A controversial statue of kolonisten Cecil Rhodes may be removed from its place in Oxford.
It recommends that the governing body of Oriel College, after a meeting on Wednesday.
the Statue adorns the facade on the Oriels building in the English university town.
It will be up to an independent commission of inquiry to make the final decision about the statue’s fate. But Oriel College want it tampered down, called it in a message.
the Businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes was in the 1800’s, a central figure in the british empire’s colonization of parts of Africa.
He put a name to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and earned a fortune in mining in southern Africa, before his death in 1902.
Activists have for several years demanded the statue be removed. It glorifies racism and is an insult to black students in Oxford, believes the.
Rhodes gave of his time in Africa, the expression of racist attitudes, and laid the foundations for the separations of the indigenous black population and white settlers, who paved the way for apartheid.
the Debate about the statue’s flared up during the last few weeks, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
– first, is this a moment that should be celebrated, says Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, a south african graduate students at Oxford and part of a campaign by the name of Rhodes Must Fall.
– But there must continue to put pressure on Oriel to see it being fulfilled, he adds.
the Campaign began in south Africa in 2015 and culminating with the removal of a statue of Rhodes at the university of Cape Town.
to mark the occasion, said Oriel College in 2016, that it would keep its own statue as ‘an important reminder of the history of complexity’.
Demonstrations against racism have in the Uk triggered a debate about the way in which the british celebrate and commemorate the past as a colonial power on.
In London was a statue of a plantation and slaveejer removed by the authorities last week.
– Although it is a sad truth that much of our city’s and nation’s wealth derived from the trade with slaves, there is no reason to celebrate it in our public squares, wrote the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, in a tweet with a picture of the statue, which depicts Robert Milligan.
