For several years now, movements have been springing up around the world to protest against the celebration of great slave, colonialist and racist figures.
Summary of this global movement (by Khadim Ndiaye)
In 2015, in South Africa, after a month of strong student campaigning under the cries of ‘Rhodes must fall’, the University of Cape Town council voted to remove the statue of Britishman Cecil Rhodes who advocated the superiority of the white race and is considered the ‘Hitler of South Africa’.
The movement even had repercussions at Oxford University in the UK. Indeed, beyond the demand for the removal of the statue of the British coloniser from the university, there was a demand for the decolonisation of university education to give the perspective of the colonised people. The movement has borne fruit as history students will now have a ‘non-British and non-European’ subject in examinations.
In the United States, the wave of indignation swept across the country, as in Baltimore where, after a unanimous decision, the city council decided to destroy statues of Confederate soldiers. In Nashville, demonstrators demanded the removal from the Capitol of the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the United Kingdom, the statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson, suspected of being a white supremacist, caused controversy after the publication of a letter by Afua Hirsh, a journalist, writer and human rights activist. The statue of the same Horacio Nelson was defaced in Barbados on the eve of Independence Day with yellow and blue paint, the colours of the national flag.
In Canada, the statue of John A. Macdonald in Montreal’s Canada Square, seen as a symbol of colonialism, racism and white supremacy by activists, was vandalised in November 2017.
In Belgium, protesters attacked busts and equestrian statues of the bloodthirsty Leopold II, who appropriated the Congo.
In France, the Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN) demanded that the statues of Colbert, minister of Louis XIV and author of the famous Code Noir, be removed. The statue of General Bugeaud, author of the carnage in Algeria, also caused controversy. Bugeaud recommended, among other things, to “smoke like foxes” the Algerian “natives” who withdrew to the mountains.
In New Caledonia, several letters, including one from the Collectif des Cercles des Libres Penseurs Kanak sent to the French Minister of Overseas, were written to have the statue of Admiral Olry removed. A first action for the effective removal of the statue took place on 26 October 2016. The pressure was felt throughout 2017 (see here the appeal of an activist against the statue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8vSoqb79ec&t=195s)
In Martinique, the statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais, on the Place de la Savane, was the subject of a demonstration by the MIR (International Movement for Reparations). As a reminder, this statue of Joséphine has not had a head since 1991. It was symbolically decapitated by militants.
In Senegal, the statue of Faidherbe in Saint-Louis also caused controversy. Taken down in September 2017, it was rehabilitated by the city’s mayor. Nevertheless, it continues to be denounced. In November 2017, it was sprayed with paint.
In Barcelona, the statue of the colonialist merchant Antonio López was removed by the local authorities in March 2018.
In Montreal, two statues of Queen Victoria were attacked in March 2018 by a group called the Anti-colonial Solidarity Brigade. The group explains: “We are motivated and inspired by movements around the world that have taken down and otherwise targeted monuments through anti-colonial and anti-racist acts: Cornwallis in Halifax, John A. Macdonald in Kingston, the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa, the resistance to racist Confederation monuments in the United States, and more. We are also inspired by the recent action in Montreal in November 2017 against the John A. Macdonald Monument. Our action is a simple expression of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist solidarity, and we encourage others to take similar actions against racist monuments.”