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#RhodesMustFall debate

27th March 2015

By: Jade Davenport

Creamer Media Correspondent

  

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The contentious debate surrounding the removal of the statue of pioneering mining magnate and British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes has, yet again, flared up. However, this time, given the actions of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Students Representative Council president – throwing human excrement at the statue as a form of protest – the debate has grown much bigger than simple campus politics and has now been taken up by what is clearly an indignant South African public.

While this very debate was examined in a Digging Deep column published in July last year, I feel the need, both as a UCT alumnus and South African mining historian, to weigh in on this debate again.

Firstly, just to be clear, the statue in question is a rather prominent feature of UCT’s architectural landscape, being a larger-than-life depiction of Rhodes seated in a chair, gazing north into the interior of Africa. The Statue The statue is located at the base of the university’s Upper Campus – symbolically in line with Jameson Hall – overlooking the rugby fields. It is not the statue of Rhodes astride a horse, as some have mistakeningly referred, which is, in fact, located at the prominent Rhodes Memorial on the slopes of Devil’s Peak.

It may seem an overly obvious, even to the point of being ludicrous, question to pose, but what exactly is it about Rhodes that has everyone so worked up? Well, in all honesty, there are various aspects of Rhodes’s career and colossal personality – ranging from being a rich capitalist to a ruthless conqueror, corruptor of opponents, English colonialist, male chauvinist and bombastic buccaneer – that could offend a multitude of South Africans for a variety of reasons. However, in this specific case, the issue at the heart of the UCT debate is the fact that Rhodes is seen to have been at the forefront of racial discrimination and the oppression of Southern Africa’s black majority and, thus, his lingering presence on Africa’s leading university campus is an offence to students evidently still coming to terms with the legacies of colonialism and apartheid.

Of course, we should not shy away from the many flaws of Rhodes’s character and, for the sake of adding constructively to this debate, his attitude and actions towards the black inhabitants of late-nineteenth-century Southern Africa should be addressed.

In-Depth Tome

American historian Robert Rotberg, who has published the most thorough and in-depth tome of Rhodes’s life and career to date, argues that, especially by late twentieth-century and not late nineteenth-century standards, Rhodes ought to be considered less immoral than amoral in his attitude towards black people.

He states that Rhodes considered black people as important only for their labour, especially for the diamond and gold mining industries, but were otherwise largely in the way. “Indeed it may be supposed that Rhodes, a man who both compartmentalised and rationalised with ease, rarely experienced a troubled conscience because of Africans. Merriman, Innes, Schreiner, Sprigg, Sauer, even Hofmeyr, and [other Cape politicians] of the day clearly worried about what would become of Africans, and whether their actions were fair. But not Rhodes.”

From 1893, and dramatically after his electoral triumph in 1894, much of Rhodes’s political energy was directed to the rewriting of the Cape’s legislation, which was to profoundly alter the contours and reach of discrimination throughout South Africa and even Southern Africa. During his political career, Rhodes, with the support of the Bond, was able to limit the African franchise, achieve labour efficiency over indigenous freedom, and entrench the compound system as a mechanism to control and channel the working lives of black migrant labour.

Having said that, it is important to emphasise that Rhodes under- took such ini-tiatives, first and foremost, as a way of facilitating his capitalist ambitions, particularly in terms of diamond mining in the Northern Cape.

What should be highlighted when it comes to the Rhodes debate, however, is the fact that he was a man of his Age, an Age where racial discrimination was the norm. And it should not be forgotten that the subjugation of black rights, even in terms of migrant mine labour, had begun long before Rhodes’s ascent to wealth and power.

Perhaps an even more important fact to bear in mind is that Rhodes was ultimately a shrewd and ruthless business mogul. The subjugation of black rights was pursued because, in his mind, it made good business sense and facilitated the cheap exploitation of an essentially massive labour force. Thus, it is entirely probable that if Rhodes had been alive today, his racial attitudes would be vastly different and moulded to what would best promote his capitalist ambitions.

So, given this legacy, the question remains: Should the Rhodes statue be removed from the UCT campus? Concrete Effect In my humble opinion, I would argue that it should not, even if it is purely on the basis that such a removal would be more symbolic than anything else and would have no concrete effect in terms of addressing the legacy of racial discrimination in South Africa. Further, it should be borne in mind that Rhodes’s legacy is not so harshly clear-cut anymore, especially given the fact that black and female scholars from around the world are now able to benefit from that most prestigious scholarship established in his name.

As a final observation, it certainly speaks volumes about the state of South Africa and its progress in addressing the legacy of racial discrimination that a debate of this nature is raging 21 years into our hard-won nonracial democracy and is being so vehemently spearheaded by students who were effectively ‘born free’.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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