Why South African Students Say The Statue Of Rhodes Must Fall

NPR ^ | MARCH 28, 2015

[MinorityRepublican]

more than two weeks, public debate in South Africa has been dominated by a statue. Students at the University of Cape Town have been demonstrating to have the bronze figure of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes removed from its central position on campus.

Rhodes bequeathed the land on which the university was built, but he also slaughtered Africans by the thousands in colonial conquest and helped lay the foundations of apartheid in South Africa.

[Olog-hai]

… he also slaughtered Africans by the thousands in colonial conquest …

Not even left-leaning Wikipedia can support that claim. (Wikipedia does cast aspersions on Rhodes’ sexuality though.)

[Gay State Conservative]

Having been to South Africa (but not recently) I’m tempted to think I know a bit more about the country than some Westerners...maybe even many.It’s a complicated country with a very unpleasant history for sure.That’s all I’ll say for now.

[PieterCasparzen]

Too bad kids, he’s a new world order hero !

[Don Corleone]

CR was a white supremacist and an extreme left winger to boot. ‘Rhodes scholars’ are expected to come away with the same philosophy.

[HiTech RedNeck]

it certainly has its own unique problems

[stubernx98]

I had a manufacturing facility in SA, and spent a lot of time there. History is that when it was colonized, the only native Africans there were in Zulu land up North. The English started farming and mining and almost all the Negros came from the Congo and Nigeria etc. to work in the mines and farms. There were many diverse cultures.

In the late eighties the Lefties in CA wanted to eliminate apartheid, and as a result of cutting off funds to SA, I had to close my manufacturing facility. At the time I had 130 people employed, with 8 “Africans” management training and positions and 8 in training for manufacturing work a total of 40 working in the plant. A car manufacturer had to close and layed off 3,000 of which 38% were Africans.

The place has gone down hill ever since. Look what is going on in Nigeria, Congo and the rest of the African governed places.

[LambSlave]

This protest began with one student throwing human excrement onto the statue. What was your reaction to that? Everyone, including myself, condemned the action, saying this is not the way to get your point across. But the question comes up: What would drive a person to do this? I mean, I don't even know where I would begin to go to collect human feces. But I talked to him [Chumani Maxwele, who threw the feces]. He literally leaves his house, turns right and there it is in the street. He wanted the statue to feel ashamed, the same way he feels ashamed that these feces are in his living environment.

Obviously all Cecil Rhodes fault that the students' peers think its okay to poop in the street, and that the students themselves have so little impulse control that they would commit such an act, and such limited intellect that they would connect Mr. Rhodes to their self-imposed plight. The government has been entirely controlled by blacks for decades now, when will they take responsibility for their own problems?

[HiTech RedNeck]

White supremacists could be forgiven for unflattering empirical observations of where a lot of black peoples are at today.

Whether to blame that on the blackness per se is a different issue and it involves theology and sociology and anthropology. I don’t agree that it should be blamed on skin. I see a sin issue, not a skin issue.

But I do think black people are morally responsible if they have given themselves to evil, same as people of any other color. If they have a bad name, there is help that they can get.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

The Third World wants all indications of Western superiority removed from their sight.

[fella]

Just goes to show that some peoples are not ready for Western civilization, they may never be ready for that.

[Leaning Right]

I’m not seeing any big issue here. Political lines get redrawn all the time (for both good and bad reasons). Statues go up. Statues go down. I’m sure the colonialists didn’t leave many statues of George III up after the Revolutionary War ended.

[Gay State Conservative]

The place has gone down hill ever since. Look what is going on in Nigeria, Congo and the rest of the African governed places.

Having traveled to other parts of Africa (Kenya,Tanzania,Zambia and Malawi) far more recently I was struck by many things.Poverty,obviously...*real* poverty...orange hair,little stick legs and big swollen belly-type poverty.Chaos as well...and I also got the sense that if many of these people were somehow allowed into this country they'd do far,far better for themselves...work *much* harder than many of our minorities and a good percentage of our majority as well.

[expat2]

At least this guy was cleaning up the street, in a small way. He would be better off organizing an effort to dissuade people from crapping in the street or an organized effort to clean it up, if the first effort fails.
Rhodes would never put up with that $hit.......

[x]

By all means tear it down ...

I get really uncomfortable every time we sail underneath it ...

[semaj]

"CR was a white supremacist and an extreme left winger to boot. ‘Rhodes scholars’ are expected to come away with the same philosophy."

Like Bill Clinton, James Woolsey (CIA Spook), Bill Bradley (Senator), Richard Danzig, (Naval Undersecretary), Wesley Clark (Army General, Pretender), Dave Kendall (Billy-bob's Lawyer), Robert Reich, Strobe Talbott, Ashton Carter (Current SecDef), George Stephanapolous, Susan Rice, Bobby Jindal (How'd he get in there?), Rachel MadCow, etc, etc, etc...

[cripplecreek]

Rhodes was a fabian socialist.

That’s enough.

[bboop]

‘Some are not ready for Western civ and might never be.’ Bingo, we have a winner.

[South Dakota]

And Larry pressler

[nathanbedford]

It is one thing to tear down a statue and quite another to tear down the whole side of a mountain. If things continue on course it is only a question of time until we face the task of tearing down the images of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on Mount Rushmore because they were slave owners.

I suppose they can use dynamite…