Rhodes University decides to keep its name after council votes

RHODES University will not change its name, the university’s council announced yesterday.

Following more than two years of wide consultation and a highly charged debate, the university’s highest decision-making body has announced what it hopes will be a final verdict on the matter.

The announcement follows a secret ballot of council members in a meeting at the end of last month.

The decision was not unanimous: 15 of the 24 council members at the meeting voted against the proposed name change and nine in favour.

The council said it was the first time in many years, despite a rich diversity of members, that it had not been able to reach consensus.

The council said it had been a difficult decision to make and there were no winners from the process, but the democratic decision should be respected.

Although the council outlined dozens of considerations in a sixpage statement, one of the major reasons seems to be that the university does not have the money to finance a name change.

The decision is likely to infuriate those within the university community who have been outspoken about the need for the university to change its name.

The council acknowledged in its statement that Cecil John Rhodes, after whom the university is named, had been an arch-imperialist and a white supremacist, and that there was “not much to celebrate about him”.

But, it said, the university had developed a unique identity of its own over more than a century which was separate from and “far transcended” the person.