Rhodes Must Fall

Background

The bronze statue of a seated Cecil Rhodes was sculpted by Marion Walgate (née Mason), wife of architect Charles Walgate, who worked with J.M. Solomon in designing and constructing the new buildings at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It was unveiled in 1934. Calls for the statue's removal had been slowly increasing for several decades, with Afrikaner students first demanding the removal of the statue in the 1950s.

Ideology and goals

Rhodes Must Fall describes itself as "a collective movement of students and staff members mobilising for direct action against the reality of institutional racism at the University of Cape Town." Whilst initially being focused on the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes, Rhodes Must Fall states that "the fall of ‘Rhodes’ is symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege at our campus."

The movement was initially about the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a symbol which the protesters felt was oppressive, and grew to encompass institutional racism, the perceived lack of racial transformation at the university, and access to tertiary education and student accommodation.

Students made use of occupation, civil disobedience, and violence during the protests. Actions included throwing human faeces at the Rhodes statue, occupying UCT offices, and burning art, vehicles, and buildings. Students also made use of the internet; protesting students created a Facebook page entitled 'Rhodes Must Fall' and promoted and made use of the hashtag '#RhodesMustFall' on Twitter.

Leaders

The first action of the movement took place on 9 March 2015, when Chumani Maxwele "picked up one of the buckets of shit that sat reeking on the kerbside" and "hurled its contents" to a bronze statue of the 19th-century British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes, as reported by The Guardian. The Times later named Chumani as "The faeces-throwing activist who orchestrated the #RhodesMustFall campaign at UCT." Ntokozo Qwabe was named as "one of the leaders of the Rhodes Must Fall movement at Oxford University in the UK" by BusinessTech and by The Daily Mirror. Parisian magazine Jeune Afrique named Youssef Robinson "one of the leaders of the movement in Britain." Athabile Nonxuba was also named a leader of the movement at UCT by City Press. National Public Radio interviewed Kgotsi Chikane and named him "one of the leaders of the Rhodes Must Fall movement."

The statue

The first protest, and the action that started the Rhodes Must Fall campaign occurred on 9 March 2015, when Chumani Maxwele threw human faeces onto the statue and toyi-toyi'd with approximately a dozen protesters at the statue. Maxwele was charged with assault after he was involved in a physical altercation with a security officer during the protest. It was reported that a UCT security officer had prevented a photographer from taking photos of the protest. UCT announced that it was investigating the incident.

On 12 March 2015, an open air dialogue took place on the stairs of Jammie Plaza, the focal point of the UCT Upper Campus, to discuss the statue, with points from all sides being heard. The following week, a march to the UCT administrative building, Bremner, took place, demanding a date for the removal of the statue. On 20 March 2015, students stormed the Bremner building, which houses the UCT offices during a speech addressing the removal of the statue by UCT vice-chancellor Max Price. On 22 March, it was reported that the students were still occupying the building and that members of the public were supplying them with food. The protesters "renamed" the building Azania House, an indication that the movement takes an Africanist position on national identity, thus rejecting the civic and non-racial tradition of the ANC.

UCT's senate voted in favour of the removal of the statue on 27 March 2015, and following the vote, the statue was boarded up pending the final decision from the university's council. On April 9, 2015 the Rhodes statue was removed.

Protest quickly spread around South Africa's universities, defacing statues and calling for the "decolonisation of education" in South Africa.

"One Settler, One Bullet"

On 8 April 2015 protesters disrupted the UCT Council meeting which had been called to discuss the removal of the statue and prevented members of the Council from leaving. According to a statement issued by Max Price, Vice-Chancellor of UCT, protestors chanted "One Settler, One Bullet", a rallying cry during apartheid, both at the meeting and the following day during the removal of the statue. On Tuesday 14 April 2015, Rhodes Must Fall issued a statement from its official Facebook page calling on its members to join a protest in the parking lot of the Bremner Building which ended with the slogan "ONE BULLET, ONE SETTLER!" This post was subsequently deleted.

Supporting student who made Pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic remarks

On 25 April 2015, Mcebo Dlamini, then president of the Students' Representative Council (SRC) of Wits University (a South African public research university), stated in a Facebook post that he "loves Adolf Hitler" and admired Hitler for his "charisma" and "organisational skills." In the same post Dlamini also stated that he "loves Robert Mugabe." Dlamini later declared during a radio interview on PowerFM that "Jews are devils," a remark which led the South African Jewish Board of Deputies to lay criminal charges of hate speech against him. Dlamini was ultimately dismissed as SRC President on unrelated charges of misconduct. Wits University Vice Chancellor Adam Habib stated that "I believe that Mr Dlamini has single-handedly wrought more damage on Wits University's reputation than any other person who I can think of in at least the last two decades."

