"At what point should people stop blaming people who died well over a century ago, and start looking at what is going on around them now?"
I don't think they are blaming Cecil Rhodes for what is happening on the ground today. I would think that a statue to honor one of the most deplorable men in history whose policies ushered in a legal system that was one of the most oppressive and bigoted in history should never have been erected in the first place. It should be brought down out of respect for the people who had their nation, their generational land, their rights as human beings, as well as their culture taken from them.
I do not think we would even have a discussion as to wether or not a statue of: Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden etc should be removed out of respect for the people that they tortured. It is also hard for people to move on so to speak when it seems that the government and society as a whole feel that somehow this evil men are in someway worthy of honor. I will end my thoughts here because I know these kinds of topics tend to get out of hand.
