The UCT - Cecil John Rhodes Statue Thread

[AntiGanda]

There may be some ignorami that belief this, but that is not due to the Apartheid curriculum.
The commonly held view is that there were Khoisan people to the South since before whites arrived and that the Vryburghers who established themselves on the Cape East border first had contact with southward moving black (Bantu) tribes since just before the Great Trek. It has however been suggested that there were cyclic movements of Bantu tribes implying that they were doing their routine for longer than was previously thought, but this was not known during the early Apartheid years and not audaciously left out of the curriculum.

Do you have some references for this. If there is evidence their movement was cyclic (these were pastoral people not nomadic), please post it.

I doubt whether the archeological evidence supports this.

 

[Fulcrum29]

Shaka is an apartheid hero... he slaughtered millions of black people, more than any white man in history. It MUST stay

It is by no means about slaughtering people, the Ndebele and the Zulu share a complicated history. In European, British, Asian and American history people did their best to protect their own tomorrow, and in many cases it was to eradicate a culture and amalgamate with the remnants. The reason behind many actions taken in the past are beyond our knowledge other than the result, we make up our own minds, and print, radio, television and social media however closed this gap.

Go read up on the Ndebele and the Zulu Kingdom. I’m not saying that massacring is an solution, it is tragic. Do note that Shaka build an empire, like many other cultures did.

Edit.

 

[w1z4rd]

Do note that Shaka build an empire, like many other cultures did.

Yup, he was a full blown colonialist.

 

[Fulcrum29]

Yup, he was a full blown colonialist.

True.

 

[nightjar]

Really?
...... that blacks and whites arrived in the area we know as South Africa around the the same time?
......about Great Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe,
......black Africans were hunter gatherers and that Europeans brought farming and agriculture to Southern Africa.
.

Whites only arrived in the interior in numbers from the 1830s onwards. Prior to that, mfecane ruled the area.
The Cape, prior to the Great Trek, was a unique part of Africa.

As for Mapungubwe, From Wikipedia

Kingdom of Mapungubwe
The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (1075–1220) was a pre-colonial state
…..probably derived from the ancestral Khoi culture, were attracted to the Shashi-Limpopo area,
…..likely because it provided mixed agricultural possibilities
…..stone-walled residence likely occupied by the principal councillor
There would have also been a wooden palisade surrounding Mapungubwe Hill.
Most of the capital's population would have lived inside the western wall.
Mapungubwean society is thought by archaeologists to be.....
The kingdom was likely divided into....

The emphasis is mine but the authors don't have a clue what the facts were.

Compare Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe with Salisbury Cathedral, Lincoln, Basilica di San Marco, Chartres, Notre Dame - all built in the same time frame.

Saying that black Africans were hunter gatherers is correct. The Zulus excelled at it. They hunted and killed most of the neighbouring tribes and gathered the women and cattle, plus young boys who could be turned into boy warriors.

The Europeans may not have brought farming and agriculture to Southern Africa but they brought improved crops. The southwards migration of the Xhosa had stopped at the Fish River because their staple crop (a non-pc corn) would not grow beyond that point.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

What has "Rhodes Must Fall!" done to us?

I have been a female Indian student at the University of Cape Town for 5 years now. I represent the voice of many moderate minded UCT students, or at least not radically minded ones. I, as well as many others, are disappointed at how UCT students have been portrayed by the media over the past few weeks.

UCT, as with many other educational institutions, is filled with symbols. There are statutes, sculptures and paintings all over our campus. All of the older buildings are named after someone, and numerous buildings display a bust of picture of that person. Despite this, many students are unaware of who these people are and what they may represent. I have walked pass the statue of Cecil John Rhodes over 100 times during my time here, and not really thought about who he is. I have written tests, invigilated and graduated in Jameson Hall, without enquiring about who Dr. Jameson really was.

The point I am making is that for many of us all these buildings and statutes and sculptures are just that: they are and will remain symbols in our minds. Our purpose for being at UCT is always greater than the unnecessary and abstract thought regarding the symbols around us.

I will not deny that there will always be latent racism, not only at UCT, but at all platforms in our country. Despite this, I don't think there is institutional racism at UCT. I understand, that the academic staff at the most senior level may not have transformed as it should have, but I am aware of steps in place to do that.

