Old Colonial Statues Are In The Crosshairs In South Africa

On March 9, a South African student protester tossed feces on a statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, igniting nationwide calls to remove other statues of former white leaders. The uproar is part of a larger discourse about change in South Africa, where the legacy of apartheid, the white minority rule that ended two decades ago, is often blamed for economic inequality, a struggling education system and other problems. Mthunzi Mthimkhulu, a technology consultant and former student at the University of Cape Town, stood Saturday near the Rhodes statue, which had been wrapped in black garbage bags by protesters. Some also assert that Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who was elected president in 1994, was too soft on a white minority that still commands enormous economic clout. On Tuesday, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, the mineral resources minister, said there is "still some way to go" before most South Africans, particularly blacks, benefit from a mining industry forged many decades ago to benefit a "select few." South Africa is grappling with questions such as should the Rhodes statue and other perceived symbols of racial oppression be mothballed or displayed as warnings of what should never happen again? Another theory is that South African blacks had directed their ire at symbols of the apartheid system overseen by the white Afrikaner minority, rather than the earlier British colonial period.

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