Former South African president calls campaign to remove Rhodes’s statue to protest racism ‘folly’
By Susan Svrluga
December 28 at 1:16 PM
F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last president to lead a country divided by apartheid, called a student-led campaign to remove symbols of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes “folly.”
Protests against Rhodes flared up in South Africa in March, when students at one of the country’s most prestigious institutions, the University of Cape Town, defaced a bronze statue of the wealthy British imperialist. Rhodes dreamed of British domination of much of Africa, founded Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), had openly and stridently racist views, and left behind a generous and lasting philanthropic legacy in higher education including a university and the elite global scholarships which carry his name.
The “Rhodes Must Fall” movement spread, with students at Rhodes University and Oxford joining on social media. In an online petition, activists called on Oriel College at the University of Oxford to remove a statue honoring Rhodes. “This statue is an open glorification of the racist and bloody project of British colonialism,” they wrote. “An architect of apartheid in Southern Africa, Rhodes is the same apartheid colonialist who said: ‘I prefer land to <racial slur>s …the natives are like children. They are just emerging from barbarism…one should kill as many <racial slur>s as possible’ ” ...
De Klerk has a complicated legacy himself. After serving for years in the party that maintained the brutal apartheid system of racial discrimination and forced separation in South Africa, he helped broker the end of it and was awarded, with Nelson Mandela, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
De Klerk wrote in a letter to the British newspaper, The Times, that it is “regrettable” that the “Rhodes Must Fall” protests spread. “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. Rhodes, for better or for worse, certainly had an impact on history,” de Klerk wrote ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/12/28/former-south-african-president-calls-campaign-to-remove-rhodess-statue-to-protest-racism-folly-and-protesters-laugh-him-off/