‘Wish I’d whipped the white b******’
LONDON: The ringleader of the Oxford University Rhodes Must Fall campaign and a University of Cape Town protest has responded to accusations of racism by saying he would have liked to have “whipped” a student because he was white.
Ntokozo Qwabe, 25, was filmed using a stick to strike a student’s cellphone out of his hands – and then ranted online that his victim was guilty of “white apartheid settler colonial entitlement”.
Qwabe, who has been a postgraduate student at Oxford, led a failed campaign last year for a statue of Cecil Rhodes to be removed from Oriel College.
He said it was “violence” to ethnic minority students to have to walk past the statue of the 19th century “colonialist”.
The law student has since completed his studies and returned to Cape Town.
He was widely criticised in May for making a Cape Town waitress cry by refusing to tip her because she was white.
Qwabe led a campus protest at the University of Cape Town earlier this week. Waving a big stick, he led a group of agitators who disrupted a finalyear law lecture by singing and standing on tables.
When the students refused to leave and one started filming the protesters on his cellphone, Qwabe struck the cellphone with a stick. The video went viral on the internet.
Responding to critics who accused him of racism, Qwabe wrote: “It is NOT true that I ‘assaulted’ and ‘whipped with a stick’ a white student during our shutdown of the arrogant UCT Law Faculty!
“Although I wish I’d actually not been a good law-abiding citizen & whipped the white apartheid settler colonial entitlement out of the b******.”
Earlier this year, Oxford University was given a petition, signed by 40 000 people, calling on it to revoke Qwabe’s Rhodes scholarship.
Oxford said it would not act against Qwabe as students had a right to express opinions others differed with, but it was expected they would respect others’ rights. – Daily Mail