Eating Rhodes cake

WE ALL know by now that CJ Rhodes was a wicked exploiter of resources, human and material, that his crafty manoeuvring outwitted every comer and also that, by the time he died, he had amassed one of the greatest fortunes in history.

Cynics claim that the establishment in his name of the world-famous scholarship was simply an expedient aimed at expunging the memory of his evil deeds. Be all that as it may.

My first difficulty is that, with all the Rhodes Must Fall noise, no one is throwing the bath water out with the baby itself. The anti-colonialists are sticking firmly to Rhodes’ colossal material heritage so many of them enjoy. Oriel, his old Oxford College in a wonderful display of sophistry, retains the huge legacy received from Rhodes’ will while roundly denouncing his political outlook.

Thousands of Rhodes scholars, cosseted by the scholarship’s prestige, and well-upholstered for life by the lucrative positions they subsequently hold, raise nary a squeak about the darker side of their benefactor. Surely monstrous cases of having your cake and eating it?

My other problem is that, with UCT sited on part of the Groote Schuur estate, another of Rhodes’ gifts to the nation, and much or all of the original Upper Campus being funded by Rhodes’ mining profits or those of his associates Beit and Wernher, not to mention the magnificent Oppenheimer bequests, how much of all this must go? I mean, to be logical, it’s all tainted and should be bulldozed away without delay.

As a former canny Scots UCT principal Sir Carruthers Beattie might have put it, “Och no, lads, certainly not. Ye canna hae the one withoot the other!” Neil Veitch