Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 357

#RhodesMustFall: The View from Zimbabwe

Cecil John Rhodes couldn’t have imagined, when he was setting up the template for Apartheid and furthering British imperialism in Africa over a century ago, that one day a statue erected in his honour would be smeared by human excrement. Especially by a young black man.

Then, after all, Rhodes was the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and virtually overlord of what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe. He was a subject of the British Empire, “on which the sun never set,” and as he arrogantly wrote in a letter to his friend, W. T. Stead: “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”

A century, however, is a long time. The sun has long set on the empire. The “first race” nonsense Rhodes spoke about has been shown to be a fallacy and the blacks he fought so vigorously to oppress now rule over South Africa.

Rhodes finds himself in the news again as young South Africans question his legacy and deface his statue. Students at the University of Cape Town are demanding that his statue be removed from the University, while those at the eponymously named Rhodes University want the University’s name changed- seeking to cut all links with a man whose racist and imperialist views find less and less space in modern South Africa.

Growing up in Zimbabwe I probably learnt more about Rhodes than any South African child. Rhodes is an important part of Zimbabwean history, prominent in our history books as the leader and financier of the colonialists who claimed these lands for their Queen. His legacy here was more pronounced, for decades the country was named in his honor.

However after independence in 1980 the government wasted no time in dismantling the symbols of colonialism. Salisbury became Harare, Fort Victoria was renamed Masvingo, Gwelo became Gweru, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. In Harare almost all the city’s streets were renamed, many after the fathers of African nationalism: Kwameh Nkrumah, Samora Machel, Robert Mugabe, Sam Nujoma, Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda and others.

There are plans to rename other institutions and places bearing colonial names, from schools to the Victoria Falls. Rhodes’ grave, suspiciously located in what was the holiest place in the Shona religion, in the Matopos has caused some controversy. Some people have called for its removal (though it has not been defaced yet).

Yet despite our attempts at decolonisation even here there are vestiges of colonialism still. The country’s strategic military base is named after a British monarch, George VI, though there have been . The Victoria Falls is still the Victoria Falls, probably because the potential financial effects (tourism) were enough to dampen the morale of whoever directs the name changes.

I am certain we will have these conversations again in the aftermath of the #RhodesMustFall protests.

One of my friends told me that he believes the students in South Africa are directing their frustrations with the ANC government at the wrong target. Rhodes, he said, is long dead and an indelible part of African history whose memory, and “good” works – such as the Rhodes scholarship- cannot be removed from the annals of African history.

This friend thinks the young people in South Africa should be focusing on more “important” issues, protesting against corruption, or unemployment for example.

I think this is a simplistic way of looking at protests- and activism in general. We should not only protest against big problems. Besides what exactly is a “big” problem- global warming, the threat of nuclear war, ISIS?

If we were to subscribe to this logic there would be no protests at all because there are always “bigger problems”. Want to protest against police brutality, why bother, that’s petty, why not protest against global warming first? There would be no Mini skirt march, no Occupy movements, no #RhodesSoWhite.

The point here is protests are important because they raise awareness. Awareness leads to dialogue. And dialogue may lead to lasting solutions.

The second point made is that Rhodes did much to “civilize” us, and continues to help Africans through the Rhodes scholarship (now Rhodes-Mandela Scholarship).

This glosses over the man’s ideas on race, and the laws he put in place in the Cape that set the foundation of the apartheid state. Rhodes was a racist and imperialist whose “good” works will never be enough to erase his injustices against black people in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Further, even the worst despots had their good deeds, depending on who you ask. This does not absolve them of their sins.

Rhodes statue, like his ideas, have no place in a modern free South Africa, less so at an institution of higher learning. If anything the statue should be relocated to a museum.

Removing the symbols of colonialism from our countries is not denying our history. That is why Rhodes will always have a place in books and museums.

The discussions started by UCT and Rhodes University students go beyond the statue, beyond renaming Rhodes University. These protests have made us ask important questions about race, equality and the importance of symbols.

Colonialism goes beyond physical domination. It manifests itself in different, subtle, ostensibly innocuous but insidious ways. Mental emancipation is also important. As the great Bob Marley said, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.”

Personally I want Rhodes University renamed, the statue relocated. A new, politically neutral, unifying and inclusive name for Rhodes University not only espouses the values and ideals of the rainbow nation, it also stops the continued glorification of a ruthless imperialist.

It will also be a step towards much needed reforms in South Africa’s elite universities, where the numbers of black faculty staff remains worryingly low and black students feel like outsiders.

But whatever happens the young people of South Africa should be applauded for these protests. They have raised awareness on a very important topic.

And this awareness, the consciousness of young black South Africans who dared to ask questions about Rhodes is in itself a victory regardless of the outcome.

Talented African students will continue to go to Oxford because of the money left by Rhodes, his  statue may remain at the University of Cape Town, if only for a little while, and Rhodes University may be Rhodes University still, again if only for a little while, but Rhodes, in a way, has already fallen.

It may take hours, days, months or even years but there will be reforms in South Africa’s tertiary institutions. Maxwele Chumani and the scores of protestors have sown the seeds for the reforms.

By this Rhodes’ ideas of segregation and imperialism are defeated.

Thousands of students can attest to this.

Africa is a Radio: Season 2, Episode 1

Africa is a Radio Season 2 is here! In our inaugural episode, we have added two hosts, Sean Jacobs and Elliot Ross of this site! In the first episode they have a discussion on the African media sphere, The South African student protest “Rhodes Must Fall”, and the upcoming Nigerian elections.

There is also of course a selection of music from Chief Boima touching on all corners of the African diaspora.

Between Two Fires: A Migrant’s Fight for a Place in Germany

In dictatorships, where a prideful life is nonexistent and the nation’s wealth is owned and controlled by the ruler’s clique, young people suffer a suffocating atmosphere of systematic oppression for merely criticizing the regime in power. Faced with joblessness and lack of freedom of expression, some suppressed youths will seek legal and illegal emigration allured by the foreign media’s empty slogans of justice and freedom. I am writing these words out of a personal experience, being an illegal Sudanese immigrant in Europe. I learned the hard way that illegal immigration is not the answer, that is if the Mediterranean Sea does not swallow you first.

