“Rhodes Must Fall” and Memphis' Confederate Monuments
by DANIEL KIEL
September 24, 2015
Cecil John Rhodes is both famous and infamous in South Africa. He is famous as an arch-imperialist, involved in the colonial expansion in Southern Africa in the late 19th century that generated much of the economic infrastructure that still underlies South Africa today. He is infamous also as an arch-imperialist, involved in the subjugation of native Africans to help drive economic expansion, generating much of the social division that has plagued this country.
When I arrived in South Africa two months ago, I didn't anticipate thinking much about Cecil John Rhodes, who died more than a century ago. Yet the local news was abuzz with coverage of a movement called Rhodes Must Fall.
Furious over a campus display of a symbol of a colonial and oppressive past, black students at the University of Cape Town organized to demand the removal of a Rhodes statue. After a month of protest, the statue was removed by the university. The Rhodes Must Fall movement has spread to other campuses and communities in South Africa and beyond, targeting not only Rhodes but also other figures from complicated pasts ...
The movement to remove the Forrest statue in Memphis is similarly about both past and present. There is symbolism of one kind in the commemoration of a Confederate general and symbolism of a very different kind in the push for its removal. But the Forrest controversy is significant because it occurs in a community with persistent racial disparities in areas from education to economics to criminal justice ...
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/rhodes-must-fall-and-memphis-confederate-monuments/Content?oid=4183953
= new reply since forum marked as read
