Activists in South Africa decapitated a statue of 19th-century British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, a diamond magnate who became wealthy from the work of black miners and then limited the amount of land they could own.
The statue in Cape Town is the last to be targeted as part of a global trial of racial injustice caused by the police murder of George Floyd in the United States in May.
Rangers patrolling the Table Mountain area found the statue’s decapitated head this week, according to South African National Parks. “The statue’s head was severed from the bust with what appears to be an angle grinder somewhere between Sunday night and the early hours of Monday morning,” the statement said.
The head of the statue was already missing its nose, which the activists previously ripped out. “I cannot say exactly how many times the statue has been damaged, but I can confirm that it is not the first time,” said a park spokeswoman, Lauren Clayton, adding that the police had opened a vandalism case.
Activists in South Africa have long attacked sites affiliated with Rhodes because of their role in implementing racist policies in the late 19th century. While serving as prime minister of the Cape Colony, now South Africa, he introduced legislation in 1894 that limited the amount of land that black residents could own. Politics finally shaped racial inequalities in land ownership for generations.
The British Company of South Africa that he founded imposed white minority rule over what are now the independent countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia.
In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town launched the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which managed to remove another Rhodes statue from its campus.
Rhodes left money at Oriel College at Oxford University after his death in 1902 at the age of 48. Last month, Oxford said it would recommend removing the Rhodes statue there.
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