My dreams of a better life of opulence on the other side evaporated upon reaching the ‘old’ continent, where much struggle awaited me. Only European citizens enjoy the freedom and human rights vaunted by their media. For example, today Germany enforces a law similar to the Closed District Ordinance Act (active from 1920 until independence in 1956) — enacted by the British colonial administration in Sudan to impose strict restrictions on the issuing of passports and permits for traveling between North and South Sudan — which requires asylum-seekers to maintain residence in their assigned state. It is a law that goes against all international and humanitarian agreements. It is complemented by other stifling regulations such as the stipulation to obtain residency, which could take years, before applying for a job or a school. Asylum-seekers have been protesting in Germany for years, calling for the rights stipulated by international human rights laws. But be it to win the votes of taxpayers who are convinced asylum-seekers are here to suck their resources, or to indulge certain parties in parliamentary coalitions with blatantly racist policies against asylum-seekers and Islam.

Money talks in Europe, and it is loud in Germany, where capitalist powerhouses manipulate all aspects of life in this country including the affairs of asylum-seekers. That is why hundreds of asylum-seekers have demonstrated against the European and German laws on asylum-seekers. For example at Oranienplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg, in which asylum-seekers occupied in a protest camp after they had marched from the South of Germany to Berlin to protest against the living conditions in the refugee camps, and the inhuman procedures of applying for asylum. The protest camp gave the movement power through visibility and put a lot of pressure on local and national politicians. The negotiations alas were not successful and in 2014 the police dispersed the camp. In a world where vile political and economic interests dictate the rules the struggle for a better life must go on.

Illegal immigration as a last resort to escape brutal dictators is extremely costly. Neocolonialism exploits the mantras of freedom, democracy, and human rights for the interests of Europe and the dictatorships providing it with their nations’ wealth. Consider the NATO’s involvement in the so-called Arab Spring, its forces assaulted Libya for the ostensible reason of defending the rebels while the international community watches wars of extermination take place in Syria and Darfur. The governments flaunting buzzwords like human rights and democracy seek nothing but to buoy up dictators to secure the flow of natural wealth to their peoples to maintain their prosperity. The colonization strategy birthed in Berlin in 1884 to divide Africa into states managed, or rather abused, for the benefit of Europe and the U.S. is still in action. The difference is it is implemented by means of starting wars and marketing weaponry. It is quite simple really – Germany is one of the biggest manufacturers of weapons and military equipment in the world, it makes all the sense for it to want to sell these weapons and equipment, so wars have to be waged in Africa.

The only solution is a radical revolution in all fields. Humanity will never grasp freedom until capitalism is defeated and rich men cease to direct the fate of the world. The revolution begins by uprooting all dictators clandestinely colluding to misuse their nations’ wealth and remain in power with the pseudo democracies of the first world.

All photos by Tobias Zielony, a German photographer who has been following the refugeement movement with his camera in the last years. Currently he is working on an exhibition project for the German Pavillion at this year’s Venice Biennial.

Open letter to 60 Minutes regarding its reporting on Africa

Dear Jeff Fager, Executive Producer of CBS 60 Minutes,

We, the undersigned, are writing to express our grave concern about the frequent and recurring misrepresentation of the African continent by 60 Minutes.

In a series of recent segments from the continent, 60 Minutes has managed, quite extraordinarily, to render people of black African ancestry voiceless and all but invisible.

Two of these segments were remarkably similar in their basic subject matter, featuring white people who have made it their mission to rescue African wildlife. In one case these were lions, and in another, apes. People of black African descent make no substantial appearance in either of these reports, and no sense whatsoever is given of the countries visited, South Africa and Gabon.

The third notable recent segment was a visit by your correspondent Lara Logan to Liberia to cover the Ebola epidemic in that country. In that broadcast, Africans were reduced to the role of silent victims. They constituted what might be called a scenery of misery: people whose thoughts, experiences and actions were treated as if totally without interest. Liberians were shown within easy speaking range of Logan, including some Liberians whom she spoke about, and yet not a single Liberian was quoted in any capacity.

Liberians not only died from Ebola, but many of them contributed bravely to the fight against the disease, including doctors, nurses and other caregivers, some of whom gave their lives in this effort. Despite this, the only people heard from on the air were white foreigners who had come to Liberia to contribute to the fight against the disease.

Taken together, this anachronistic style of coverage reproduces, in condensed form, many of the worst habits of modern American journalism on the subject of Africa. To be clear, this means that Africa only warrants the public’s attention when there is disaster or human tragedy on an immense scale, when Westerners can be elevated to the role of central characters, or when it is a matter of that perennial favorite, wildlife. As a corollary, Africans themselves are typically limited to the role of passive victims, or occasionally brutal or corrupt villains and incompetents; they are not otherwise shown to have any agency or even the normal range of human thoughts and emotions. Such a skewed perspective not only disserves Africa, it also badly disserves the news viewing and news reading public.

We have taken the initiative of writing to you because we are mindful of the reach of 60 Minutes, and of the important role that your program has long played in informing the public. We are equally mindful that American views of Africa, a continent of 1.1 billion people, which is experiencing rapid change on an immense scale, are badly misinformed by much of the mainstream media. The great diversity of African experience, the challenges and triumphs of African peoples, and above all, the voices and thoughts of Africans themselves are chronically and woefully underrepresented.

Over the coming decades, Africa will become the backdrop of some of the most significant developments on the planet, from unprecedented population growth, urbanization and economic change to, potentially, the wholesale reconfiguration of states. We would like see to 60 Minutes rethink its approach to Africa, and rise to the challenge of covering topics like these, and many more, that go well beyond the bailiwick of the staid and stereotypical recent examples cited above. In doing so, 60 Minutes will have much to gain, as will the viewing public.

Signed:

Howard W. French, Associate Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Author of China’s Second Continent and A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa

Fatin Abbas, Manhattanville College

Akin Adesokan, Novelist and Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and Cinema and Film Studies, Indiana University Bloomington.

Anthony Arnove, Producer, Dirty Wars

Adam Ashforth, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

Sean Jacobs, Faculty, International Affairs, Milano, The New School and Africa is a Country.

Teju Cole, Distinguished Writer in Residence, Bard College/ Photography Critic, The New York Times Magazine

Richard Joseph, John Evans Professor of International History and Politics, Northwestern University

Leon Dash, Swanlund Chair Professor in Journalism, Professor, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Michael C. Vazquez, Senior Editor, Bidoun: Art and Culture from the Middle East

Achille Mbembe, Professor, Wits University and Visiting Professor of Romance Studies and Franklin Humanities Institute Research Scholar, Duke University

M. Neelika Jayawardane, Associate Professor of English Literature at State University of New York-Oswego, and Senior Editor, AFRICA IS A COUNTRY.

