Maxwele being denied his rights
ON JUNE 6, 1966, Robert F Kennedy spoke these words at UCT: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Almost five decades later, these words found expression in the unfolding events of the #Rhodes MustFall movement, which has raised awareness on deeper issues of decolonisation and transformation, leading to the removal of the statue of the notorious Cecil John Rhodes, a colonialist par excellence.
For those of us who have been psychologically and physically involved in these events, March 9, 2015, began a time that challenged the institutional ethos and “heartbeat” of UCT, signalling a turning of the tide. Although the statue of Cecil John Rhodes has been removed, his spirit and legacy persists in a racist culture of undermining black people’s intelligence and quality, ignoring intergenerational pain inflicted on them and manipulating their narrative, while the recalcitrant administration uses policies as shields behind which it brutalises and victimises students for thinking differently and leading change. UCT’s decision to define Chumani Maxwele as a danger to society, on the basis of an untested allegation from a white lecturer, is exactly what colonisation did to black people as a race by privileging power and whiteness.
Colonisation functions as a locus of colonial episteme and white dominance over “black subjects”. It was an ideological positionality which created an environment in which black people were stripped of their human dignity as a race, and their sense of place in space, place and time was erased and replaced by an intergenerational cycle of servitude.
As a result, it created a situation where black people, wherever they may find themselves in the world (academia, business, etc), remain colonial subjects, clones of “Western modernity” and “objects of desire and derision”, to be manipulated at will. In essence this is the “DNA” of the broader colonial project, which produced and continues to reproduce today a mentality where whiteness and white supremacy is strangely regarded as the sine qua non of modernity and knowledge production.
Colonisation undermined other processes of knowledge production, which “could have succeeded if Europe had not impeded them…”, as we are reminded by Immanuel Wallerstein.
Today, we maintain these European forms of knowledge production at the expense of other processes and ways of knowing.
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, noted that, while “there was great increase in knowledge (in Europe), but do not imagine that this necessarily meant an increase in wisdom”.
For there is no wisdom, simply a brutal expression of conquest and domination in looting Africa’s treasures and the erasing of its historical narrative in order to inscribe colonial symbols and ethos in a postcolonial society. It is the responsibility of the progressive postcolonialists, Rhodes Must Fallists and “decolonialists” to critically examine colonial legacies that still shape our processes of thought in institutions of higher learning and society globally.
Has this colonial legacy fuelled UCT’s obsession to suspend Chumani Maxwele at any cost? I find this situation extremely problematic, especially as the institution has ignored due process, breaking its own policies and guidelines. It cannot be correct that UCT masquerades as a progressive institution when, in this case, it has operated a “kangaroo court”.
First of all, Maxwele’s first suspension was based on an untested allegation. He was suspended without his experience being asked for or heard, and this action alone is a serious misstep that undermines the very image of the institution. History will judge UCT harshly.
As argued in Maxwele’s notice of appeal to UCT, “the suspension hearing was held in contravention of DJP3.4 in that it was held outside the prescribed 72 hours on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. The provisional suspension order was served on Maxwele at 1pm on Thursday, May 7, 2015. In terms of DJP3.2 the… student so suspended is entitled to a hearing before the Vice-Chancellor within 72 hours of such provisional order being made”.
“The suspension hearing was to be held on or before Sunday, May 10, 2015. The suspension hearing was held on Wednesday, May 13, 2015 at 2pm in contravention of the 72-hour rule. The hearing was accordingly unlawful.”
Secondly, after an appeal tribunal ascertained the fact that UCT had broken its own policies in suspending Maxwele, and took a resolution to lift the original suspension, the university went ahead and reinstated the charges against Maxwele. Now we observe a complex situationality where the institution used unlawful processes in order to suspend Maxwele and when confronted, admitted to its transgression, but then arrogantly decided to reinstate the content of its original suspension. The prism through which UCT looks at Maxwele and the psychological processes with which it understands Maxwele are antagonistic and racist in nature.
On the basis of his race and an allegation brought against him by a white lecturer, the university passed judgment without any hearing and now presents him as an aberration who should be viewed as a danger to other students and society.
Maxwele was summarily suspended and never allowed an opportunity to present his side of the story. He decided to release his statement in public, and even when he did, his statement was dismissed by the university.
Although Maxwele is on the receiving end of this debacle, he is one who will not be silent in the face of injustice. He is probably only one of many students to experience similar flawed processes – which leads us to question: who will hold UCT accountable for its transgressions? Who will question this show of force against a student who has been labelled by students and staff as barbaric, a savage and even depicted as a monkey on social media? What are the repercussions when the institution flouts due process in order to inflict pain on a student and compromise his future? When Maxwele’s future is made to hang in the balance, for performing and speaking “truth” to power, who will heed the call to change the status quo that privileges some and disadvantages others?
As one of the Rhodes Must Fallists to be alienated by the university, could it possibly be a reprisal for his activism highlighting the conscience of this generation? Perhaps the authority of the institution feels imperilled and has decided its authority must be reasserted with force. Perhaps this matter is beyond the internal processes of UCT and should be dealt with in a court of law.
As a concerned PhD candidate in sociology and on the basis that UCT has admitted fault in discriminating against Maxwele, I call on all those who are implicated in this error of judgement to be sanctioned for having undermined due process, thus denying Maxwele’s rights.
Even more troubling is the shocking dissonance between UCT’s public support for the transformation agenda of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, while privately taking steps to institute criminal charges against over 200 students who participated in activism. This institutional schizophrenia gives the lie to the ideal of academic freedom of expression and student activism.
Even as I write, I know for sure that history is on our side and is calling on all of us to take a stand for dignity against injustice and impunity. I call on all South Africans and people of goodwill who are bound to our cause to support decolonisation and transformation at UCT and other institutions of higher learning with the following:
Remove all statues and plaques on campus celebrating white supremacists. Curriculum transformation. Radically change the representation of black lecturers and professors across faculties.
Representation of black female professors across faculties.
Recognise that the history of those who built the university – enslaved and working class black people – has been erased through institutional culture.
Re-evaluate the standards by which research areas are decided.
Adopt an admissions policy that explicitly uses race as a proxy for disadvantaged black applicants.
End outsourcing. It is at times such as these – of political difficulties, of students being confronted by riot police, being served with criminal charges and expelled by an institution that continues to ignore these legitimate demands for dignity – that we remind ourselves of Steve Biko’s words that “It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die”. And that when all is said and done, like Nelson Mandela, “posterity will pronounce that we were innocent”.
There can be no truer transformation of an institution than one that courageously confronts its own deeds in an effort to reposition itself as a catalyst for change in this century and beyond.
As James Baldwin reminds us, “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”.
UCT has an opportunity to change and needs to rise to the challenge posed by Kennedy when he visited this institution in 1966, when he said “few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of our generation”.
Kasibe is a Chevening Scholar with a B-Tech degree in Fine Art (WSU), MFA in Fine Art (UCT), MA in World Heritage (Turin, Italy) and MA in Museum Studies (Leicester, UK) and a PhD candidate in Sociology (UCT).