Where blacks tolerated

IAM a proud Rhodent, no matter what that moniker sounds like and I quite hate it, actually. I studied for my honours at the institution and graduated in 2010 from arguably the continent’s No 1 journalism institution. It was a proud moment, but what never really sat well with me was the famous line under the university’s badge, “Rhodes University, where leaders learn”.

Granted, the institution has produced some remarkable leaders and I’m certain one day I’m going to be one. Wait until I speak to a few fighters and they give me a job at the EFF as a commander in something. Straight face.

But what also really irks me is that Rhodes is some sort of an exclusive university where whites are preferred and blacks more like tolerated. It doesn’t matter that you would have qualified to study at the university based on merit and not as some sort of favour.

I had more than one scholarship to fund my studies and I had qualified well from my previous university to study there. Yes, I’m gloating, why the heck not.

Rhodes University is one of the harshest places where a black person can study – racism is apparent there, a lot. Most white students think that blacks are there by deployment by the vile ANC government and not necessarily because of their academic achievements. Not every white person I encountered there was racist as I passed through the hands of some of the most fantastic people such as the revered professor, Guy Berger, who was my mentor and believed in me so much that I was the class leader when he taught a course called Reporting Africa.

And what of Rod Amner, who really took my hand and walked with me when I was this new boy from Limpopo who had arrived in Grahamstown with nothing but a bag of a few clothes and ambition to become a good journalist. A fantastic man.

I even had a few classmates who were so well bred that I could see they saw a human being in me and not some dude who must be pitied. We fought on many issues and sometimes differed on issues of racism and race, to the point that sometimes debates would be so heated some would leave the class and others went outside to sob.

I say racism is rife at Rhodes because the university, at least during my time there and the few years I called Grahamstown home, didn’t seem to do much about it. It only took some serious incidents for the university to be seen to care.

Rhodes University, like the University of Cape Town, is anti-black achievement and treats blacks like they should report to work there or to class and thank God that they are there. Ask any black academic there and they will tell you all about it.

I have had drunken chats with academics I thought were enjoying themselves there, only to find that they’d rather be drinking until the wee hours than report for work. That institution is either rigid to you as a black person or you are treated with condescending acceptance.

The white students see this and see nothing wrong treating their dark skinned lecturers badly and with little to no respect.

My friend Vincent, a French national of Brazilian blood who was in the same class as me, kept on asking me, with his broken English that I will edit: “Floyd, why is Rhodes so white?”. He is a white man and at first I though he was just another condescending white man trying to get into my good books, but no, he was serious and I had been trying to avoid that fact.

Rhodes is indeed so white that I have seen most blacks starting to act so white, with that nasal accent and being loud in the streets in the middle of the night. Rhodes University needs to transform and that starts with the university starting by admitting that in its 103 years of existence it has been a rigid institution designed for white people and only tolerating black people.

What if I told you that when I studied at Rhodes I was never taught by a black South African lecturer? Is that just a coincidence? That maybe there were no black South African lecturers who applied to work at the “reputable” institution? I beg to differ.

There are reasons for that and maybe they didn’t want to “give the department away”. I was taught by whites and fellow Africans from outside of the country, and for that I’m not complaining because I was taught by the best.

It’s many years since democracy and some real transformation is needed at that institution and if it doesn’t happen the proverbial is going to hit the fan.

I still want to go back to Rhodes and further by studies and perhaps work there and live in that beautiful Grahamstown, but I hope things really do change before I go back there.