Adam Hochschild, author

Eileen Julien, Professor, Comparative Literature, French & Italian, African Studies, Indiana University Bloomington

Mohamed Keita, freelance journalist in NYC, former Africa Advocacy Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Aaron Leaf, Producer, Feet in 2 Worlds, The New School

Dan Magaziner, Assistant Professor, History, Yale University

Marissa Moorman, Associate Professor, Department of History, Indiana University

Sisonke Msimang, Research Fellow, University of Kwazulu-Natal.

Achal Prabhala, Writer and Researcher, Bangalore, India.

Janet Roitman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The New School

Lily Saint, Assistant Professor of English, Wesleyan University.

Abdourahman A. Waberi, writer and Professor of French and Francophone Studies George Washington University

Binyavanga Wainaina, Writer

Chika Unigwe, Writer

James C. McCann, Chair, Department of Archaeology, Professor of History, Boston University

Susan Shepler, Associate Professor, International Peace and Conflict Resolution, School of International Service, American University

G. Pascal Zachary, professor of practice, Arizona State University

Cara E Jones, PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Mary Baldwin College

James T. Campbell, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of History / Stanford University

Nii Akuetteh, Independent International Affairs Analyst, Former Executive Director of OSIWA, the Soros Foundation in West Africa

Mary Ratcliff, editor, San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper

James Ferguson, Susan S. and William H. Hindle Professor, Stanford University

Alice Gatebuke, Rwandan Genocide and War survivor. Communications Director, African Great Lakes Action Network (AGLAN)

Max Bankole Jarrett, Deputy Director, Africa Progress Panel Secretariat

Mohamed Dicko, retired Computer Applications Analyst in St Louis, Missouri

Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, African & Women’s Studies, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Adam Ouologuem

John Edwin Mason, Department of History, University of Virginia

Dele Olojede, newspaperman

Dr. Jonathan T. Reynolds, Professor of History, Northern Kentucky University

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University

Lisa Lindsay, University of North Carolina

Anne-Maria B. Makhulu, Assistant Prof. of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies, Duke University

Karin Shapiro, Associate Professor of the Practice African and African American Studies, Duke University

Garry Pierre Pierre, Executive director of the Community Reporting Alliance, New York City

Lynn M. Thomas, Professor and Chair, Department of History, University of Washington

Martha Saavedra, Associate Director, Center for African Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Kathryn Mathers, Visiting Assistant Professor, International Comparative Studies, Duke University

Siddhartha Mitter, freelance journalist

Alexis Okeowo, Contributor, The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine

Susan Thomson, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Colgate University

Nicolas van de Walle, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Government, Cornell University

David Newbury, Gwendolen Carter professor of African studies, Smith College

Charles Piot, Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology & Department of African and African American Studies Co-Convener Africa Initiative, Duke University

Adia Benton, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brown University

Gregory Mann, historian of francophone Africa, Columbia University

Anne Pitcher, University of Michigan

Howard Stein, University of Michigan

Adam Shatz, London Review of Books

Peter Rosenblum, professor of international law and human rights, Bard College

Timothy Longman, African Studies Center Director, Chair of Committee of Directors, Pardee School of Global Studies, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boston University

Laura E. Seay, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Colby College

Robert Grossman, Producer

Daniel Fahey, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, and served on the UN Group of Experts on DRC from 2013-2015

Jennie E. Burnet, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Louisville

Kim Yi Dionne, Assistant Professor, Smith College

Lonnie Isabel, Journalist

Karen L. Murphy

Ryan Briggs, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech

Yolande Bouka, PhD, Researcher, Institute for Security Studies

Elliot Fratkin PhD, Gwendolen M. Carter Professor of African Studies, Department of Anthropology, Smith College

Gretchen Bauer, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware

John Woodford, journalist

Frank Holmquist, Professor of Politics, Emeritus, School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College

Alice Kang, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Institute for Ethnic Studies – African and African American Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Michel Marriott, journalist

Jennifer N. Brass, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Public & Environmental Affairs, Indiana University

Séverine Autesserre, Department of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University

Jill E. Kelly, Assistant Professor, Clements Department of History, Southern Methodist University

Dr. Meghan Healy-Clancy, Lecturer on Social Studies and on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University

Dayo Olopade, journalist

Mary Moran, Colgate University

Sharon Abramowitz, UFL

Rebecca Shereikis, Interim Director, Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa, Northwestern University

Barbara B. Brown, Ph.D.,Director of the Outreach Program, African Studies Center, Boston University

Jeffrey Stringer

David Alain Wohl, MD, Associate Professor, The Division of Infectious Diseases, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Andy Sechler, MD,Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

John Kraemer, Assistant Professor, Dept of Health Systems Admin. & African Studies Program, Georgetown University

Barbara Shaw Anderson, Associate Director, African Studies Center, Lecturer, Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, African Studies Center, University of North Carolina

Adrienne LeBas, Assistant Professor of Government, American University, DC

Catharine Newbury, Professor Emerita of Government, Smith College

Ana M. Ayuso Alvarez, Epidemiology Programme applied to the Field, M. Art (Anthropologist)

Cynthia Haq MD, Professor of Family Medicine and Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Aili Tripp, Professor of Political Science & Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Kellner Family Professor in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin

Anne Jebet Waliaula, PhD, Outreach Coordinator, African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Judith Oki, Salt Lake City, UT, former Capacity Building Advisor for Rebuilding Basic Health Services, Monrovia, Liberia

Sandra Schmidt, PhD, Assistant Professor of Social Studies and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Emily Callaci, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Louise Meintjes, Assoc Prof, Departments of Music and Cultural Anthropology, Duke University

May Rihani, Former Co-Chair of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), Author of Cultures Without Borders

Tejumola Olaniyan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Selah Agaba, Doctoral Student, Anthropology & Education Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin

Casey Chapman, Wisconsin

Ted Hochstadt, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Lesotho)

Kah Walla, CEO – STRATEGIES!, Cameroon

Kofi Ogbujiagba, journalist, Madison, Wisconsin

Matthew Francis Rarey, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

David B. Levine, consultant in international development, Washington, DC

Claire Wendland, Medical Anthropologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Frederic C. Schaffer, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Joye Bowman, Professor and Chair, Department of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Cody S. Perkins, Ph.D. Candidate, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia

Eric Gottesman, Colby College Department of Art

Lynda Pickbourn, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College

Kate Heuisler, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Henry John Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor of African and African Diaspora Arts, Departments of Art History and Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sarah Forzley, lecturer in the English department at the University of Paris 10- Nanterre (France)

Laura Doyle, Professor of English, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Ralph Faulkingham, PhD

Emeritus Professor of Anthropology (and former Editor, The African Studies Review), University of Massachusetts Amherst

Dr. Jessica Johnson, University of Massachusetts Amherst History Department

Joseph C. Miller, University of Virginia ret.

