Deconstructing Rhodes

Universities are steeped in and reflect the values of a society, engineered in accordance with the political administrations of the day.

All 23 South African institutions have been shaped by the political cultures and legacies of colonialism and apartheid, and this needs no repetition.

Rhodes played a role in the early history of UCT, hence a material artefact, the statue.

The statue is one dimension of " whiteness" and its material basis: call it power, call it excellence, call it standards, call it quality, call it a global identity, call it the knowledge economy.

The very idea of a university is that it is a space for debate or, as scholars would have it, a "cosmos of truth".

Universities in traditional terms are supposed to be spaces for "reason" (read as Western thought). So s tudents and staff engaging with the university on this issue have to be "rational" against this model.

Yet, how do we engage in dialogue when the institution by its very nature has a material culture soaked in traditions that have alienated the guardians of the youth?

The statue is but the tip of the transformation iceberg - namely, the whiteness and Eurocentrism it represents.

Even those institutions that do not have a white majority carry the burden, in an inverse way. We have to grab this point as any discussion on the Rhodes saga, by implication, would require us to think imaginatively about transforming the entire sector.