Former South African president FW de Klerk on Saturday criticized a campaign to remove a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes from the UK’s University of Oxford.
The move to remove the statue follows a similar campaign at South Africa’s University of Cape Town, where a statue of Rhodes has already been taken down, and whose Rhodes Must Fall initiative now aims to tackle institutional racism.
De Klerk described the student-led plan, whose British arm is called Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, as “folly.”
“If the political correctness of today were applied consistently, very few of Oxford’s great figures would pass scrutiny,” he wrote in a letter to the Times newspaper.
“We do not commemorate historic figures for their ability to measure up to current conceptions of political correctness, but because of their actual impact on history,” De Klerk added.
Rhodes was a major driver of British territorial expansion in southern Africa and a key player in the Boer Wars, which pitted Britain against the Dutch-origin Boers.
Thousands were killed in a conflict which became infamous for Britain’s use of concentration camps, where thousands of blacks and Boer civilians, forefathers of today’s Afrikaners, were held.
“My people — the Afrikaners — have greater reason to dislike Rhodes than anyone else. He was the architect of the Anglo-Boer War that had a disastrous impact on our people,” De Klerk wrote.
Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond company, went on to bequeath a substantial sum to Oxford University to pay for scholarships that still carry his name, and his statue adorns the facade of Oriel College.
Writing in an oped for the Times, Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford’s Chi Chi Shi said the campaign was not just to remove the statue, but was part of “reckoning with the past.”
“Popular history sanitizes the brutal facts of colonialism and those who profited are recast as heroes,” Shi wrote. “Much of Britain’s history rests on an unsavoury pile of native corpses, of lands pillaged by imperialist megalomaniacs. To maintain the rose-tinted myths of colonialism, its victims must be silenced.”
In a statement last week, Oriel college said Rhodes’ world view stood in “absolute contrast” with the ethos of the scholarship program and the university today and said it would apply to remove a plaque honoring Rhodes.
More importantly, the college said it would conduct a six-month “listening exercise” to decide the fate of the statue.
“If Oriel now finds Rhodes so reprehensible,” De Klerk wrote, “would the honourable solution not be to return his bequest, plus interest, to the victims of British imperialism in southern Africa?”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in