Sean Hanretta, Associate Professor, Department of History, Northwestern University

Iris Berger, Vincent O’Leary Professor of History, University at Albany

Jackson Musuuza, MBChB, MPH, MS, PhD student in Clinical Epidemiology, University of Wisconsin Madison

Dr. Anita Schroven, Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

Prof. Dr. Baz Lecocq, Chair of African History, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

Monica H. Green, Professor of History, Arizona State University

Sandra Adell, Professor, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Broom Professor of Social Demography and Anthropology Director, African and African American Studies Program, Acting Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton College

Michael Herce, MD, MPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ)

Satish Gopal MD MPH, UNC Project-Malawi (Director, Cancer Program), UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases

Mina C. Hosseinipour, MD, MPH, Scientific Director, UNC Project, Lilongwe Malawi

Cliff Missen, M.A.

Director, WiderNet@UNC and The WiderNet Project, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Groesbeck Parham, Professor, UNC (working in Zambia)

Norma Callender, San Jose

Harry McKinley Williams, Jr., Laird Bell Professor of History, Carleton College

Robtel Neajai Pailey, Liberian academic, London

Rose Brewer, professor, University of Minnesota

Fodei J. Batty, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Political Science, Quinnipiac University

Graham Wells, MS. PE, (Professor, Retired), Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Mississippi State University

Chouki El Hamel, Ph.D., Professor of History, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies Arizona State University

Obioma Ohia, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Maryland Department of Physics

Paschal Kyoore, Professor of French, Francophone African/Caribbean Literatures & Cultures, Director, African Studies Program, Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, Minnesota

Preston Smith, Chair of Africana Studies. Professor of Politics, Mount Holyoke College

Catherine E. Bolten. Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Peace Studies. The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

Michael Leslie, associate professor of telecommunication, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida

Agnes Ngoma Leslie, Senior Lecturer and Outreach Director, Center for African Studies, University of Florida

Martin Murray, Urban Planning and African Studies, University of Michigan

Laura Fair, Associate Professor of African History, Michigan State University

Elliot Ross, Senior Editor, Africa is a Country

Peter Alegi, Professor of African History, Michigan State University

Laura J. Mitchell, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Irvine

Kathleen Sheldon, editor, H-Luso-Africa, and Research Scholar, UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Ibra Sene, Associate Professor, History & International Relations, The College of Wooster

President, The Dakar Institute of African Studies.

Judith Van Allen, Research Fellow, Institute for African Development, Cornell University

Ron Krabill, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington

It’s Not Just About Cecil John Rhodes

In the past week I received an email from my alma mater requesting the University of Cape Town (UCT) alumni to comment on the Student Representative Council’s calls for the sculpture of Cecil John Rhodes to be removed from its prominent position on UCT grounds. The email reads:

Twenty years into our nation’s democracy, it is clear that the UCT community now needs to make a decision on whether this statue should continue to occupy such a prominent place, both on our campus and in the landscape of our identity as a South African university on the continent of Africa.

The legacy of Cecil John Rhodes undeniably forms an inescapable part of our history. The question we must now ask ourselves is whether he should continue to be venerated in the manner in which the statue presently seems to do. Can we continue to memorialize him in this symbolic way, while being committed to transformation? Can we create a more inclusive and diverse university community — one that is sensitive to the role that Rhodes played in the history of our country, and our continent?

Max Price, the vice chancellor of UCT has since revealed that his proposal to remove the statue has been supported by the institution’s senior leadership group (SLG), but in light of important debates that have emerged over the past few weeks, I question whether this is the best approach. I am writing this from my current university where until very recently a bronze plaque with a dedication to the former South African prime minister and ‘architect of apartheid’ H.F. Verwoerd graced the entrance walls of a prominent building on campus (the building was partially destroyed by a fire in February) and where later this year I will attend my graduation ceremony in a hall named after another former apartheid prime minister, D.F. Malan. Given this current context, I welcome the vice chancellor’s efforts to critically engage with pleas from the student body to have the statue removed. The Haitian historian, Michel-Rolph Trouillot reminds us that “all facts are not created equal: some leave physical markers, others do not…What happened leaves traces, some of which are quite concrete – buildings, dead bodies, monuments, political boundaries that limit the range and significance of any historical narrative”.

While I agree that material culture is both embedded with and transmits meaning as well as produces historic narratives, the university’s efforts shouldn’t simply be focused on the removal of the statue, as this may rob us of an important opportunity to track and expose the role of power in the making of history.

Those South Africans (and others) who don’t understand why celebrating and memorializing Cecil John Rhodes in the public landscape in the way we currently do is problematic or offensive, may need to revisit the country’s history and this requires digging a little deeper than the colonial narratives they may have been taught about men like Rhodes at school. Rhodes, who became prime minister of the Cape Colony in the late 1800’s was instrumental in the establishment of imperial laws that forced black people from their land to make way for industrial development — this formed part of the greater British colonial project which helped to disenfranchise the black population in South Africa — the consequences of which we are all familiar with today. I would argue that the sculpture gazing over the Cape Flats in its uncontested state, symbolises the slow rate of transformation in the institutional, physical and socio-economic spaces of the Western Cape and in South Africa in general. In this regard, it is important for institutions like the University of Cape Town to recognize their role in maintaining systems of privilege that contributed to the lack of reform since we launched into Democracy in 1994.

