Tear down symbols of oppression

From South Africa to America, people are demanding the removal of monuments to a racist and repressive past. It has happened in India, where cities once controlled by colonists have been given fresh names.

Students led a protest to rid the University of Cape Town of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a British coloniser and author of a brutal regime.

In America, we are taking action after murders in Charleston. A young man, who supported South African and Rhodesian apartheid regimes prayed with members of a black church then gunned them down.

The murderer hoped to start a race war in the US but has instead caused a widespread rethinking of those things we publicly honour.

Retailers, from Wal-Mart to Amazon, are refusing to sell the Confederate flag, which sadly still hangs over the capitol grounds in South Carolina. The flag was the calling card of the southern army when it fought for slavery in the American civil war from 1860-1865.

But the flag is coming down in Alabama. So might the statues of Confederate heroes like John C. Calhoun and Robert Lee. They stand in places of honour inside state capitols in the south and even in Washington, DC. Republicans and Democrats are working together.

History is a fact. Museums help us understand the past — no matter how ugly. But the public display and honour of those things that stood for racism and treason are unacceptable. We have finally learned they are catalysts for murderous behaviour.

So what else must fall? Shall the remains of Cecil Rhodes, buried in the foothills of Zimbabwe, be dug up and sent to Britain? Should America go through the maps and change names of every lake, road and building named for some Confederate general?

My answer is yes, but the defenders of the Confederacy say there are heritage issues that must be respected. We use this excuse too often.

Consider the issue of guns, which are too easy to get and allowed the massacre to happen. Our excuse for gun freedom is the outdated Second Amendment, which was written to protect us from government sponsored tyranny when we had slow-loading muskets.

As President Obama noted, the country is faced regularly by mass killings. We have enough guns in circulation for every man, woman and child.

A new study says American law enforcement groups are more fearful of right-wing extremists than any other form of terrorism.

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