The UCT Law School has previously funded 8 non-white males to complete a master's program overseas, and offered them teaching posts. The real trouble is that private business has swooped in and taken 6 out of the 8. This can't be a problem UCT can be expected to fix. Private business is readily offering young bright black graduates well paying jobs, because they too need to transform. It cannot be a universities fault that they can't compete with private companies in the salary department.

I acknowledge that UCT has a long way to go in transforming academic staff, but the removal of the Rhodes statute just cannot contribute to this enterprise. The worrying reality of this is that this removal has increased racist tensions at the university. Any side you choose can be construed as racist. Saying that a British imperialist should stay equates to being insensitive to black people, and campaigning about white arrogance compares to attacking all white people on this notion of ‘privilege'.

The removal of the Rhodes statute has divided UCT more than it was ever meant to unite us. But was this campaign really meant to unite us? I don't think so. There are a group of students that may well firmly believe that there is institutionalized racism at UCT, and that the Rhodes Statue gives white people some sort of license to carry this out. But there are also a lot of students that joined the sit-in at the Bremner Building, because they were keen to miss class.

We as students are receiving requests to supply these students with notes, and food. This cannot be ok. Added to this, students have furthered their attack to the memorial stone that lies behind the statute and commemorates those that sacrificed their lives in the respective World Wars. What I am trying to say is that the campaign to remove the statue seems to always have been about the creation of chaos on our campus. This is clearly evident, when students who hold a differing opinion are scared to make their voices heard.

I chide the students who started and free rode on this campaign for bringing UCT in to disrepute, and for undoing the years of unity and kumbaya UCT students have experienced. All I can hope for is that action is taken promptly, so hopefully we can return to normal. Remember, the normal state of a University is NOT one of protests, riots, sit-ins and vandalism, especially when the country is a constitutional democracy already.

The author has requested to remain anonymous.

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politi.../en/page71639?oid=1023027&sn=Detail&pid=71616

 

[etienne_marais]

What has "Rhodes Must Fall!" done to us?



http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politi.../en/page71639?oid=1023027&sn=Detail&pid=71616

Nice article by 'unknown' Chris. Is this the Dr. Jameson from the Jameson raid ?

I have to add that Afrikaners rather passively watched symbols and statues be removed from the historic Voortrekker University. At a time there was even an ox-wagon in front of the library. The halls were filled with pictures of Afrikaner academics, historical figures, politicians (yes, including 'Apaat-Hate' ones), and it used to be an Afrikaans institution. Do not automatically assume that the quasi-marxists will not remove all references to British colonial history, they hate everybody, I think even themselves. There was a certain vibrancy and air to the place, steeped in history. Post 2000 when I went there again it felt void of character and like a churning machine to turn students into wealth generators.

 

[Galactica]

Why Price is wrong over Rhodes

The UCT vice-chancellor’s eagerness to spring to the defence of the indefensible and inglorious Cecil John Rhodes is astounding for former Rhodes Scholar Adekeye Adebajo.

Johannesburg - Being a former Oxford University Rhodes Scholar and given the students’ furore calling for the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue in the front of the University of Cape Town (UCT), I was rather startled to read the views of vice-chancellor Max Price, on the arch-imperialist in last week’s Sunday Independent (“The student statue protest is significant, but the greater debate around this is what really matters,” Max Price tells Michael Morris, March 22). Price seemed to be unwittingly acting like a pyromaniac fireman.

Although he conceded Rhodes’s “values and his ruthlessness, and his willingness to take the view that imperial ends were justified by any means, were appalling”, Price made the extraordinary statement: “I do believe there’s a risk of simplifying Rhodes… it’s important to examine why he came to be viewed as a great man. He achieved an enormous amount by the time he died… a businessman, diplomat and prime minister of the Cape, a military strategist and a philanthropist very committed to education, and in all these things he was successful.”

Let us examine each of Price’s claims. First, the idea of Rhodes as a diplomat is patently absurd, unless one views “diplomacy” as flowing out of the barrel of a Maxim gun. Rhodes seized, administered and populated African land with white settlers.

His genocidal “scorched earth” campaigns killed tens of thousands of people.

He dispossessed black people of their ancestral lands in modern-day Zimbabwe and Zambia through armed conquest in one of the most ignominious “land grabs” in modern history.

By 1890, Mashonaland had been seized, while farming claims had been staked out in Matabeleland by 1896. Rhodes’s British South Africa Company gave itself the right to half of the loot, with the rest being shared out among the motley crew of his settlers, freebooters, mercenaries, and adventurers. The huge herds of Ndebele cattle were divided between the armed thugs and the British South Africa Company. Rhodes’s band of mercenaries raped, enslaved and stole Shona land in pursuit of mineral wealth.

Perhaps the diplomacy which Price is referring to is Rhodes’s use of agents to negotiate a concession with Matabele King, Lobengula, who believed that he was only ceding limited mining rights, but ended up losing his entire country.

Or perhaps he is referring to Rhodes’s “negotiation” of a treacherous and dishonest accord in which the Ndebele and Shona were allowed to return to their land over which all rights had been revoked?

This is, surely, duplicity rather than diplomacy.

Killing thousands of people with superior technology was not – in contradiction of Price’s second claim – the actions of a great military strategist, but those of a pillaging plunderer.

Price’s third claim was that Rhodes was a great businessman. The imperialist, however, used his economic wealth (he controlled 90 percent of the world’s diamonds) to buy political power, and used political power to protect and extend his wealth.

He used shares and land to buy off politicians in Britain and South Africa, including members of the Afrikaner Bond. In cornering the diamond industry in Kimberley, he ruthlessly crushed many of the smaller businesses and tricked many of his opponents.

He manipulated the stock exchange and bought off people with company shares, outright bribes and job offers.

He had speculative shares in a shell diamond company in the early 1880s. He bought off rival entrepreneurs, politicians and journalists to further his expansionist aims. He misled investors and the British government into believing that his British South Africa Company owned the 1888 Rudd Concession to secure a royal charter.

Price’s fourth claim was to praise Rhodes as prime minister of the Cape Colony.

However, the imperialist used his rule between 1890 and 1895 to lay the foundations for apartheid and his premiership ended in disgrace when Leander Starr Jameson’s ill-conceived raid into the gold-rich Transvaal in 1895 failed, helping to trigger the Anglo-Boer War four years later.

Even before apartheid was passed into law in 1948, Rhodes was its forerunner, helping to disenfranchise black people through the introduction of new property and educational criteria in the Cape Colony.

He forcibly removed blacks to reserves through the 1894 Glen Grey Act, which presaged apartheid’s Bantustan policies.

Rhodes further pushed the Cape parliament to introduce hut and labour taxes on blacks to force them into the cash economy; packed more than 11 000 black miners into inhuman, dog-patrolled, wire-protected barracks and supported draconian labour laws (including the legal flogging of “disobedient” black workers through the notorious “strop bill”), facilitating the continued supply of human fodder to his mines and impoverishing the black population.

As premier of the Cape Colony, Rhodes also introduced social segregation for “non-whites” in schools, hospitals, theatres, prisons, sports, and public transport; forced blacks to carry passes (a precursor to the dompas) and removed thousands of members of these groups from the colony’s electoral rolls.

Price’s fifth claim was that Rhodes was a great philanthropist. Aside from the difficulty of being generous with stolen booty, it is important to note that, though 7 688 Rhodes scholars have studied at Oxford University since 1903, the scholarship scheme excluded women until 1976 and had clearly been designed for a “heaven’s breed” of largely Anglo-Saxon white males. The Rhodes trustees themselves today remain mainly white men, while most of the scholarships still go disproportionately to white Americans, Canadians, Australians, and South Africans.

Contrary to Price’s statement that Rhodes did not graduate from Oxford, the imperialist – who was not reputed to have been a particularly good student or a potential Rhodes scholar – took eight years to achieve a “gentleman’s pass” in law from Oxford.

The South African scholarships, from which Price himself benefited, have been controversial, effectively serving as a form of white “affirmative action” for over a century, disproportionately going to schools that did not admit blacks or girls until the 1980s. Only four of the first 80 scholars were black.

One must unequivocally reject Price’s argument that: “We are all, really, products of our time.”

Many of Rhodes’s contemporaries criticised him, including the writer Olive Schreiner, who wrote a devastating critique of his ruthless imperial methods in her 1897 novella, Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland.

Finally, Price makes the astonishing claim that Rhodes was “in many respects self-made, though he had the empire behind him”. This is a contradictory and confused claim. The British, in fact, granted Rhodes a royal charter to annex territory in southern Africa.