In the transformation of former monument sites in South Africa, scholars like the Stellenbosch University-based historian Albert Grundlingh have commented on the ANC government’s low-key approach towards dealing with former symbols of apartheid (in terms of the removal and replacement of monuments). Grundlingh writes: “Apart from removing certain statues of H.F Verwoerd, prime minister from 1958-66, renaming airports and redecorating parliament, there has not been any concerted attempt to wipe the slate clean.” After the removal of the H.F. Verwoerd statue from the Parliament buildings in 1994, then president Nelson Mandela warned to use sensitivity in removing former Afrikaner symbols, saying: “[we] must be able to channel our anger without doing injustices to other communities.” Subsequent to the removal of the last 15-foot Verwoerd bust in Bloemfontein in 1994, which took several hours to pull from its perch, virtually no more changes were made to the material reminders of the old order in South Africa. Grundlingh writes that the ANC government has chosen instead “to reinscribe the past by developing its own legacy projects, so far eschewing huge monumental structures and opting for instead for practical, living, open museum sites. Robben Island is the Government’s flagship project in this respect.”

This hands-off approach to adjusting South Africa’s memory landscape is apparent in the way in which the icons of colonialism continue to exist in their visibly unaltered state throughout South Africa’s major cities. As the University of KwaZulu Natal scholar, Sabine Marschall writes: “heritage officials in particular are well aware of the great importance communities in South Africa attach to their political icons and the heritage sector would hardly dare engaging in ventures that might undermine its widely perceived role as contributing to morally elevated societal goals such as community empowerment, reconciliation, education and nation-building.”

From 11 to 13 December 2013, the public viewing of former state president Nelson Mandela’s body took place at the Union buildings in Pretoria and was broadcasted live on SABC2, a national television channel. It was significant and symbolic to me (of the state of our nation) at the time that Nelson Mandela’s national memorial was juxtaposed with the unaltered visual landscape which reflected South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past. (A few days after, on 16 December 2013, South Africa’s national Day of Reconciliation, the South African State President Jacob Zuma, unveiled a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela at the Union buildings.) Sabine Marschall wrote in 2009 (and this became apparent while watching the 2013 broadcast of Mandela’s memorial) that no concrete guidelines or criteria had yet been developed in order to facilitate the removal of selected colonial and Apartheid era monuments: “The process of removal is acknowledged as being contentious and divisive, whereas the installation of new monuments is presented as an inclusive, unifying act, conducive to nation building and reconciliation” — which formed the basis of the national rhetoric of South Africa since Desmond Tutu coined the term “Rainbow Nation” in 1994. The results of this reconcillitory approach are reflected by current debates about our material pasts, sparked by UCT students which has erupted elsewhere in the country.

What’s clear is that the Rhodes sculpture at UCT (and similar sites elsewhere) needs intervention. There have been suggestions made by the UCT Vice Chancellor (the US equivalent is a University President) for a bronze plaque to be installed at its base to alter the heroic narrative around the Rhodes legacy in South Africa. Perhaps a better idea is to make the statue available for intervention by artists (via a transparent invitation and selection process) to disrupt the language and visual coding of the sculpture itself (in terms of materiality, scale and accompanying text) to permanently alter its meaning and the way in which it is read by present and future generations. The statue could become a reminder to the institution that there are pressing issues in terms of reform (beyond just removing it) that need to be addressed. My concern is that in ‘wiping the slate clean’ by removing the sculpture and placing it in the glass vitrine of a museum, far away from it’s context, an opportunity may be missed for continued dialogue about the lingering presence and effects of South Africa’s colonial past.

Nicholas Kristof Discovers Angola

The New York Times’s white savior extraordinaire is at again! The man we love to hate to write about has discovered Angola, and Isabel dos Santos (never mind that much had already been written about her, long before Forbes magazine exposed her dirty billions; but no sour grapes here).

Kristof’s two recent posts on Angola make me feel a whole lot better about still teaching Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write About Africa. I recently worried that Wainaina’s 2005 brilliant satirical piece, was dated. But Kristof’s latest piece “Two Women, Opposite Fortunes” is the very caricature described in Wainaina’s piece. Wainaina is as fresh as ever.

Like Kathryn Mathers, I really don’t want to write about Kristof. His first piece, “Deadliest Country for Kids,” offered the usual drivel, just that it was located in Angola. Poor Africans, rutted dirt roads, pitiful indexes of poverty, health, and education coupled with skyrocketing oil revenues and equally high marks for corruption (and Porsches). Welcome to the journalistic boilerplate on Angola that’s been circulating since at least 2002.

Where have you been, Nicholas Kristof? (Oh, right…saving young, Southeast Asian prostitutes, I nearly forgot.) But now that he has discovered Angola, for Kristof, this is a genocide-size atrocity. Yank the aid! Wag a finger! And don’t forget to make a cameo: leading the woman with a dying child in her arms into the hands of the over-burdened health clinic doctors casting an aside on the wailing of mothers over dying infants as the background chorus of Angola.

If the first piece wasn’t quite enough to get me to the computer to vent, “Two Women, Opposite Fortunes” rockets to a zenith of Conradian description that perhaps only Jeffrey Gettleman could approximate. So, here I am.

One of the two women in the piece is Isabel dos Santos, daughter of long-time Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and one of the continent’s few female billionaires. She’s fancy. And corrupt. The other woman, is Delfina Fernandes. She’s ‘hospitable’ and ‘stoical.’ A vision of misery: 50 years old, blind in one eye, lost 10 of her 15 children, doesn’t know that mosquitos cause malaria (a sound byte so dear NK repeats it in the other piece), and rinses her mouth with gasoline when she can afford it to kill the pain of rotting teeth (which she didn’t mention, ‘stoical’ as she is, until NK asked her – hey lady, did you know your teeth are rotting?). He describes her life as not “that different than a few hundred years ago” (like he would know?), confirmed by Dr. Stephen Foster who claims “They’re still getting what the traditional healer would have given them if they’d come by in the 17th century.” Safe to say, they haven’t read Johannes Fabian’s Time and the Other, or the sizeable bibliography on Angola that describes life in the 17th century.

Here’s the problem. Life in Angola is no cake-walk for lots of people. We’ve talked about that before. That’s why young folks have been protesting since 2011. That’s why Rafael Marques is on trial now. But with the exception of Marques, Kristof prefers expats and the avatars of misery as his interlocutors. They re-confirm his 19th century mise-en-scene and add a little poof of air under his super-hero cape. If he actually spoke to Angolans who work to improve their own lives and situations, he’d write himself and the aid project out of business.

Nick, we’re on to you. We have something called the Bullshit Files. This is now our eleventh piece on you. This needs to end. Or else we’ll have to inaugurate the “Your White Saviour Sh*% Stinks” Files.

