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Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire
When students at Oxford University called for a statue of Cecil Rhodes to be removed, following similar calls by students in Cape Town, the significance of these protests was felt across continents. This was not simply about tearing down an outward symbol of British imperialism – a monument glorifying a colonial conqueror – but about confronting the toxic inheritance of the past, and challenging the continued underrepresentation of people of colour at universities. And it went to the very heart of the pernicious influence of colonialism in education today.
Written by key members of the movement in Oxford, Rhodes Must Fall is the story of that campaign. Showing the crucial importance of both intersectionality and solidarity with sister movements in South Africa and beyond, this book shows what it means to boldly challenge the racism rooted deeply at the very heart of empire.
Written by key members of the movement in Oxford, Rhodes Must Fall is the story of that campaign. Showing the crucial importance of both intersectionality and solidarity with sister movements in South Africa and beyond, this book shows what it means to boldly challenge the racism rooted deeply at the very heart of empire.
406 pages, Hardcover
First published August 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 18, 2019
It started in Cape Town, as a protest against the central place of a statue of the great imperialist Cecil John Rhodes at the heart of the University of Cape Town, but it was never just about the statue, or Rhodes. The statue and Rhodes mark a specific way of thinking and a structure of knowledge that places at its core a particular intellectual history that grants voice to that far western peninsular marking the outer limits of West Asia and its satellite zone of occupation in North America and other former colonies.
The drive and demand of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign was decolonisation of education, of the curriculum, of the ways we think and act and do. It is a movement that demands that we confront the basis of our educational institutions in the mass enslavement of human beings, converting them to chattels. It is a movement that demands that explore those voices silenced by cultural arrogance of the small West Asian peninsular we call Europe, a silencing explored compellingly by Raewyn Connell in her outstanding Southern Theory and it is a movement the we see taking form in phenomena such as #CiteBlackWomen. It is also a movement that spread, quickly, with is most high profile off-shoot being Rhodes Must Fall Oxford, where a similar statue of Rhodes, this time on the façade of Oriel College, became the symbolic centre of a decolonisation campaign.
Not surprisingly the campaign drew the opprobrium of the intellectual establishment seeking to depict these wild eyed students as intellectually ignorant and inept, attacking SOAS for its efforts to decolonise philosophy and Cambridge students for their efforts to disrupt the lily white canon of English literature. Yet I know from my work as an historian of empire that the overwhelming frame of my discipline depicts the heroic adventurer/explorer heading out into the unknown to claim a new world – yet the new world is already well populated by people for whom it is nothing new. What’s more, I know from my work in social and cultural history that these ‘newly discovered’ people (that is, the people who were already there) seem to have no agency, as if they were the stage set against which the real stuff of history happened. The stories my discipline and others like it continue to tell, despite decades of political decolonisation, remain Euro-centric tales of heroic adventures and passive ‘natives’.
This superb collection of papers, movement and activist literature, analyses, commentaries and critiques that emerged from this international exposes not only the richness of the movement but also its faultlines and its frontiers. Centred on Rhodes Must Fall (Oxford) the collection draws on and draws in sister movements and situates itself in a global context of commentary and critique, albeit a largely Anglo-centric global context. It is structured in such a way that it does not imply distinctions between demands – curriculum, institutional structures, institutional governance and the like – but challenges us as readers to see them as interwoven and inter-linked to the extent where they become not just mutually interdependent but mutually sustaining. Calls for reparations sit alongside high profile contemporary colonial struggles (Palestine) and those less known (West Papua); reports of protests link to discussions of the problems of holding a Rhodes Scholarship and the meaning of whiteness in decolonial politics; ‘British values’ and pedagogy are considered as parallel to the silencing of majority world thinkers and intellectuals in subject areas such as mathematics; space and time share a common burden…..
These are activist papers and analyses as well as scholarly critiques and organic interventions; these are papers that are an essential complement to the sorts of analyses we see in Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial & Kerem Nişancioğlu’s outstanding Decolonising the University as a pair of companion volumes for activists of our times. Together they are an essential guide to the intellectual and political struggles that should define our era.
The drive and demand of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign was decolonisation of education, of the curriculum, of the ways we think and act and do. It is a movement that demands that we confront the basis of our educational institutions in the mass enslavement of human beings, converting them to chattels. It is a movement that demands that explore those voices silenced by cultural arrogance of the small West Asian peninsular we call Europe, a silencing explored compellingly by Raewyn Connell in her outstanding Southern Theory and it is a movement the we see taking form in phenomena such as #CiteBlackWomen. It is also a movement that spread, quickly, with is most high profile off-shoot being Rhodes Must Fall Oxford, where a similar statue of Rhodes, this time on the façade of Oriel College, became the symbolic centre of a decolonisation campaign.
Not surprisingly the campaign drew the opprobrium of the intellectual establishment seeking to depict these wild eyed students as intellectually ignorant and inept, attacking SOAS for its efforts to decolonise philosophy and Cambridge students for their efforts to disrupt the lily white canon of English literature. Yet I know from my work as an historian of empire that the overwhelming frame of my discipline depicts the heroic adventurer/explorer heading out into the unknown to claim a new world – yet the new world is already well populated by people for whom it is nothing new. What’s more, I know from my work in social and cultural history that these ‘newly discovered’ people (that is, the people who were already there) seem to have no agency, as if they were the stage set against which the real stuff of history happened. The stories my discipline and others like it continue to tell, despite decades of political decolonisation, remain Euro-centric tales of heroic adventures and passive ‘natives’.
