In the last two weeks, students belonging
to the #RhodesMustFall collective have rechristened and remade of one
of University of Cape Town’s key administrative building as ‘Azania
House.’ They have been occupying the building since March 20and it has
become a nodal point for the student led collective. At the end of one
of the first teach-ins at Azania House, a UCT student and member of the
collective, Ru Slayen, half-jokingly and half-seriously suggested
instituting teach-ins like the one we had just had in a new summer
school to be named the Post-colonial School of Cape Town.
Ru’s words might have been half-serious
and half-joking but they also, as I grasp them, iterated a desire to
institute and inhabit a university that in the first instance enables an
understanding of the after-effects of colonialism and then reflects on
how to ‘go beyond’ them, as Stuart Hall argued in 1996. Cecil John
Rhodes’ statue is one such manifest symbol of colonialism and the
students’ passionate calls for its removal are a reminder of the
visceral ways in which history is experienced. But the visceral sting of
colonial inheritances can be felt repeatedly and in many places. At
Azania House students remind us of that experience through the posters
that they have put up on its walls. Amongst the many that have come up
in in the last two weeks, one announced that, “we are no longer at
ease.” Several others bear printed copies of the many racist Facebook
responses that the #RhodesMustFall page has received; these Facebook
comments appear intent on hurting and demeaning the students who are
part of the movement. Some of these racist comments are from fellow
students, and others perhaps from members of the wider Cape Town and
South African citizenry who disagree with the #RhodesMustFall
collective’s cause and dispute its members’ position. On its part, the
university administration has also had to deal with vicious outpourings.
It had put up writing boards around the statue to invite comments from
the university community on transformation issues but had to remove them
because, according to a university missive, many of the comments penned
there constituted ‘hate speech.’
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