JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A hulking statue of a late 19th century white leader has been a flashpoint for cultural conflict in South Africa for years. Black protesters threw paint on it. White supporters rallied around it. Authorities surrounded the statue with barbed wire and then ringed it with a more permanent fence.
Nearly 25 years after the end of white minority rule, the statue of Paul Kruger still looms in Church Square in the center of Pretoria, South Africa's capital. The tussle over its fate goes to the heart of a discussion over whether relics of white domination should be scrapped or kept as reminders of a harsh past.
The arguments echo similar ones in the U.S., where some monuments to the U.S. Civil War-era Confederacy have been removed after protests and vandalism.
