The morning after: Reconciliation after #RhodesHasFallen: iLIVE

27 March 2015 - 11:55 By Suntosh R Pillay
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now

Suntosh R Pillay reflects on being a Mandela Rhodes Scholar in a society grappling with complex paradoxes and messy nation-building

When I applied for the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship in 2007, I must admit, I had only a vague idea of who Cecil John Rhodes was. He never featured much in the history I was taught or in the world I grew up in. Looking back, and perhaps even looking forward, Rhodes’s name was so naturalised into the landscape of southern Africa that the absence of any heated public debates on his role and place in a new, post-1994 South Africa seemed odd. Maybe we had bigger fish to fry, and the project of dismantling apartheid certainly seemed more urgent than shooting the breeze about a man who had died in 1902.

But it was in rural Qunu on a still, peaceful night in 2008, that I was personally awoken to the obligation of grappling with this man’s complex legacy. Being part of a spirited young group of post-graduate students who had the dubious honour of being called Mandela Rhodes Scholars, placed us at the nexus of needing to decide whether or not this was something to be ashamed of or proud of.

Could we carry this title bearing the surname of a man who openly detested black people and had never really intended for his wealth to be used for the education of black students? How could Madiba allow his wholesome brand to be tarnished by the association with such a ruthless man? Should we accept this scholarship in the comfort that at least some OF the wealth unfairly plundered from African soil for the expansion of the British Empire was to be finally redirected to its rightful place, albeit 100 years too late? Did Mandela take reconciliation too far?

Debating our opinions and having a vested interest in this conversation took us into the early hours of many mornings, and with the help of some good wine and open-minded engagement, I think the issue was left hanging. But it had got us thinking, and it was a serious conversation had by those selected before us, and continues to be had by those selected after us. Rhodes scholars ponder this up in Oxford. This conversation, to be meaningful, requires a lot of context, history, and attempts at empathy, because it is easy, perhaps even lazy, to retrospectively judge a person by norms and standards set a century later. But, we don’t have to allow context to sanitise past narratives, especially when they continue to have such profound effects on our present. And here we are now, burdened and challenged with this legacy debate in full volcanic eruption since the urgent calls for symbolic and material transformation at UCT.

It is worth reading Mandela’s own words as to understand why he accepted the benefaction from the Rhodes Trust to start a foundation in Africa that could benefit society. He could have politely refused the blood money of a ruthless colonialist. But this was Nelson Mandela, an astute, strategic, forward-thinking man whose inclusivity is unparalleled. This is not to deify Mandela, nor to impose his logic onto our current issues. Quite the contrary – my aim is to problematise reconciliation in light of #RhodesWillFall at UCT, #KingGeorgeMustFall at UKZN, and #RhodesSoWhite at Grahamstown. They reflect ruptures in Mandela’s reconciliation project.

My own reading on Rhodes is that this colossal colonial conqueror embodied both the light and dark aspects of humanity. Mandela recognised this and, in an attempt to capitalise – not sanitise – what we could learn from Rhodes, he distilled educational excellence and entrepreneurship from an otherwise dodgy legacy. And so it came to be that the Mandela Rhodes Scholars would have to demonstrate the potential for these qualities, in addition to Mandela’s own traits of ethical leadership and a spirit of reconciliation. Since the marriage of these two names in 2003, there has been plenty of healthy debate on the implications and meaning of what Mandela himself called "the closing of that historic circle”. Certainly, they bring together the two biggest names from South Africa’s 19th and 20th century, for the betterment of the 21st.

Consider also, the key role played by anti-apartheid activist and Director-General of Mandela’s office, the late Prof. Jakes Gerwel, whom Mandela credited as “the principal conceiver of the idea of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation and the person who brought the idea to me and persuaded me of the great potential of the initiative”. As a younger generation grappling with complex aspects of past and present realities, it is edifying to reflect on the reconciliatory attitude of the elders who came before us, their ability to transcend pain, anger and bitterness at a system that dominated their lives, and to wilfully engage in the paradoxes inherent in tying those names together.

It is also worth quoting at some length our patron’s founding speech in Westminister Hall, London, on July 2, 2003, in front a crowd of some 2000 people:

“We have agreed to and support this joint initiative believing that the bringing together of those two names represents a symbolic moment in the closing of the historic circle referred to. And we know with confidence that the work of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation will substantively contribute to a better life for the people of South Africa and further abroad on the African continent. It was in South Africa that Cecil John Rhodes, that great entrepreneur, made most of the money which he left in legacy for scholars from across the world to benefit from for the past hundred years. It speaks of a growing sense of global responsibility that in this second century of its operations the Rhodes Trust finds it appropriate to redirect some of its attention and resources back to the origin of that wealth. We can only imagine how Rhodes himself would have identified with this decision...”

Good intentions notwithstanding, it is obvious that Mandela’s wish was premature and that the historic circle is not closed. Indeed, its superficial plastering has been hiding viciously untreated, festering wounds these statues have come to represent. Dialogue, therefore, must continue even after the statue falls, so the kinds of conversations I was having in Qunu, are the kinds of public dialogues we now need to seriously and authentically participate in, because the Mandela/Rhodes paradox is a legacy that affects all of us; how we make sense of it is part of our post-colonial struggle to figure out who we are as a nation, and whether we are willing to grapple with the messiness of reconciliation.

  • Suntosh R Pillay is acting chairperson on the Board of Directors of the Mandela Rhodes Community. He is a state clinical psychologist and writer. These are his personal views. Tweet @suntoshpillay
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now