Talk:Rhodes Must Fall

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This article is written in South African English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, realise, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

A fact from Rhodes Must Fall appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 April 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a protest movement began after excrement was thrown at a university statue in South Africa?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2015/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Rhodes Must Fall.

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Move to Statue of Cecil Rhodes, University of Cape Town

F.W De Klerk's Remarks

Full disclosure: I am a guilt-ridden high high income very liberal English white person who nevertheless received financial aid whilst student at UCT during the period of demonstrations (umad, bro?)

In the article, under the section "Reactions", De Klerk is cited by two news sources: The BBC and The Times. The latter is also cited by the BBC but the citation link is behind a paywall: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4649850.ece (Imperialists...)

Nevertheless, I would like to suggest (maybe) that clarification in the form of historical nature be made. In particular with respect to this (BBC source): "His comment that white Afrikaners 'have greater reason to dislike Rhodes than anyone else' embodies precisely the distortion and whitewashing of colonial history that we at RMFO are challenging." Cecil Rhodes' involvement during the Second Boer War in particular, when atrocities against the Boers were committed, namely internment of civilians in concentration camps, forced deportations and other brutal tactics consisting of scorched earth warfare. Historically the British put Blacks in these famine-stricken camps and 20,000 Africans died. By comparison the Boers suffered severely; nearly 28,000 civilians dead (mostly women and children), an additional 6,000 Boer casualties died in combat, and after the war the British forced 24,000 Boers in deportations to overseas territories.

All this to say, the sentiments like those espoused in the statement above are historically unfounded and maybe De Klerk needs some explanation.

TL;DR Yes, Black suffered under White Imperialism but so did White farmers. In conclusion, people need to understand that history is not, pardon the pun lol, black or white. We white people had been perfecting the art of war, brutalizing one another for centuries in Europe before we started to feel guilty about it in the 20th century. In fact, the aggregate amount of human suffering in white vs white people wars, pardon the next pun lol, pales by comparison.

Update: In fact, it is urgent that my suggestions be heeded before the outbreak of another fecal remonstrating mob causing property damage due to lack of complex historical knowledge of British Imperialism... Perhaps if a few were to read this they would go back to their studies!

197.89.111.56 (talk) 20:00, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How to separate Rhodes Must Fall (campaign) from Rhodes Must Fall (organisation)?

So, this page doesn't really clearly identify the difference between the Rhodes Must Fall campaign (participated in by tens of thousands of all races) from the Rhodes Must Fall organisation which sparked the campaign, but has always been a relatively small group of black (Steve Biko black) students who are, as this page indicates, quite radical.

The core of this article is about the campaign and its effects, but then it brings in the 2016 protests by RMF which is far removed from the original campaign.

I'm not really sure how to go about making this distinction clear, any guidance? (Discott, perhaps?) Both the campaign and the organisation have individually received enough press to be notable. (The preceding text was written by User:Jacobmacmillan on 15 January 2017, 11:17 hr.)

Hi Jacobmacmillan, good question. In situations like these I usually look for what other high quality Wikipedia articles have done. I suppose we could take inspiration from the article on the October Revolution. In the third paragraph of the introduction to that article it states that "The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence" to do X, Y, and Z. I suppose we could try out something similar here with a sentence expanding on the small group of radical organisers? --Discott (talk) 21:28, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 10 June 2020

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please add:

On 9 Jun 2020 more than a thousand University campaigners and Black Lives Matter protesters converged on Oriel College at Oxford University chanting ‘Take it down’ and ‘Shame on you’ to demand the removal of a statue of Rhodes. Riot police stood on the roof of the college building while the crowd below the Rhodes statue listened to speeches. The demonstration was peacefully, with people cheering as a police officer took a knee in the crowd and t the end leaving their signs on the outside of the building.

Sources: 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/protesters-rally-in-oxford-for-removal-of-cecil-rhodes-statue 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAvSeYyiVQA

Merci, --87.170.195.201 (talk) 10:23, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. TheImaCow (talk) 12:11, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

HERE is why the statue needs to be removed

Encylopedia Britannica made this comment about Rhodes: he "once defined his policy as 'equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi' and later, under liberal pressure, amended 'white' to 'civilized'. But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming 'civilized' as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing. [1] Peter K Burian (talk) 00:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]