Pulling down statues

Europeans, Americans and all other former colonisers have every right to do whatever they wish with their statues. Those who regret their slave/owner past will remove the statues from public view, and those who are proud of such past will retain the statues in place. It's their past after all. By "their" I mean THEM as they are today: white, yellow, brown, black etc.

As a Southern African whose parents lived and worked under apartheid in neighbouring South Africa, I wish statues of such apartheid icons as Hendrik Verwoerd could not only be left in place, but be protected with our lives, if need be.

Destroying or taking down and removing such statues is tantamount to tampering with a crime scene. Our children need to be educated about the actions of such characters as Verwoerd. Such education requires that our children actually see the statues, the same way a trainee investigator is exposed to crime scenes.

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