Rhodes reply: We’re all part of the University
The letter last week from Kirk Helliker with “right of reply” from “Rhodes University” written by spokesperson Catherine Deiner illustrates the divide at UCKAR. It saddens me that “the university” responds to a staff member as if we were not all part of the university.
Helliker refers to the incongruity of the present chairperson of council speaking out against a mode of protest that he himself not only employed but strongly justified in 1993. I add another historical example: the expulsion of Nelson Mandela from Fort Hare in 1940. Mandela was elected to the SRC in a farcical election, held in the midst of a food protest, in which only a handful of students voted. His refusal to take up his seat was seen as unacceptable defiance of the authority of the principal and he was sent home like a naughty child. In the 1993 protests here, the protesters were also treated like naughty children. The same applies today.
And where did those “naughty children” of past protests end up? One became arguably the most admired leader of the last 100 years and the other now chairs the university’s council.
We have three events, two here, one at Fort Hare, all in different eras. In 1940, the police-state apartheid era had yet to start; in 1993 it was in its closing year. Now, it has formally disappeared and we are more than 20 years into democracy. Yet the attitude to student protest is still one of treating them like naughty children – but with a more ominous twist of throwing labels of criminality at them.
So, in response to Catherine Deiner’s letter: yes, this is a different era. But no, comparisons are indeed instructive.
One thing that is radically different this time is the subject of protest: rape culture.
Students have been told that it is wrong to label someone as a rapist because to do so is a denial of due process. Yet protesters have been labelled as criminals, with scary talk of “provocateurs” and “anarchists”. The fact that there has been violence and serious arson at other campuses is taken to imply that the same is happening here; note now that due process ceases to be an issue. The students have been “naughty” and their “illicit” behaviour must be suppressed, even though no one has been convicted of an offence. The effect of this inconsistency is to make “the university” (whoever that is) appear to regard rape as less serious a problem than “naughty” protest.
Patriarchy is a system of power relations characterised by a deep hierarchy in which maleness is an overwhelming advantage. Rape is fundamentally a crime of patriarchy, particularly when it happens on a systemic scale and the cultural factors that enable it are out in the open and tolerated over a long period. The style of university leadership that labels dissent as “naughty” and which operates as a strict hierarchy exemplifies patriarchy. Opposing rape culture protests in this framework has the unfortunate effect of placing the leadership on the wrong side of the issue no matter how good their intentions.
None of this is an attack on any individual; I merely point out the structure of the problem. Understand the structure of the problem and you can start to fix it.
What is wrong today is not our students, but an outmoded model of university governance that is closer to the culture of an old-fashioned boarding high school than a community of peers striving to solve society’s hardest problems. Fix that problem and we can create a culture of mutual respect and – more important – be a significant resource for fixing the problems of our wider society, rather than merely reflecting them in concentrated form.
Philip Machanick