On 7 May 2015 Rhodes Must Fall tweeted "Why Mcebo Dlamini's views on Hitler are not outrageous", including a link to an anonymous letter in the student newspaper Wits Vuvuzela bearing this title. On the same day Eyewitness News reported that the Rhodes Must Fall movement stated that it "rejects the removal of Wits SRC President Mcebo Dlamini."

2016 protests

Protests resumed at the University of Cape Town at the start of the academic year on the 15 February 2016, when members of the Rhodes Must Fall movement constructed a shack at a heavily used pedestrian crossing and road at the base of Jameson steps at the university's main campus. The shack was set up to protest what some students perceived as a lack of housing for black students and unfairness in the allocation of student housing. The University responded, stating that the shack needed to be relocated by 5 p.m. the following day, as the shack's placement was causing traffic congestion. The following day, the shack was removed after 6 p.m. by the University. In response, Rhodes Must Fall supporters vandalised two statues, one of Jan Smuts and another of Maria Emmeline Barnard Fuller; burnt paintings, predominantly portraits of white people, collected from university buildings (including a portrait of highly revered anti-Apartheid activist, Molly Blackburn, and five anti-apartheid-themed paintings by black artist, Keresemose Richard Baholo, who was the first black student to receive a master's degree in Fine Art from UCT and who later supported the activists' actions); torched three vehicles, including a Jammie Shuttle transport bus; and petrol-bombed the office of the university's vice-chancellor.

The University of Cape Town stated that the shortage, 6 680 beds for 27 000 students, was due to three reasons; namely greatly increased student numbers caused by lower fees, students rewriting deferred exams caused by the protests the previous year, and the clearance of historical student debt increasing the number of returning students. The university also stated that their ability to respond to the housing problem was hampered by the occupation of three buildings hosting the Student Housing department by Rhodes Must Fall protesters. The university also refuted protesters claims of prioritising the housing of white students, stating that 75% of students in university residences were black. The university claimed that a number of the protesters were not university students and that due to the "intimidation of others, demeaning utterances, and distortion of facts" it was taking criminal action against the protesters. Eight protesters were arrested on charges of public violence and malicious damage.

In the same week, non-black students were also barred from the UCT residence's dining hall by Rhodes Must Fall protesters and denied food from the cafeteria.

Similar protests erupted across South Africa during February 2016 with protests at North-West University, University of the Free State, University of Witwatersrand, University of Pretoria, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Reactions

On 22 March 2015, UCT lecturer Xolela Mangcu told the Cape Times newspaper that the university was not hiring enough black professors. He said that only 5 out of the 200 senior professors at the university were black. A week later, Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters agreed that the statue should be removed and that the student protests were against not only the statue, but white supremacy itself. Albie Sachs suggested to "keep him [Rhodes] alive on the campus and force him, even if posthumously, to witness surroundings that tell him and the world that he is now living in a constitutional democracy."

During March 2015, the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town ran a poll on whether or not the statue should be moved. Out of 2700 students, 1100 students voted. Sixty percent of them were against the removal of the statue, 38% were in favour of its removal and the remaining 2% abstained. However, the poll did not measure strength of opinion. A consensus in the Senate found that many who are against removal did not feel strongly about the issue.

In late April 2015 the University of Cape Town announced that it would be introducing black studies as part of its transformation following the protests.

Apartheid-era president, F. W. de Klerk has criticised the movement, calling the movement a "folly" and the students "full of sound and fury". He argues that Rhodes was "the architect of the Anglo-Boer War that had a disastrous impact on our people, yet the National Party government never thought of removing his name from our history". De Klerk continued on by saying in a letter to The Times that for better or for worse, "Rhodes had made an impact on history, which included the positive contribution of his scholarship scheme." Others have responded that the land Rhodes "donated" to the University of Cape Town, as with the funds used to form his scholarship programme, was never his to give, having been appropriated from indigenous populations as part of his colonial conquest.

Some critics of the movement worry that the focus is on quantity rather than quality of education, and that an increase in the number of students accepted to universities will lead to a decrease in the quality of their education, as money which would have gone towards securing quality educators goes instead to subsidising students' fees. Sikhakhane draws parallels between South Africa's path and the situation in Chile and Colombia.

The university protests have been criticised for their increasingly violent nature and their racism against non-black students, especially their "extreme hatred of whites". Some black students claim they fear retribution should they not support the protests.

