Rhodes Had To Rise in Order to "Fall"

Photograph by Tony Carr

In an ironic twist the Rhodes statue which was finally removed from the grounds of the University of Cape Town (UCT) this week - 9th April 2015 - had to be "lifted" in order to "fall". But it could have fallen :
 the occupiers of "Azania House" (the administration building) could easily have arranged it if vandalism was their intention. It clearly wasn't. There was much more at stake - the conscientizing of the whole academic community - not only at the University of Cape Town but nationwide. I think all those critics I have just read on the news24 website who were disgusted by the students' behaviour yesterday should realize this.

Furthermore, I watched on video as one young man bashed at Rhodes' carved face with a wooden plank, while another tied a bucket with red paint round his head and I wondered what was happening for them. It was as if they wanted to  destroy forever the greedy colonialist vision that his gaze over the Cape flats symbolized - the installation of white hegemony from Cape to Cairo. It's scary for many people to see this. But actually it's human to feel rage at centuries of injustice and at present humiliations. Its just that so few of us have ever been allowed to express this kind of rage, we get scared by it. I once saw some enlightened parents give their angry little boy a plastic baseball-bat to go hit against a tree. What was so different last Thursday afternoon? Its not just children who feel rage - we all do. By the time we are adults it's usually suppressed and our bodies pay the price. So if a couple of young men expressed their violent rage by bashing at Rhodes' head, I for one, am grateful to them - no-one was hurt in the process - they got to feel empowered and it was the perfect moment to savor their victory.

Photograph by Tony Carr

 Every young person should have that feeling at some point in their lives! I doubt they will ever forget what they did and what was achieved by the Rhodes Must Fall campaign.

Many of the occupiers of Azania House slept in the conference room named belatedly to honour Archie Mafeje. Having known Archie, who wrote from experience about white liberal hegemony at the universities of Southern Africa, I think he would've been pleased to have played a role in this first big step to effect a change, but he would in no way be satisfied with it....

The Quiet Demise of Zonnebloem

Sometime earlier this year, I arranged a meeting at St Marks District Six and when I gave people directions I told them to follow the signs to Zonnebloem. I was a bit surprised therefore when on my way there, I saw the sign had been changed to District Six. This was the original 1867 name of the area close to the Cape Town Central Business District (CBD) which for over a century housed a mixed community and then was declared to be for whites only in 1966.

It gave me a bit of a lift - Wow! the City had given the area back its rightful name - or so I thought.....

A few weeks later, I am walking around the Cape Town Art Fair and I chance upon a video made by Haroon Gunn-Salie. And what is it about? It is a film of 2 hoodies going out at night with ladders and rolls of wide tape replacing all the Zonnebloem signs. I am rather amazed to see this evidence of what actually had transpired. Far from this being a decision taken by the City Fathers (or in Cape Town's case, the Mothers) it turns out to be a "site-specific installation" by a young artist and his friends. And do you know? Its been up since August 2013 and not a single one has been removed! and I guarantee none will be. In addition it is probably illegal to do what Gunn-Salie did, but you will never hear of a court case about it. A terrible wrong - the apartheid government's forced removals in 1968 of thousands of people from a vibrant community - which was then euphemized by calling the area Zonnebloem (Sunflower) - was quietly addressed by a brilliant artist who sensed the time was right for a return to the place-name - "District Six". No-one has been offended or excluded by his action. In fact his works on the forced removals of District Six have won him great acclaim.

The University of Cape Town students currently protesting about the statue of Rhodes (Southern Africa's arch-colonialist) so prominently placed on campus, or even Max Price, the beleaguered Vice-Chancellor, could do a lot worse than consult with Haroon Gunn-Salie about what to do with the Rhodes statue and what to put in its place!