The imperialist was allowed to dispossess the indigenous inhabitants and offer British soldiers land ownership in return for their military conquest.

This is not a record the UCT vice-chancellor should be defending.

Link.

 

[Space_Chief]

He achieved an enormous amount by the time he died… a businessman, diplomat and prime minister of the Cape, a military strategist and a philanthropist very committed to education, and in all these things he was successful.”

This is quite telling. Success according to Price and many, many people is measured by social standing. Heck by that measure Stalin and Hitler were successful. Had Hitler won he'd be glorified now all over Europe. Instead of focusing on the university as a place where one can obtain knowledge, knowledge for its own sake, for the sake of others and not for social standing and prestige we have this narcissism. It's the same in the academia. People have to publish, and publishing good stuff gets them awards and prestige. And many strive for that. But that's not how it should be, IMO. More humility please.

 

[etienne_marais]

Do you have some references for this. If there is evidence their movement was cyclic (these were pastoral people not nomadic), please post it.

I doubt whether the archeological evidence supports this.

I'm afraid I don't have links, it was mentioned by somebody who seemed knowledgeable ages ago. I was debating with the person who was pretty sure of himself and I took his word for it, but he may have been wrong.

 

[Space_Chief]

Nice article by 'unknown' Chris. Is this the Dr. Jameson from the Jameson raid ?

I have to add that Afrikaners rather passively watched symbols and statues be removed from the historic Voortrekker University. At a time there was even an ox-wagon in front of the library. The halls were filled with pictures of Afrikaner academics, historical figures, politicians (yes, including 'Apaat-Hate' ones), and it used to be an Afrikaans institution. Do not automatically assume that the quasi-marxists will not remove all references to British colonial history, they hate everybody, I think even themselves. There was a certain vibrancy and air to the place, steeped in history. Post 2000 when I went there again it felt void of character and like a churning machine to turn students into wealth generators.

Voortrekker Uni?

 

[etienne_marais]

Voortrekker Uni?

Well the history is more complex than just a 'Voortrekker Uni', TUKS got its name from Tranvaal University College. The predominant culture through the decades, especially further back, was that of the Voortrekkers and later perhaps more Afrikaner Nationalist.

 

[Space_Chief]

Well the history is more complex than just a 'Voortrekker Uni', TUKS got its name from Tranvaal University College. The predominant culture through the decades, especially further back, was that of the Voortrekkers and later perhaps more Afrikaner Nationalist.

Oh, ok, thanks for that.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

Shame, Jon Hodgson is obviously suffering from a severe case of white guilt syndrome. He also went to the same high-school as me. The shame.

Rhodes will fall. This is a victory won by the Rhodes Must Fall movement of black students, supported by black workers and staff! And as the movement says, there must be more. In the interests of broader debate, we publish in full this response by JON HODGSON to a recent piece in Daily Maverick by Professors Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass.

I write as a white (cis-sex, male, straight) UCT alumnus, speaking to other white people.

Removal of the statue has now been endorsed by UCT’s senior leadership and senate, under positive pressure. But this has happened as part of a process by management to consult stakeholders and consider views. Yet white voices shouldn’t matter on the subject of the removal of the statue.

Why am I using my privileged voice to comment? Only to say that my voice and the voices of other white people should not matter on this issue. Only to say this to other white people. Because some of you may listen to me. Though you should listen to Rhodes Must Fall:

“White students in particular cannot be consulted in such a process because they can never truly empathise with the profound violence exerted on the psyche of black students. […] an alumni that is overwhelmingly white and male will only prejudice black people, and black women particularly, in the decision-making process."

Quoting Rhodes Must Fall doesn’t mean the movement needs my endorsement to be heard. It doesn’t. But, as a black former student leader from UCT said to me, I should use my voice to say to other white people that white voices, even of endorsement, shouldn’t matter on this first demand of the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Yes, there is law regulating heritage sites. The law requires consultation, as the Minister of Arts and Culture has recently repeated. And UCT’s management may be obligated to consult. But white voices shouldn’t speak up in this process, other than to thank Rhodes Must Fall.

Yet many continue to shout. Every online comment thread I've read about Rhodes Must Fall shows a volume of explicit racism that is sickening. It’s sickening to me as a white person, with the privilege of looking away and living life white. Fellow white UCT community members: don’t you see that so many white responses show why Rhodes Must Fall is imperative and white voices on the statue and the lived experience of black pain and oppression shouldn’t matter?

