Why?
Cecil John Rhodes was a specially disgusting piece of work. He didn't care one iota about this, or any other country for that matter, except of course his beloved British Empire. He was the ultimate colonist, and never cared about the people that was subjugated under the burden of his imperialistic occupation. As long as Britain was powerful and rich, he was happy!
In our own, very personal Afrikaner experience, Rhodes is regarded as a war criminal and murderer. We was with that other rouge Horatio Herbert Kitchener, part of the planning and execution of “the scorched earth policy”, the total destruction of civilian homes and property, the systematic burning down of everything owned by anyone not British, and above all, the horrid murderous concentration camps, that cold heartedly and symptomatically genocidal murder thousands of Afrikaans woman, children and old defenceless people. A third of the Afrikaner population was brutally murdered. Not one child under the age of 5 survived this genocide. Half the woman that entered those camps never came out again.
Kitchener is on record as to order the “killing of as many of the opposition as humanly possible”.
George Witton wrote in 'Scapegoats of the Empire':
"It was customary in outlying districts during the latter stages of the war to shoot as many of the enemy as possible. Vaguely-worded orders were issued that 'All officers should strive to the utmost to bring the war to a speedy termination'…These orders were interpreted in only one way by the officers, and that was 'No quarter, no prisoners."This lead to large scale murdering of prisoners of war. Rhodes and Kitchener prosecuted a war by murdering woman and children and unarmed men, with a ferocious blood-lust beyond all levels of humanity, in fact by “methods of barbarism”!
Let's recall Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman:
“What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture. It is that we should sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba; and how we denounced the Spaniards! – the women and children into camps...in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 430 in the thousand. A phrase often used is that "war is war", but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.”It was only due to the history as written by the victor, and the British uncanny ability to turn any “truth” to only reflect themselves in a positive light, that this disgusting vile man is not listen by historians as one of the greatest war criminals of all time, guilty of just about every recorded crime against humanity. He should be listed in the company of Hitler, Ceau?escu, Stalin, Milosovic, Hussein, Pol Pot, and al the other vile excrement produced by mankind.
Break down that damn statue, melt it down, who cares! I personally will not miss his presence one little bit! Cecil John Rhodes should burn in hell, not sit on a pedestal at one of our respected institutions of learning!