Photo of the Day: Rafael Marques’ new book distribution model

Members of the public barred from the court room of Rafael Marques’s trial for defamation today. Before the doors were closed, the charges and his plea were read, and he handed out nearly 100 copies of his book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola (the cause for this trial.) The court adjourns for a month to consider the arguments posed by the defense.

According to the online new site Rede Angola, police arrested five young activists protesting at the court with copies of the book in their hands.

In Pictures: ‘Africanizing Technology’ Conference

Earlier this month, I was invited to a tightly-packed, two-day conference on “Africanizing Technology” at Wesleyan University in Connecticut (a 40 odd minute car ride from New Haven). It was organized by a historian of West Africa on the Wesleyan faculty, Laura Ann Twagira The full program is here. The paper I gave eventually morphed into this talk I gave two weeks later at the London School of Economics. Hopefully the rest of the papers make it to larger audiences outside the academy. Meanwhile, you’ll have to do with these images of the conference by Solen Feyissa, a PhD student in Learning Technologies at the University of Minnesota.

 

The Italian hotelier representing Kenya at the Venice Biennale

How has an Italian hotelier, albeit one who has long-standing ties to Malindi, managed to take over the Kenyan Pavillion at the 2015 Venice Biennale? Armando Tanzini has lived on the Kenya coast for 45 years, and has made a lot of ‘stuff’, from carved driftwood elephants, to baobab trees, to beach villas, to bad collages made from “found materials” – including green flip-flops – in the shape of the African continent. I will grant him the fact that he is known as much for this as he is for mingling with wealthy Italians who holiday in Malindi. However, he is entirely disconnected from the contemporary Kenyan art and culture scene, and has not been known to attempt to get to know Kenyan artists, let alone to represent them. When the news broke that this Italian hustler was running the Kenya Pavillion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, SkepticAfro alerted the African arts and culture community via Twitter:

More!: Armando Tanzini who nicked #Kenya’s pavilion @ Venice Biennale
@Dunia_Duara @farrahnurani @la_Biennale pic.twitter.com/kAs0615kDd

— SkepticAfro (@skepticafro) March 18, 2015

Kenyan artist Michael Soi also contributed, quickly creating a couple of satirical works to help us visualize what’s going on:

There’s history to Tanzini’s Kenyan “hustle”. Back in 2013, a Kenyan Pavilion mysteriously popped up at the 55th International Biennale di Venice. It was commissioned by an Italian woman, Paola Poponi, and ‘curated’ by an Italian man, Sandro Orlandi, a double act previously unknown to  the Kenyan arts and culture scene. The show consisted of 12 artists; one, this long-term Italian resident in Malindi, Armando Tanzini (whose work had shown at Venice ten years previous, also ‘on behalf’ of Kenya), alongside 8 Chinese, 1 Italo-Brazilian, and only 2 Kenyans. Another thing to note is that Orlandi had been involved in Biennial Italy-China, a project that had brought Italian artists into dialogue with Chinese. (Not-so-surprisingly, a couple of the Chinese artists from that endeavour were now exhibiting in this show, as part of the Kenya Pavilion. Orlandi had also previously curated Syria’s Pavilion at the 54th Venice biennial.) You get the picture.

Not much factual information can be found on this project; the Internet, usually brimming with juice on things that take place in such a public realm, is remarkably barren. One blogger at Culture Trip tried to be optimistic about the mish-mash: “A dozen artists from China and Kenya present a seemingly united front at the Kenyan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, under the umbrella of ‘Reflective Nature: A New Primary Enchanting Sensitivity – an exhibition that aesthetically bonds the natural African landscape and the consumerist instincts of the modern world’.” Tanzini is described as an artist who:

has been confessing in multiple ways his love for this magical and troubled land. Having tasted the most cosmopolitan facets of art (he hung out with Andy Warhol while in the US), he eventually fell for African tribal art – a critical encounter in his career, that turned him from painting to sculpting and architecture. In addition to his artistic production, Tanzini established ‘Do Not Forget Africa’, a foundation created to increase public sensibility on both social and cultural issues in the continent, winning the UNESCO prize in 2000. Among other important exhibitions around the world, the artist represented the Kenyan Pavilion in the 50th Venice Biennale.

On his Facebook page, Tanzini describes what he is all about:

“I love Africa, I love it with its endless qualities and its anful defects, I love it because it’s innocent and poor, I love it like I love all my neighbors, also the rich one, but the poor — uncomfortable — are signals. Why don’t we turn our head to this forgotten world placed under Equator? Why don’t we try to help them to make concrete the huge richness of their land and their souls? Not as missionaries, but as smart and sincere managers, ready to give and receive. I’ve been working with them for 30 years, testing several irrational economies such as tourism, agriculture, handcraft, estate activities and so on. I discovered that only magic of creativity could face those economic appalling emergencies, especially in artistic and scientific fields.”

Enough said.

Despite its sordid history, this year, 2015, people had some hope that the Kenya Pavillion at the Venice Biennale would go better. But again, it features mostly Chinese artists, and again, Armando Tanzini. And again, it is commissioned by Paola Poponi and curated by Sandro Orlandi, though he seems to have bagged himself a deputy in Ding Xuefeng. It must have been tricky to rally the Chinese artists from such a distance, so perhaps they thought it better to have a man on the ground. The concept is laughably called ‘Creating Identities’ – which tells us that there isn’t even an attempt to disguise the insincerity of the curatorial construct this time.

The outrage this time is palpable. Artists and writers and bloggers and gallerists and twitterers are fuming, an online petition has been drawn up, and last week, the Minister of Culture called a meeting in Nairobi to discuss the whole fiasco. Only, he never showed up. According to Binyavanga Wainaina, the meeting was set for 2pm. A group of arts and literary people converged in a meeting room and were told to wait. Apparently they waited, and waited, and at some point the group were told that the minister was at the mosque praying, as it was a Friday (so why was the meeting for Friday afternoon?). So they waited again, and then a special-branchish type came to sit with them, and then they waited some more, and then they were asked by someone else why they were waiting, and then they went to Trattoria to drink beer, since they met no-one and got no answers.

