UCT’s Cecil John Rhodes statue needs no introduction, so we won’t go down that well-trodden route and rehash the events that led to the statue being removed from its position on the university campus.

We can have a little chuckle, though (HERE).

Since that removal on April 9 of last year, Cecil has been gathering dust in storage and hasn’t seen the light of day. That could be about to change though, because UCT has received four offers from people willing to give the controversial statue a new home.

Here’s IOL:

According to the report, which is dated November 11, the four offers to house the statue came from the Crow Foundation in the US, the owner of a series of properties adjacent to the Cheetah Foundation at Paardevlei in Somerset West, the Nooitgedacht Estate near Stellenbosch and the South African Institute for Heritage Science and Conservation (SAIHSC) at Twee Riviere, Langkloof, which is midway between Port Elizabeth and George.

The report says the Crow Foundation was willing to pay for the relocation of the statue to a sculpture garden in Texas “that includes works of Winston Churchill and Vladimir Lenin on condition that the Foundation would become the owner of the statue”. The SAIHSC has proposed the relocation of the statue to its campus “where it may serve the purposes of education and research”.

Texas could work, but maybe old Cecil would feel more at home somewhere in the deep south – Alabama, perhaps?

[source:iol]