Statue row blots Mandela's vision for SA
South Africa's University of Cape Town removed a statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes yesterday, a symbolic step that exposes persistent racial divides two decades after the end of apartheid.
The statue at the university, one of Africa's top academic institutions, has been covered up for the past few weeks as both white and black students regularly marched past with #Rhodesmustfall placards calling for its removal.
They believe it is a symbol of the institutional racism that prevails in South Africa two decades after the end of oppressive white-minority rule.
"This is just the first step," sociology student Wandile Kasibe told Reuters. Behind her a crane was being readied to remove the statue, unveiled in 1934, at 5 pm (1500 GMT).
"The statue is just a symbol," she said, adding that the aim of the protests was to encourage the completion of the country's transition from the colonial era.
The demonstrations have triggered similar reactions elsewhere, with a statue outside parliament of Afrikaner Boer war hero and former prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Louis Botha, vandalised with paint.
They have prompted a backlash from white activists, who say they mask unreported racism towards a white minority they say takes the blame for the failures of the black-led African National Congress (ANC) party that has ruled since 1994.
The toppling of statues and national symbols of perceived oppression have marked seminal moments during revolutions, from the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the tearing down of busts of Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In South Africa, however, the end of apartheid was intended to be a period of peaceful reconciliation and forgiveness encapsulated in the late Nelson Mandela's vision of a unified "Rainbow Nation".
South Africa has made significant progress in delivering broad access to housing and basic services since 1994 but millions of people from the black majority still live in shanty towns, often adjacent to white-dominated upmarket suburbs.
With a quarter of people unemployed and 60 percent of youths without jobs, many argue that the ANC has not delivered on its promises to alleviate poverty and redistribute wealth.
"We still operate in the unequal and bigoted socio-economic conditions generally talked about in the past tense," political analyst Greg Nicolson said in a column in the Daily Maverick, a leading political online newspaper.
"The specific legacies ... (of those whose statues have been targeted) are largely meaningless. The statues are a symbol of all that remains to be done, of real transformation."
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