Teething problems with the new South-Africa

26 March 2015

This morning I stumbled upon an really interesting article and thought I would share my thoughts. The article is about how certain statues and symbols do not belong or rather do not represent the new South Africa. It’s about Cecil John Rhodes statue on the stair leading up to the UTC, University of Cape Town. A statue of a person dead for 113 years does not often overwhelm a leading university and dominate national headlines. But earlier this month, politics student Chumani Maxwele emptied a bucket of excrement over the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the centre of the University of Cape Town’s campus in South Africa

This left me with an interesting argument. Does Rhodes represent the history of South Africa, the same man who said that white Europeans are the superior race and that we should colonize as much of the world as possible? I suppose in his day he could have been looked at, as an ambitious business man albeit a bit of a maverick. But today with the beauty of hindsight, we look at him as representing the same values that killed more than 10000000 people and would try to distance ourselves from him as much as possible.
So maybe – just maybe – this statue has more significance today, than it would if we removed it and left it to gather dust in some corner of a museum and forgot about it. Maybe it represents a time and ignorance that should always be remember for what it was. Maybe we should put a plaque under it with the words: ‘Here stands a man who even though he had some great accomplishments, represented a time and people that were the polar opposite to what we believe in today. Lest we forget that time so we insure that it never happens again to any people, race or religion!!’. What a more fitting place than on the steps of one of the most famous universities in South Africa, so that every student from now to the end of time can walk past this statue and remember and be glad that that time is past us!

Next time I would like to share my thoughts on who could replace him if the statue was removed.

William