Since their inception, National Pavilions at the Venice Biennale have been an opportunity for countries to present themselves in new, idiosyncratic, progressive ways, to celebrate cultural, national identities on a world stage, and to artistically engage in critical conversation with one another. It’s a big responsibility to host a Pavilion, as it falls upon each individual country to determine the design, the curation and the funding for their Pavilion independently, with no set method. Governments, Ministries of Culture, and the relevant powers-that-be of each country adds its voice to the conversation, meticulously choosing its artists and curators to ensure its voice – and “cultural face” – is heard and seen by the powerful world of fine art, which consist of chosen artists, celebrity tastemaker-curators, and billionaire buyers. Together, they can change the way in which we visualise a nation.

As an artist, when you think about the Venice Biennale and what it might feel like to be selected to represent your country in it, you probably start by questioning the legitimacy of your own voice whilst being caught offguard by the notion that the nation state has anything to do with your art. As artist Tavares Strachan who represented the Bahamas in the last biennial says, “Most artists might argue that the process of artistic practice now is more about being a citizen of the world than representing one particular place”. Yet you are presumably expected to explore your own sense of national identity a bit, since the responsibility must be to determine, within the confines of your practice, your country, and the context of the global contemporary, what representation truly means. In the run-up to the last Biennale, Art Review published a series of questionnaires with artists from around the world, asking what it meant to represent their country in the National Pavilions. The words ‘problematic honour’ stood out, not quite an oxymoron, but certainly indicative of the complex pressure beheld by such a nomination.

Personally, I’ve always had a fragile notion of the meaning of ‘home’. I was born in Kenya to a Kikuyu mother and fourth generation British Kenyan father, raised in the Middle East, and now live and work in London. In moments of whimsy, hypothetical contemplation I’ve often wondered, if I had to fight a war, which country would I risk my life for? If I have children, where would I root them? When I reach old age, which veranda would I like to be sitting on, watching which sunset? And as an artist, of course, which country would I want to represent in the Venice Biennale?

The answer to all these questions is Kenya. Of course, Kenya. So, in 2013, it was with heart-happy delight that I read that Kenya was to have its own Pavilion. And later, when I read that the Kenyan Pavilion was described as “a frightening manifestation of neo-colonialism vulgarly presented as multiculturalism”, “Primitivism at its very worst”, “To be avoided like the plague”, my heart sank with a mighty thud.

I recall the name Tanzini from childhood holidays spent at rented villas on Casurina Beach in Malindi, of which he had designed almost all. A longterm resident to Malindi, Tanzini’s biography says things like, “Tanzini’s vision of Africa is very different from the majority of European artists. He sees Africa not as an exterior land but rather the fulcrum of all civilizations. Africa is not just a geographical area, it is a central point fully connected to the universe. The West gives little time to understanding that Africa gave birth to us all… but like a mother, she waits patiently…”. So sensitive to the plight of Africa, he set up a foundation called Do Not Forget Africa, just in case we did. Rumour has it the president owns some of his work. Over 45 years, he made Kenya his ‘home’, and carved a niche (and an obscene number of exotic wild animals and maps of Africa) for himself as artist, architect, and designer. And so it is without malice that I understand that, when he sits on his veranda and contemplates whimsy things, he too must have imagined ‘representing’ Kenya at Venice – though I imagine he probably assumed he would be doing it an enormous benevolent Western favour in the process. So, when he saw a huge gaping hole in the cultural framework of Kenya, where the governmental departments responsible for providing a healthy infrastructure onto which their artists can thrive seemingly gave no fucks, he thought nothing of the problematic honour entailed; he put his opportunist thinking cap on, grabbed his mercenary Italian curatormates, dug into Chinese pockets in return for allowing some of their substandard artists to exhibit, and crudely threw in a couple of token Kenyan artists, whose work bore no relevance to current art practices coming out of Nairobi at the time, as a way of legitimizing this cynical, perverse vanity project. As commentators have since discussed, in the spirit of critical engagement that the Venice Biennale champions so strongly, this could have been a clever curatorial conceit, commenting on the confluence of both Italy and China on Kenya’s growing economy. Only it wasn’t. Bizarrely titled ‘Reflective nature: a new enchanting sensitivity’, a title that, let’s face it, means nothing at all, it was a befuddled, baffling, perverse hodgepodge of poorly realised artworks, “summed up,” as East African art dealer Ed Cross says, by “the main instigator, Armando Tanzini’s carved African woman. This piece (most likely not carved by him as he is in the habit of paying African artists to produce work for him under questionable ethical circumstances) seems to hint at his relationship with Africa. The unfortunate woman lies prostrate on the floor with her well rounded “African bottom” raised invitingly for someone to take advantage of.”

Back in 2013, The Kenyan Pavilion was the laughing stock of the Biennale. People were livid. How could Kenya have got it so wrong? There was so much artistic energy coming out of Kenya. As @skepticafro tweeted, Kenya gave the world Wangechi Mutu. The whole thing didn’t make sense. Who were the jokers responsible, and what on earth could they possibly have done? I read on. It wasn’t a Kenyan Pavilion at all, it was a shitshow. A farce. A really bad joke told really badly with no punchline. Told by this opportunist named Armando Tanzini and his merry band of ill-fitting, below parr Chinese artists and Italian imposters. This wasn’t Kenya’s voice. 

Then, artists and arts organisations in Nairobi rallied. The Minister of Culture was called upon in vain. I followed some of it as best I could from London for a while. And then, I admit, the whole sorry story left my mind. 

And now here we are, this year, with Okwui Enwezor at the helm of what is set to be the most inclusive Biennale to date, with 36 artists of African descent (including Wangechi Mutu) exhibiting in their own right in the central Pavilion. Would Kenya rise triumphant, claiming back its Pavilion and heralding the powerful artistic voices that shouted in outrage two years ago? I had visions of Wangechi Mutu’s goddesses singing chopped up, collaged Kikuyu arias about what it means to be a woman in the world, to the world. Or maybe we would be invited to peer into Arlene Wandera’s dollshouse interiors, or consider our bodies against Gor Soudan’s wire mesh limbs. Or maybe the Pavilion would be lined with dozens of paintings by the prolific Michael Soi, detailing the quirks of Nairobi life. Or, perhaps, Boniface Mwangi would be invited to fill the Pavilion with fat, blooded, squealing pigs; after all, it is the true sign of a progressive government to allow satire and vigorous critique. There were so many possibilities.

But no. No. Tanzini and his henchmen have triumphed again, and my heart – and the credibility of the Kenyan Pavilion – is set to sink further still.