Stellenbosch University

In mid April 2015, the student and staff led activist organisation Open Stellenbosch was founded at the University of Stellenbosch to promote similar aims, but with more of a focus on the role of language – specifically Afrikaans – in education at the university. The organisation was inspired by the Rhodes Must Fall movement at the University of Cape Town. Four independent University of Cape Town students produced a short video documentary called Luister in which students attending Stellenbosch and Elsenburg College explained their experiences of racism and slow transformation at the university and the college. On 12 November 2015, the University of Stellenbosch's Rector's Management Team recommended a new language policy in line with Open Stellenbosch's demands; specifically the adoption of English as a lingua franca.

Rhodes University

At Rhodes University, the Black Students Movement was started on the 17th of March in solidarity with the UCT Rhodes Must Fall Movement. The movement then began agitating for the name of Rhodes University to change, and has since made several interventions towards transforming Rhodes University, which it regards as a colonial university. In late May 2015, following protests and complaints by the Black Students Movement, the university, Rhodes University (named after Cecil Rhodes) approved plans to formally begin the process of changing the university's name.

University of Pretoria

On 19 February 2016, the AfriForum Youth, the Progressive Youth Alliance, and the EFF Student Command met with the university to vote on the use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction. Following clashes between students and police, 24 students were arrested for public violence. The following day, the university announced that the Hatfield and Groenkloof campuses would be closed until the university could ensure the safety of its students and staff.

On 22 February 2016, the university proposed that its medium of instruction would become English-only. Protests against Afrikaans continued, with students boycotting classes and forcing other students out of their lectures. Lectures were cancelled as a result.

University of the Free State

On 22 February 2016, a group of 35 people consisting of contract workers and students, were arrested at the University of the Free State on charges of contempt of court and illegal gathering.

University of Oxford

At the University of Oxford, students called for a statue of Rhodes to be removed from Oriel College, and started a movement at the university to better represent non-white culture in the curriculum as well as to combat racial discrimination and insensitivity. Organising members of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford stated that awareness should be raised at the university about the institution's implication in colonialism and the violence that accompanied it, and that representation of 'black voices' should be improved.

Writing in the The Daily Telegraph, Harry Mount described Oxford's Rhodes Must Fall campaign as the product of a "a generation raised to believe that their feelings are all that matter", arguing that academics had been too indulgent towards student activists.

On 19 January 2016, students at the Oxford Union (a private student debating society, without official endorsement or links to the University) voted 245 to 212 in favour of removing the statue of Rhodes from the campus. Ultimately, on 29 January 2016, it was announced that the statue would remain, after "furious donors threatened to withdraw gifts and bequests worth more than £100 million" if it was removed.

Other

Small student protests in support of or directly inspired by the removal of the statue and the Rhodes Must Fall movement also occurred at the University of Edinburgh and the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley protesters felt the demands of the Rhodes Must Fall movement were relevant to their own grievances of perceived black marginalisation at Berkeley. At the University of Cambridge the movement catalysed the creation of similar 'decolonisation' student lead initiatives such as the return of the okukor cockerel (taken during the punitive Benin Expedition of 1897) at Jesus College to Nigeria.

Other statues

On 22 March 2015, the EFF's president, Julius Malema, called for all other colonialism and apartheid symbols to be removed nationwide in South Africa. Following this, a number of colonial era statues were vandalised across the country, including the statue of King George V at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The EFF's members were implicated in the vandalism of a number of Anglo-Boer War statues including the Uitenhage War memorial statue for fallen British soldiers on 4 April, the Horse Memorial in Port Elizabeth dedicated to the animals that served in the war on 6 April, and the vandalism (green paint) of Paul Kruger's statue in Church Square, Pretoria on 7 April. The statue of Louis Botha situated outside the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town was vandalised on 9 April.

EFF spokesperson Mbuyeseni Ndlozi said on 9 April that the party would have to take responsibility for its members' actions, but that the EFF was for the removal, not vandalism or destruction, of the colonial and apartheid symbols in the public space.

In response to the vandalisms of the Louis Botha Statue and Horse Memorial local supporters of the monuments laid wreaths at the sites of the monuments a few days after the vandalisms. The Horse Memorial was temporarily moved by the local municipality to a safe space so as to protect it from future vandalism with the chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Bay region of the EFF, Bo Madwara, threatening to "unload it into the sea" should the monument be restored.

On the 18th September 2015 the bronze bust of Rhodes at Rhodes Memorial was vandalised with the nose of the bust being cut off and graffiti accusing Rhodes of being a “Racist, thief, [and] murderer.”