The Guardian view on Confederate statues: they must fall | Editorial

Toppling symbols of hate is not an assault on the past but a defence of the futureOne Friday afternoon in September 1994, a statue was pulled down from in front of provincial government offices in what was then the Orange Free State in South Africa. It depicted Hendrik Verwoerd, the country’s prime minister from 1958 to 1961, administrative architect of “apartheid” and a vicious racist. No one who grasps the barbarism that his doctrines imposed laments the removal of monuments