UCT professors Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass argue in “Rhodes and the Politics of Pain” on 31 March 2015 that we’re seeing “politics of pain” and “racialisation of pain” [...which] fosters an intolerance of both the diversity of opinion and of reasoned deliberation, and it easily serves to obscure some privileges and injustices”. But they don’t explain how it’s the deep, unsurprising pain at “the profound violence exerted on the psyche of black students” that is responsible for the tactics and decisions they critique.

Seekings and Nattrass also suggest that UCT should have commissioned proposals for the statue to be moved and turned into a critical “educational project” on “imperialism, ‘warts and all’”. I like this suggestion. But I wonder whether they tried to make it, somehow, to the Rhodes Must Fall movement? What the three of us think isn’t material here. As a good white friend says, transformation entails white people “filling up” less space and black people “taking up” more. Black voices need to take and claim space. We, here and now, about this statue, need not be heard.

More broadly, the movement is explicit about the role for those trying to be white allies. Quoting Biko, to start:

“’the place for their fight for justice is within their white society. […] they themselves are oppressed […] they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous 'they' with whom they can hardly claim identification.’ […] We support the White Privilege Project and encourage white students to engage with that. We also welcome their participation in radical action as a sign of solidarity, so long as that participation takes place on our terms."

That I and many friends at UCT never thought twice about the statue (even when we argued that UCT must do more to transform), illustrates Biko’s words. It’s whiteness that unconsciously normalises statues of racists.

I remain grateful, inspired and shamed by the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Grateful because transformation is imperative and the movement is making UCT a better university. Inspired by the radical action. And shamed because I did little to support transformation in my time at UCT.

Jon Hodgson

Vice Chancellor’s Student Leadership Award recipient 2008

President: SHAWCO Education, 2007-2009

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti...or-whites-talk-less-listen-more/#.VSOjpeGddfZ

 

[ellyally]

snip

STFU Jon... You forget you're living in a democracy... you know, freedom of speech and such. ALL voices must be heard. People like you telling the impressionable soft minded idiots in this country that can't think for themselves that WHITE peoples voices must not be counted is one of the reasons things are going to end in bloodshed.

 

[rwenzori]

What an arsehole.

 

[konfab]

I wonder if all of these activists are planning on going into politics or the media. Anywhere else their behaviour (conveniently recorded by Twitter and Facebook ), is going to cost them their careers.
These people would be a liability to a business, especially a business where you might have a white boss.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

One of the "leaders" is the son of Frank Chikane...

 

[LazyLion]

D-Day for Rhodes statue

Cape Town - The fate of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the University of Cape Town's upper campus will be decided on Wednesday, with the institution's Council set to act on a recommendation by the university's Senate that the statue be moved.

On March 27, the university said in a statement that its Senate had "voted overwhelmingly in favour of recommending to Council that the statue of Cecil Rhodes be moved when Council holds its special sitting on Wednesday, 8 April 2015".

"The proposal states that the Senate recommends that the Rhodes statue be removed from the campus permanently; that it be handed over to the government heritage authorities for safe custody; and that the statue should be boarded up with immediate effect until it is removed from the campus."

Protests

The Senate's recommendation followed weeks of protests by UCT students and the #RhodesMustFall campaign on social media, initially sparked by student Chumani Maxwele throwing sewage over the statue on March 9.

The debate on the presence of colonial-era statues has since spread countrywide, providing impetus on a wider debate on transformation and redress in South Africa since the end of apartheid.

Since the statue of Rhodes was targeted, several other statues around the country have drawn the ire of those who felt they should be removed.

Last week, the Economic Freedom Fighters in the Eastern Cape torched the War Memorial statue in Uitenhage’s Market Square, with the party later claiming responsibility for damaging another statue in the area over the weekend, this time dismantling the Horse Memorial in Port Elizabeth.

In Pretoria, the Paul Kruger statue in Church Square was targeted by the EFF's local chapter over the Easter weekend, with green paint splashed upon it.

Adam Wakefield, News24
Source: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/D-Day-for-Rhodes-statue-20150408

 

[Fazda]

Don't have much hope for this

The bloody mad hatters will win again!