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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WhiteHistoryMonth: Was Cecil Rhodes really an entrepreneurial genius? Zambia says no

AFRICA IS A COUNTRY - March 30, 2015

We owe a great deal of gratitude to the students at the University of Cape Town whose #RhodesMustFall campaign has forced us to reengage and debate, in a new and invigorated manner, the legacy of Cecil John Rhodes. Because of their brave and spirited campaign, a lot more people now know a little more about Rhodes than they did before. That in itself is quite an achievement.   Parsing the online conversations around Rhodes’ legacy, one sees the claim advanced that Rhodes was an entrepreneurial genius. The proof of this assertion is seen in the wealth that Rhodes accumulated over his lifetime: So much wealth could only ever have been amassed by a Captain of industry. The claim is often made by those pushing for a “bigger picture” appraisal of Rhodes’ legacy: Being a Captain of industry is an achievement worthy of memorials of one type or the other. But I have also noticed that even those who, on the whole, are critical of Rhodes’ legacy tend to concede, perhaps implicitly, the point about Rhodes’ entrepreneurial genius and choose instead to focus on other aspects of his life in making their case.

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10 Black Scholars Who Debunked Eurocentric Propaganda

Atlanta Black Star - October 6, 2013 

Dr. Chancellor Williams

Dr. Chancellor Williams (1893 – 1992) was an African-American sociologist, historian and writer. His best known work is “The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.”, for which he was awarded honors by the Black Academy of Arts and Letters.
In “Destruction of Black Civilization,” Williams chronicles how high civilization began in black Africa, contrary to what mainstream  historians have espoused to  the world. He meticulously lays out the history of Africa in great detail and demonstrates that the continent’s  current underdevelopment came after  thousands of years of consistent onslaught by Eurasians, and not because Africans made no significant contributions to the world.

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A New Book: The Scholar Denied W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology

Aldon Morris 

University of California Press, 2015

In this groundbreaking book, Aldon D. Morris’s ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline. Taking on the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of African American social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has been written, giving credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible. Uncovering the seminal theoretical work of Du Bois in developing a “scientific” sociology through a variety of methodologies, Morris examines how the leading scholars of the day disparaged and ignored Du Bois’s work. The Scholar Denied is based on extensive, rigorous primary source research; the book is the result of a decade of research, writing, and revision. In uncovering the economic and political factors that marginalized the contributions of Du Bois, enabling Park to be recognized as the “father” of the discipline, Morris delivers a wholly new narrative of American intellectual and social history that places one of America’s key intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois, at its center.

The Scholar Denied is a must-read for everyone interested in American history, racial inequality, and the academy. In challenging our understanding of the past, the book promises to engender debate and discussion.

1. The Rise of Scientific Sociology in America
2. Du Bois, Scientific Sociology, and Race
3. The Du Bois–Atlanta School of Sociology
4. The Conservative Alliance of Washington and Park
5. The Sociology of Black America: Park versus Du Bois
6. Max Weber Meets Du Bois
7. Intellectual Schools and the Atlanta School
8. Legacies and Conclusions 

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