Statue of Cecil Rhodes, Bronze memorial statue in Company's Garden, Cape Town, South Africa
The statue of Cecil John Rhodes shows him in formal dress with his hand outstretched, positioned in the historic Company's Garden grounds. The bronze monument sits within a large park that also contains colonial-era buildings and open green spaces.
Herbert Baker designed this monument in 1908 to honor Cecil Rhodes, who shaped southern African politics and mining during colonial times. The work was built as a memorial to one of the era's most powerful figures.
The statue sits at the center of how South Africans think about colonial history and what should be remembered today. Different visitors see it in very different ways based on their own perspectives.
You can reach the statue through several entrances to the garden, with the main gate on Queen Victoria Street. The location is walkable, and the park itself has paths that are straightforward to navigate.
In July 2020, activists used an angle grinder to remove the statue's head during the night, which sparked wider debates about how to handle colonial monuments. This event became a turning point in how people publicly discussed the memorial.
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