This superb collection of papers, movement and activist literature, analyses, commentaries and critiques that emerged from this international exposes not only the richness of the movement but also its faultlines and its frontiers. Centred on Rhodes Must Fall (Oxford) the collection draws on and draws in sister movements and situates itself in a global context of commentary and critique, albeit a largely Anglo-centric global context. It is structured in such a way that it does not imply distinctions between demands – curriculum, institutional structures, institutional governance and the like – but challenges us as readers to see them as interwoven and inter-linked to the extent where they become not just mutually interdependent but mutually sustaining. Calls for reparations sit alongside high profile contemporary colonial struggles (Palestine) and those less known (West Papua); reports of protests link to discussions of the problems of holding a Rhodes Scholarship and the meaning of whiteness in decolonial politics; ‘British values’ and pedagogy are considered as parallel to the silencing of majority world thinkers and intellectuals in subject areas such as mathematics; space and time share a common burden…..
These are activist papers and analyses as well as scholarly critiques and organic interventions; these are papers that are an essential complement to the sorts of analyses we see in Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial & Kerem Nişancioğlu’s outstanding Decolonising the University as a pair of companion volumes for activists of our times. Together they are an essential guide to the intellectual and political struggles that should define our era.
August 9, 2021
Full disclosure: I admit I was partly interested in this in the context of an ongoing mostly good-natured feud with my father (he went to Oriel; I went to Balliol; the jury is still out on which of those has the worse internationally-(in)famous white male racist alumnus).
Thanks to social media, I'd heard of the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford movement but I'm afraid I knew very little about their aims beyond the removal of his statue, so it was about time I educated myself, and this is just the book for others who need to do so.
It pulls together a collection of essays, speeches, interviews and other writings by members of various anti-colonialist groups from, inter alia, the UK, the US, and South Africa. Not surprised by much of what was said about the likes of Oxford and Harvard, but reading the chapters on UCL, QMUL and SOAS, all of which I would have said were more progressive institutions, were...enlightening, shall we say (in some ways, this book has dated since its publication...sadly much of what's being protested is still firmly in place).
The range of themes and styles adopted by the various contributors mean there's something for pretty much everyone here: stand-out chapters for me were Julian Brave NoiseCat's piece on interviewing for the Rhodes Scholarship, Lwazi Lambusha's 'Open Letter to the Coloniser' and Esther Stanford-Xosei's speech on reparations.
The one thing I will say against this book is that it needed a more thorough edit/proofread - had to get out my pencil more than a few times to make sense of some passages.
Thanks to social media, I'd heard of the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford movement but I'm afraid I knew very little about their aims beyond the removal of his statue, so it was about time I educated myself, and this is just the book for others who need to do so.
It pulls together a collection of essays, speeches, interviews and other writings by members of various anti-colonialist groups from, inter alia, the UK, the US, and South Africa. Not surprised by much of what was said about the likes of Oxford and Harvard, but reading the chapters on UCL, QMUL and SOAS, all of which I would have said were more progressive institutions, were...enlightening, shall we say (in some ways, this book has dated since its publication...sadly much of what's being protested is still firmly in place).
The range of themes and styles adopted by the various contributors mean there's something for pretty much everyone here: stand-out chapters for me were Julian Brave NoiseCat's piece on interviewing for the Rhodes Scholarship, Lwazi Lambusha's 'Open Letter to the Coloniser' and Esther Stanford-Xosei's speech on reparations.
The one thing I will say against this book is that it needed a more thorough edit/proofread - had to get out my pencil more than a few times to make sense of some passages.
June 2, 2025
Good things about anthologies - intersecting voices collaborating on one subject from a wide range of different voices and perspectives.
Bad things about anthologies - repetition.
The RNF Oxford bit got a little samey for me. But loved the speeches, poems and raps.
When they opened out to look at a broader context globally and more specifically following the Rhodes Must Fall at Cape Town really enjoyed plus all the bits on Palestine. (Note this was written in 2016 and is a book about decolonising the heart of empire. Cough Israel. 😌)
Man universities really SUCK huh!?? Hard hard relate to white supremacy really doubling down in a university context. @uniofyork needs to fix up.
Bad things about anthologies - repetition.
The RNF Oxford bit got a little samey for me. But loved the speeches, poems and raps.
When they opened out to look at a broader context globally and more specifically following the Rhodes Must Fall at Cape Town really enjoyed plus all the bits on Palestine. (Note this was written in 2016 and is a book about decolonising the heart of empire. Cough Israel. 😌)
Man universities really SUCK huh!?? Hard hard relate to white supremacy really doubling down in a university context. @uniofyork needs to fix up.
September 20, 2020
I liked this book. Taught me alot about history of what is happening.
February 11, 2019
This first third of this collection is a brilliant compilation of essays, speeches, interviews and lyrics related to the Rhodes Must Fall, Oxford campaign. The remaining two-thirds is a collection of essays and interviews on other global decolonial themes, campaigns and projects. Those pieces are interesting and important reads, but there’s less cohesion to them as a whole.
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December 30, 2018great collection of essays, good pairing with 'Decolonising the University'
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews