Oxford University votes for Rhodes statue to be removed

Rhodes scholarship has been awarded to more than 8,000 overseas students

oriel_college Oriel College, Oxford University | Wikimedia Commons

Oriel College of Oxford University has voted in favour of removing the statue of 19th-century colonist Cecil Rhodes, less than two weeks after thousands of protestors called for it to be taken down.

Oriel College said it also wanted to set up an independent inquiry into the “key issues” surrounding the statue of the Victorian mining tycoon.

A movement to take down the statue had been going on even before the Black Lives Matter movement began protests after an African-American George Floyd was killed at the hands of a white police officer.

Since then the protests have turned into a movement of sorts with demonstrators taking down statues of various colonists and white supremacists around the world. Londoners defaced former UK PM Winston Churchill’s statue, while in Bristol, UK, protesters pulled down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston. In Scotland's capital of Edinburgh, protesters have been demanding that the statue of Henry Dundas be taken down. Dundas put forward an amendment to a bill which would have abolished slavery in 1792, calling for a more gradual approach to be adopted, which allowed slavery to be continued for 15 more years.

Campaigners had also demanded changes to the Rhodes scholarship, which has been awarded to more than 8,000 overseas students to study at Oxford University, since 1902.

Rhodes, like many builders of the British Empire, was a white supremacist and gave his name to the territories of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and founded the De Beers diamond company.

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign said it was cautiously optimistic after the college's announcement.

“However, we have been down this route before, where Oriel College has committed to taking a certain action but has not followed through: notably, in 2015, when the college committed to engaging in a six-month-long democratic listening exercise,” it was quoted as saying in an AFP report.

Susan Brown, the leader of Oxford City Council, said she welcomed the news from Oriel College and added that the city council would welcome an early submission of a formal planning application from Oriel to accompany the review process and feed into it.

Following a Rhodes Must Fall Campaign, the statue of Cecil Rhodes was taken down from the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Governor of Oriel college has said that they would look into broader issues of diversity in the campus and review access and attendance of BAME [black and minority ethnic] undergraduate, graduate students and faculty, together with a review of how the college's 21st Century commitment to diversity can sit more easily with its past.

The statue will stay up till the commission completes its work later this year.