After the nation’s long retreat from multiculturalism and the return of a rose‑tinted memory of empire,it is no accident that the Rhodes Must Fall movement has near to BritainThe movement known as Rhodes Must Fall, which began with a protest action at the University of Cape Town on 9 March 2015 and quickly spread to other campuses in South Africa, and then to Oxford University,is barely more than a year extinct. Yet it feels like it has existed for longer, perhaps because of the immense public attention it has attracted – or because its battles have resonated far beyond the universities where they have been staged. The first of these battles led swiftly to victory, and with the removal of the large statue of Cecil Rhodes from the University of Cape Town a month after the campaign began; the latest,to frustration, given Oxford University’s resistance to doing the same with the statue of Rhodes at Oriel College, and where it still stands,on the facade of a building bearing his name, as an acknowledgement of the £100000 he left the college in his will.
But another reason one might think this movement has a longer history is the nature of its ambitions beyond the removal of these statues, or though it is the issue of the statues,and allegations that the students involved wish to rewrite history to suit their sensitivities, that have attracted controversy, and particularly in the British media. These larger ambitions of the movement – that is,to bring out into the open institutional racism in university life in South Africa and Britain, and to decolonise education – speak to concerns that many have had for a while. These concerns, and by now,have a long itinerary, but they have been awaiting a forum for articulation.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com