inquiries put forth in Exchanging Symbols began at the Human Sciences Research Council, which sought to understand the performative and transformative events associated with the #RhodesMustFall Movement that took hold of the UCT campus in 2015. For many authors in this book the #RhodesMustFall Movement is a catalyst to investigate the sociopolitical climate from which it emerged.The first chapter, “Statues of Liberty? Attitudes Towards Apartheid and Colonial Statues in South Africa” situates readers within the aftermath of the #RhodesMustFall Movement. Using nationally representative public opinion polls and attitudes of adult South Africans, the research team of Sharlene Swartz, Benjamin Roberts, Steven L. Gordon, and Jarè Struwig captured some compelling datapoints about how the public regards the main goals of the #RhodesMustFall Movement. Counter to previous research, their quantitative analysis found that the younger post-apartheid generation held similar “opinions [of how] to redress the problem of colonial and apartheid statues” as the older generations (p. 23). From this grounding in public opinion, Anitra Nettleton's chapter, “By Design, Survival, and Recognition: Exploring the Contemporary Significance of Monuments in South Africa,” considers the dominant aesthetic traditions. She grapples with the paradoxical continuation of commemoration styles that are rooted in a hegemonic Western practice yet playing out in a “supposedly decolonising state” (p. 34).Nettleton's chapter stands out from the others as it provides a thorough grounding in terminology and historical context. She advances a thoughtful argument about the aesthetic baggage of monumental bronze statues of heroic patriarchs. Additionally, she provides an historical and rhetorical foundation from which all other chapters' benefit. Nettleton's essay pairs well with Nancy Dantas' chapter “This Fragile Present: Verfremdung as a Strategy of Memorial in the Works of Contemporary South African Artists.” Nettleton and Dantas are the most straight forward art historical essays in the book. Nettleton looks to the history of monument and memorial making in Western traditions and within some broader African occurrences. And Dantas considers the works of four contemporary South African artists.Dantas leverages the work of artists Leonard Tshela Mohapi Matsoso, Lungiswa Gqunta, Sikhumbuzo Makandula, and Haroon Gunn-Salie and Bevan Thornton against dominant aesthetics of monumental and triumphal commemoration practices. Dantas's selected artists that produce artworks that expand, if not dissolve, the taxonomy of commemoration in the visual arts. These artists created works that are mnemonic in nature, as opposed to the confrontational approach of Sithembile Msezane and Beezy Bailey. Msezane and Bailey are contemporary artists regarded for their “statue-troubling.” They are briefly discussed Thabo Manetsi's chapter, “Heritage Denunciation and Heritage Enunciation? A Postcolonial Discourse on State Prioritization of Heritage in South Africa.”Manetsi's chapter threads together several themes that underlie the book. One theme is the post-1994 focus on adding important figures from the liberation struggle to the cultural landscape. This additive process is generally regarded as an effective corrective to an overemphasis on White heritage within a majority Black nation. Manetsi complicates this reading by examining the hegemonic heritage and cultural framing done by the African National Congress. The political rhetoric within the nation's cultural policies tends to promote multiculturalism and celebrate the diversity of heritage within the nation. However, according to Manetsi, “to achieve multiculturalism in a political system through state prioritization of the liberation heritage will require a substantial measure of appreciation and acceptance of political and cultural difference as well as tolerance which tends to be difficult to achieve” (p. 140). The crux of the issue is that liberation heritage has been defined as ANC heritage according to Manetsi's thorough analysis. Since the ANC has maintained political dominance since 1994, they have also maintained a monopoly over national heritage projects. Heritage has been appropriated by the political, as Nettleton, Mahali, and Madida also contend in their chapters. Thus, political challengers and opponents of the ANC are less likely to be represented in monuments and memorials.Alude Mahali's essay marks a shift to a more theoretical consideration of heritage production, trauma, and memory making and unmaking. Mahali's chapter “In Whose Name? On Statues, Place, and Pain in South Africa” theorizes why and how monuments and memorials become sites of social protest that (re)activate the site. She argues for a reading of the “corporeal qualities” of sites of memory. She claims that acts of revolt (like Chumani Maxwele's hurling of feces at the Rhodes statue on the campus of UCT in 2015) “demystify the statue” and undermine its authority while allowing for “an expression of the country's collective and individual anger, or collective and individual grief” (p. 74). Advancing the book's theoretical discourse, Sipokazi Madida's “Troubling Statues: A Symptom of a Complex Heritage Complex” advocates for an analysis of power through a lens of “critical heritage studies that probes beyond simple binaries” (p. 95). Madida carefully provides her readers with a methodological framing of “critical heritage studies” prior to proceeding with hers. Her engagement with the networks of production of heritage sites draws on the work of scholars like Leslie Witz, Gary Minkley, Ciraj Rossool, and Phindezwa Mnyaka. Madida provides readers with a detailed account of the somewhat complicated bureaucratic processes of government agencies, mandates, and heritage organizations that initiate, maintain, and/or hinder a post-apartheid heritage practice.The final chapter “Struggle Heroes and Heroines: Statues and Monuments in Tshwane, South Africa” by Mathias Alubafi Fubah and Catherine Ndinda provides a qualitative review of participants' engagement with the Greonkloof nature reserve. The reserve is an example of one of the ANC's approaches to addressing the imbalanced cultural landscape dominated by colonial and apartheid structures. This approach is an additive one in that the ANC installs heroic bronze statues of struggle leaders. As discussed in other chapters, this approach to cultural redress is problematic as the statues replicate the colonial approach to commemoration. This chapter would have worked better if had been offered as the second or third chapter in the book. Positioned earlier, it would have provided readers with a good case study of the ANC's memorialization agenda. But in contrast to the other chapters in this book, this chapter falls short of a critical engagement with the statues of struggle heroes and heroines installed at the Greonkloof nature reserve in 2015.A photo essay by artist Guy Königstein is an unexpected addition to an otherwise focused collection of essays. Königstein, an Israeli-born artist who resides and works in western Europe, scanned images from two old books that contained photographs of South African monuments and memorials. He retouched the photographs so that the image of the statue is obliterated by a white void. As a result, a stark demarcation between the people in the images and the silhouetted white mass produce an eerie sense of estrangement.Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and Memorials in Post-apartheid South Africa advances scholarly inquiry in three primary areas. First, heritage production and policy discussions are dealt with to a great extent. Second, major debates and public opinions about what to do with colonial and apartheid statues within the postcolonial and post-apartheid state are, to greater and lesser degrees, dealt with throughout. Lastly, theorizing about what constitutes an anticolonial and anti-apartheid commemorative program, and whether one is achievable given the politicization of heritage within the nation, is offered. Each chapter works independent of the others; however, readers will benefit from the totality of the book as it will provide a more nuanced understanding of the issues at play. Each author offers detailed literature reviews relevant to their topics. This diligence in contextualizing their arguments within existing scholarship will prove valuable for students and readers less familiar with the critical debates around public heritage and commemoration practices. Exchanging Symbols will prove instructive to anyone working within the cultural and heritage sectors, particularly within countries engaged in decolonizing processes and/or with a polarized populous. The timeliness of this book and the debates it presents would enhance graduate courses on public policy, heritage and preservation, art history, cultural studies, as well as fine arts programs as artists, designers, and architects would greatly benefit from the examples brought forward in this volume.