TOPIC:

This is the Bradley County memorial for WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam, in Warren, Arkansas. It's is an example of a memorial which should be re-inscribed, or replaced by a new memorial. The Steyn statue doesn't perpetuate apartheid, the Warren memorial does.

While the conquerors write, and sometimes rewrite the history of the lands they control, the facts of the past represented in place names, memorials etc, which are the realities of history, should be left in place. After the Afrikaners finally won the Anglo-Boer War in 1948, they set about taking control of the Public Service, so, by the mid-1950's, English-speakers were a rarity in the system. However, the new rulers did not set about removing statues and other such reminders of British control. I am sure that many in the Afrikaner-dominated Parliament in Cape Town must have felt aggrieved by the presence of the statue of Queen Victoria presiding over the gardens. Similarly, the Rhodes Memorial on his former estate in Cape Town, and statues of the man, and others like him, all survived their 46 year rule intact. Similarly, the names of towns, buildings and streets, with few exceptions, were retained.

After 1994 , white Afrikaners lost their positions in the Public Service in a very short period of time, monuments have been removed, and name changes began early and continue to this day.

One wonders at the reasons for this difference ......

Brett

I think it rather depends upon just how you define it, for example, segregation, as we would understand it, actually began in the eighteenth century.

BereniceUK wrote: President between 1896 and 1902. Apartheid existed in South Africa between 1948 and 1994, unless I'm reading the wrong history.
www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa

From Durban's 'The Mercury', 19/04/2018:

George V has been defaced, why?

Frank Kelley wrote: George V has been defaced, why?

Perhaps because he was King of the British Dominions between 1910-1936, of which the Union of South Africa was an self-governing member, and during that time segregationist laws were introduced to the country. He wouldn't have been directly responsible for those laws, but maybe his statue is seen as representing those who were.

Which would show a bit more awareness of the country's history than the students who want the Steyn statue to be removed do.