And now for the difficult part
RHODES has fallen. Or has he? The council of the University of Cape Town took the inevitable decision on Wednesday this week to remove the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from its location on the upper campus to a location yet to be determined. And the statue was removed on Thursday after advice from the Western Cape heritage council.
Is this victory? For whom? It could well be a pyrrhic one unless steps were taken to look beyond the fate of a monument to a villain of the past.
For weeks the UCT campus has been embroiled in rather chaotic protests calling for the permanent removal of the statue. The history surrounding Rhodes is not in contention: arch imperialist, capitalist, and in all respects a man without honour in the experience of so many who dealt with him. But perhaps less noted is that he was also, especially in death, a generous philanthropist, bestowing Kirstenbosch Gardens, the Groote Schuur presidential complex, UCT, Rhodes University and the Rhodes Scholarships.
The debates on campus were angry, passionate, even bitter; noisy but determined. The administration block, Bremner Building, has been occupied by protesting students in a bid to render the university ungovernable. The student occupiers have now renamed the building “Azania House”, presumably to signal that it is the seat of revolution, or a place that now belongs to them. There have been confrontations and defiance. And yet, we have been assured, the ordinary life of the university continues — if one can talk about the ordinary in the midst of chaos.
As part of the university-wide consultation process initiated by university management, the UCT Convocation held a well-attended meeting on Tuesday to deliberate about the impact of this issue on the prestige and image of the university. I counted five generations of UCT graduates at that meeting, from the early ’50s to 2014. There was a lot of memorialising about UCT and what it stood for. There were references to similar events in the lives of previous student generations; there was sharp criticism of some of the student leadership and of management. And there were many who held that Rhodes was not worthy of being defended by the modern UCT.
History by its nature is argumentative. In the fervour of radicalism it does not appear that today’s generation of students has learnt much from Nelson Mandela when he said that the purpose of studying history was not so much to “deride human action, nor to weep over it, or to hate it, but to understand it — and then to learn from it as we contemplate the future”.
Convocation was not called upon to vote on the matter. That was the responsibility of the council in its exercise of governance in the university. Opinion was widespread, however. It is fair to say that the idea of transformation found resonance in the opinion of the great majority of convocants. It was acknowledged that UCT had to be very much at ease with the values of the new South Africa.
Questions, however, remained about what precisely “transformation” meant. There was no support for those who called for the conduct of some students to be censured. It was agreed that UCT needed to be an institution where all in the academic community found a sense of belonging and ownership of the university and its values, to establish an atmosphere conducive to study and research. It was recognised, maybe grudgingly by some, that the university, in its current form, could be considered alienating for many steeped in their own cultures that were not part of European modernity and the Enlightenment. It was conceded that Rhodes may well be a representative figure for all that was oppressive and alienating to many of today’s students.
Convocation then gave vicechancellor Dr Max Price strong support to advance the pace of transformation.
In summary, my message to Convocation was positive. For the sake of this country, I believe that it is a positive development when we find students argumentative, questioning, disapproving and radical in their approach to social issues. Second, it was my view that we can be proud of UCT, proud that this movement for change in higher education was finding expression within its portals. It suggests there is a free rein for the contestation of ideas; that the university management is tolerant and engaged with the students. In fact, in many respects the students did not need to break down an open door for dialogue. For those reasons, the reputation and image of the university is not just intact, it is enhanced.
The management of the university, however, faces an abiding challenge. Dr Price has spelt out all the elements of transformation and he pledged the university’s commitment to move forward in that regard.
Perhaps, contrary to what he may have indicated, the low-hanging fruit could well be the acceleration of the recruitment, nurturing and advancement of black and women academic staff. A strategy for the facilitation of a new breed of academic staff needs to be set out and adopted.
The harder matter, it must be admitted, is the issue of dealing with more than 100 years of entrenched culture and an academic ethos that has become part of the fabric of the university. The changes in the names of buildings and centres are a good development. But it is not enough.
More seriously, it is necessary to adopt an environment of intolerance to all forms of racism and alienating discourse in teaching and research.
Instead, UCT needs an open and inviting approach to learning based on the notion that students from a diversity of cultures bring with them a variety of pathways to learning.
Finally, curriculum and research priorities must be set in a context that draws from the totality of African knowledge and ideas, in dialogue with those of the wider world.
Curriculum reform is the preserve of the senate, but its ethos must be experimental and decolonising. Only with such boldness will the University of Cape Town assume a place of leadership in higher education as a post-colonial university. I believe that is the university that all UCT alumni would be proud of.
Pityana is president of the UCT Convocation