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.
All of this resonated with a Memphian abroad because of our own
experience with a statue of a long-deceased famous and infamous man.
There was some comfort in seeing a society 8,000 miles from home grapple
with the same difficult issues. Particularly in places with deep
histories of division, a universal part of confronting that past is
struggling with persistent symbols of it. Freed from my identity as a
Memphian, I am able to follow the Rhodes story without my own local
baggage and preconceptions.
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