Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Students claim victory in Rhodes rumpus
AFTER claiming victory yesterday, UCT students said their senate’s support to remove the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the campus was just the start of transformation.
UCT spokeswoman Pat Lucas said late yesterday that 181 senate members had voted to move the statue. One person voted against, and three others abstained.
“(The) senate has voted overwhelmingly in favour of recom- mending to (the university’s) council that the statue be moved when council holds its special sitting,” she said.
“The proposal states that the senate recommends that the Rhodes statue be removed from the campus permanently, that it be handed over to the government heritage authorities for safe custody, and that the statue should be boarded up with immediate effect until it is removed from the campus.”
The university’s council will meet on April 8 to vote on the matter.
UCT student representative council president Ramabina Mahapa said the senate’s vote was an endorsement of the student-led Rhodes Must Fall campaign launched earlier this month.
“It is certainly a victory for us. Such a huge body has endorsed what the students are calling for. It means we are being heard by the larger community.
“Council will be influenced by the senate. Council never really goes against the senate.”
At the Bremner Building yesterday, which has been occupied since a campus protest last Friday, students were still camping out in a top floor meeting room. They had also rebranded the building Azania House, and put stickers on the door reading “Under new management”.
Postgraduate student Alex Hotz said their campaign “went beyond the statue”.
“The statue must be removed from the campus completely. I’m sure council will vote for the statue to come down,” she said. But the battle was not yet won. Hotz said: “You can have black people who are vice-chancellors, such as Mamphela Ramphele, but that doesn’t mean things become better for black people. We have to change the structures at the university and its processes. That will lead to transformation.”
They were not challenging white people, but the system of
power. Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa has said that the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999 “stipulates particular techni- cal as well as consultative processes that would be followed in the case of a removal and/ relocation of a statue”.
Removing the Rhodes statue would entail a consultative process “where the applicant must notify all conservation bodies, including applying to the South African Heritage Resource Agency or relevant provincial or local structures”.