Black Lives Matter says it wants to dismantle Britain’s capitalist state

sir – Fourteen Oxford academics (Letters, June 17) criticised the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, for claiming that Nelson Mandela would have opposed the Rhodes Must Fall campaign. They concluded their letter with a quotation from a speech by Mandela about the need to “recognise the injustices of our past” and to build a country that “belongs to all who live in it”. They said that Black Lives Matter demands nothing else for Britain.

This last claim is not true. Black Lives Matter UK clearly states on its fundraising website its wish to dismantle capitalism and elsewhere has demanded the police be abolished.

Chan Hin Ping

Singapore

sir – Nelson Mandela’s views on retaining symbols of the past were recorded by his personal assistant.

Zelda la Grange was a young Afrikaner when he employed her as part of his conciliatory bridgebuilding, and she became a lifelong admirer. She notes in her autobiography her surprise that on the walls of his office in Cape Town he kept pictures of former white prime ministers and presidents (some of whom imprisoned him): “I was told that President Mandela insisted that those not be removed. They were part of South Africa’s history, no matter how unpleasant the memories were.”

Dr Arthur Mawby

Cambridge

sir – I am an anthropologist and historian of Africa of an earlier generation than that of the academics who criticised the vice-chancellor of Oxford for accurately representing the views of Nelson Mandela in her concerns about the wilfully ignorant Rhodes Must Fall campaign.

After many years of prohibition, I returned to South Africa in 1995 as the vice-chancellor of Cambridge’s representative to reopen relationships with South African universities.

The Oxford academics accused the vice-chancellor of “ventriloquising”, which is a childish insult, and I am glad that she did not dignify this with a reply. The signatories should be ashamed.

Gwythian Prins

Emeritus Research Professor London School of Economics

sir – Many congratulations to Marie Daouda (Comment, June 19) for her brave article on the Rhodes hysteria.

As a fellow Bame citizen – an anonymous acronym that I find insultingly patronising – I too love my adopted country and am very proud of the vast majority of Britain’s history, a country that made an immense contribution to improving the health, safety, and infrastructure of its colonies. Most of all, I take immense pride in its commitment to the abolition of slavery, not just in the Act itself, but in the way it suppressed slave trading and slave markets for many years at considerable cost in lives and materiel.

Mary Zao

Grouville, Jersey