But the real problem here isn’t Tanzini. The problem isn’t the extreme lack of critical curatorial intention at the last Kenyan Pavilion. The problem isn’t the inclusion of Chinese and Italian artists and the exclusion of Kenyan ones. These are all the metastases. The problem – the tumour – is that the powers-at-be don’t seem to care enough about Kenya’s cultural voice. How else would they allow a regressive, dishonest, cynical, cronied neo-colonial (and frankly just not very good) voice to continuously speak for the country at one of the most prestigious international jamborees in Contemporary Art’s calendar?

The author of this Crytical Paradoxes blogpost, which re-alerted me this year to the fiasco, sent out a call to arms. It says: “The Kenyan artists have their rock and cellphone. The rock is their knowledge and desire to shape their own lives, while their cell phone is their connectedness, among themselves and with the rest of the world, with access to a massive network of people with a similar conviction, linking them all together to form a formidable matrix.” My initial tweet last week, which lead to this longer post was:

 #Kenya artists! Why haven’t we thrown our rocks hard enough to claim back our Pavilion after the ’13 fiasco? #Venice

When I sit in moments of contemplative, hypothetical whimsy, and consider which country I one day would dream my voice could represent at Venice, the answer, of course, is Kenya. Not yet, and maybe never. This is a (problematic) honour that must be worked for and earned. But it is so important to me and to all of Kenya’s current and future artists that we work now on the powers-at-be, to create a viable, credible stage for our voices to be heard. We must throw our rocks now, and vow for this never, ever to happen again.

Rhodes Must Fall Everywhere

As I write, students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) are occupying an administration building demanding the removal of a statue of Cecil John Rhodes, who keeps watch over Cape Town’s leafy, liberal, and largely white, southern suburbs from the university’s upper campus. Earlier the same week, undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, my own place of employment and study, staged a mass walkout to support their teaching assistants, then in the third week of their strike. By the end of this month over 30,000 students in Quebec could be on strike against the provincial government’s austerity program. Aside from the heady enthusiasm of campus politics, is there any variable that unites these seemingly disparate campus struggles and what can they learn from one another?

Scrolling through pictures on the facebook group Rhodes Must Fall, it is apparent that the occupation’s aim is not limited to the removal of a statue that glorifies a colonial tyrant responsible for untold suffering inflicted on black bodies in pits and shafts throughout Southern Africa. Students holding placards that read ‘Black Staff at UCT Matter’ are also calling attention to the low wages of cleaners and maintenance staff on campus. For some time, unions have called attention to the university’s outsourcing of campus services to private companies and labour brokers and the harassment and discrimination many workers face from middle managers. By speaking directly to the enduring symbols of racial domination on campus they have not only exposed the epistemological whiteness of the curriculum but the ways in which the university exploits cheap and racialized labour.   

This matters immensely because it exposes the fact that universities are increasingly staffed by legions of low-paid, contract and precarious workers who keep the university running on an everyday basis. It exposes a hidden world of work that keeps the university operational, from the cleaning of student residences to the preparation of food for thousands each day. At UCT it just so happens that the bulk of this work is done by black people, many of them women. As a general rule, universities work to position themselves within a hierarchy that obscures these forms of labour. Even when universities advertise themselves as benevolent employers, the beneficiaries are almost always tenured faculty and the legions of deans and managers that seem to multiply year after year, not those photocopiers and gardeners who keep the academic factory running. Students at UCT have achieved this by speaking to issues of institutional and entrenched racism at Africa’s leading university, and in doing so they have addressed issues of both race and class within the university system.

In calling for the statue to be removed then, activists are not only addressing the hidden divisions of labour that sustain academia on the backs of black bodies, they are critiquing the raced, classed an gendered dimensions that shape access to education in South African society. Challenging whiteness at UCT is not to suggest that individual students are to blame for the absence of transformation, but to point out that millions of black people in this country find themselves in a position where even gazing upon the statue of Rhodes is a remote possibility. It is to point out that economic inequality remains heavily racialized and gendered, and in order to transform our universities there needs to be a greater recognition of the structural violence that black people continue to endure as they send their children off to dilapidated schools in far flung rural areas with few employment opportunities once they finish.

When we situate this particular struggle within the political economy of this deeply unequal nation it’s quite clear that a struggle against symbols of colonialism is a struggle against the perpetuation of colonial forms of domination in the present. In the South African case this involves both material forms of racial inequality inscribed into the nature of the post-apartheid economy—ongoing urban divisions along racial lines is but one example as are contemporary forms of labour migrancy. The other is, of course, the ideological tenets of white supremacy, which deny and undermine the intelligence of black people and position enlightenment virtues, particularly within the academy, as the pinnacle to which those on the continent should aspire to. To claim that removing a statue fails to address the structural problems at the heart of South Africa’s universities is to miss the ways in which inequality is produced by both economic forces and ideologies of domination that remain deeply etched into South Africa’s socio-economic fabric.

And herein lies the immense value of Rhodes Must Fall for student struggles the world over: It is through tackling issues of racism on university campuses that one exposes the structural conditions that shape access to public education and, indeed, the nature of that education itself. In this regard, students at UCT are in the lead. While students in Toronto have struck for improved funding for student workers, more work needs to be done to expose how access to post-secondary education at some of the world’s leading institutions is shaped by histories of economic inequality in which racial domination played a prominent role. Such an approach can also, crucially, call attention to the racialized and gendered labour within the academic factory. 

There is a long history of student occupations setting off a chain reaction of social protest. Throughout history students have acted as catalysts of struggle, as they often feel the impacts of economic and political change most acutely. In South African history, they have also been the ones willing to take the risks required to advance emancipatory struggles. In North American and Europe student uprisings have challenged the principles of economic austerity and neoliberal rationalism that values fiscal restraint ahead of human development. In South Africa, Rhodes Must Fall, and the expansion of these protests to other universities including Rhodes University itself, signals a changing tide. Those post-1994 ‘born-frees’ are simply not content with the gains made by their parents, and rightly so. Removing one statue and putting up another hardly seems to be their point, and no doubt they have read their Fanon. If the last twenty years of South African politics have taught us anything it is that glorification before transformation only sows the seeds of bitter resentment. Students around the world are looking to a future that, in many ways, seems rather bleak. They are coming to realize that it is in their power to change it, and, as Biko wrote “to bestow upon South Africa [and the world] the greatest gift possible —a more human face.”