About time UCT’s privileged and pouty community got a good grip on reality

THE public is growing tired of UCT’s dirty laundry taking so much space in the papers. I’m referring to the latest in a long line: another op-ed piece from Xolela Mangcu about racism and Rhodes Must Fall white noise (Cape Times, July 17).

This privileged community – vacillating vice-chancellor, argumentative professors and protesting students – have the demeanour of a pouty child, and their politics are boring.

The truism is academic politics are vicious because so little is at stake. In what other job can you work 5 hours a week and spend the rest of the time doing as you please? A UCT associate professor told me he could do what he wanted and not be fired unless he seriously messed up. He declined a senior government job offer at a higher salary because of his comfy billet.

UCT is considered elite in South Africa and Africa, and to be a member of the community one is in the upper social and economic bracket. So Chumani Maxwele and his fellows, and Mangcu’s self-declared victimhood, do not impress me. It comes across more as self-pity. So Mangcu was allegedly mistaken for a delivery boy? Boo hoo.

What did he or his nemesis, fellow professor David Benatar, do for Mandela Day? Perhaps they should look on page 4 of the same issue of the Cape Times (“Sewage making life unbearable”) to discover what real deprivation is.

As a UCT alumnus I was appalled by the immature and reckless manner they handled the Rhodes business. They deserve any lingering fall-out from that.

By the way, as a black student there in the 1980s and again 7 years ago, I did not experience racial prejudice or oppression from any staff or student.

I’m several notches below Mangcu on the economic and social scale but don’t have the huge racial chip he is carrying. Perhaps he and his carping fellows should go out and experience the real world.