Monday, March 30, 2015

The fall of Rhodes’s statue is only the first step, says Malema

Bongani Nkosi

MAIL&GUARDIAN - 30 Mar 2015

The fall of late imperialist Cecil Rhodes’s statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) won’t be a meaningless token action, but a major step towards defeating white supremacy in South Africa.
This is what Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), told delegates at the summit of the party’s student wing at the University of the Witwatersrand on Sunday. Members of the EFF Student Command from 103 university and college campuses across the nine provinces attended the summit.
Delivering a keynote address, Malema urged the students to reject attempts by some influential people to trivialise the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign by students at UCT. Those people ask “when Rhodes falls, then what?” as if the campaign is “just a small thing”.
“It is not a small thing. [The campaign] is an onslaught against white supremacy,” said Malema.
“It is that statue that continues to inspire [whites] to think that they are a superior race, and it is through ­collapsing of these types of symbols that the white minority will begin to appreciate that there’s nothing superior about them.”
Downfall of race supremacy
The UCT students’ protest campaign to have Rhodes’s statue on campus removed enters its third week on Monday. Malema described it as just “one very important step in the correct direction”.

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