Twitter has been ablaze recently with #RhodesMustFall trending in South Africa. Besides having attending a university named after Cecil John Rhodes, I’m ashamed to admit that my historical knowledge of this illustrious man is sketchy at best. So I did a little reading and to be honest was relatively surprised at what I found out – this name that for me has long been synonymous with only positive has clearly got more to it than that. In modern day South Africa, it is surprising to me that anything is named after someone who stated in their Will that:
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives.”
The fact that it takes student protest (to remove a statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the center of UCT campus) for us to be aware of what causes offence to many, saddens me. Do we need to be more reflective of all that is around us, taking time to consider “what lies beneath” that which we take for granted? Or is it really about the statue at all? The statue will fall but what protest will come next?
To me it seems that there is an underlying student angst at the heart of it – be it (possibly) even just amongst those “chosen few” representing the students on the SRC. Yes, transformation is not something that happens overnight, but let’s get real – it’s now been 21 years and if we’ve overlooked the offence that a statue might cause, what else are we not seeing?
The Blonde Makoti 