Headless Cecil Rhodes statue in South Africa

The statue, located on the north slope of Table Mountain, a popular tourist attraction, was smashed earlier this week, King Thakhuli of SANParks said in a statement.

Thakhuli said a ranger from Table Mountain National Park had discovered that the statue’s head had been ripped off while patrolling the area.

“The statue’s head was severed from the bust with what appears to be an angle grinder somewhere between Sunday night or the early hours of Monday morning,” he said.

And as co-founder of the diamond mining company, De Beers, Rhodes also wanted to acquire more territory for mining.

SANParks said it could not determine the reason for the vandalism, but had reported the incident to the police.

The decapitation of the statue in Cape Town comes immediately after the global Black Lives Matter protests that have seen figures of colonialists crumble around the world.

In Uganda and Nigeria, activists have called on their governments to remove and rename streets and monuments named after colonialists. They say that these figures recall their colonial conquest in some African countries.

Last month, protesters in England also called for the removal of a Rhodes statue outside Oriel College at Oxford University, where the late imperialist studied.

The protests were based on the 2015 #RhodesMustFall campaign campaign in South Africa that led to the evacuation of a Rhodes monument at the University of Cape Town.