UCT Press Release: Rhodes Statue will be demolished

UCT makes its final decision on the controversial matter of the Cecil John Rhodes statue.

Text reads:

Date: 24 March 2015

Alumni, colleagues, and fellow students,

By now you’re all aware of the heated and bitter debate happening on social media and on campus concerning the controversial Cecil John Rhodes memorial statue located on the Jammie stairs. Since the furore kicked off, strong public pressure has mounted on UCT to take a decision on what to do with this statue, this painful reminder of our imperfect past.

And, having listened to the all the rational arguments, heartfelt submissions, ad hominem spiteful tweets, disingenuous oversimplifications and absurd Hitler comparisons on both sides of this debate, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve come to a decision.

The statue will fall.

Of course, this is only the first step in a long, long journey of progressive change to combat the institutional racism and elitism that, unlike that blonde girl you dated last year, you can’t escape even if you take the long way around campus to the Politics department.

Many ask us, “CRS, what kinds of socially progressive programs will you put into place to ensure that postive change and justice is rooted into our institution’s core?”. Many email me asking, “Eric, what sorts of scholarships and funding programs for disenfranchised youth will you source and offer to ensure that this protest isn’t just a skin-deep, feel-good, masturbatory paintjob?”

And to you I say, there is still so much work to be done before we can consider such trivialities.

Look at the Parliament buildings in Cape Town. Look at the Union buildings in Pretoria. Look all around you – how can we possibly introduce institutional transformative measures when there are still so many monuments to be torn down and free us from the oppressive weight of mental violence?

How could we possibly instigate better equal employment measures, or introduce student funding and financial aid schemes for students from a disadvantaged background if all the buddies of Cecil Steel-eyes – like Jan Smuts - glaring down at downtrodden South Africans from their places of honour?

How could we create new student scholarship opportunities or education programs aimed at including unheard authors and thinkers in our academic discourse if we’re reminded at every turn how racist everyone except us is?

And let us gaze turn overseas. What about The Pyramids of Giza? Ofttimes shrouded in a false veil of grandeur, these are nothing more than death relics that represent a terrible and oppressive age of slavery and horror. And it doesn’t stop there: we look at Mount Rushmoore, The Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China, The Cistine Chapel, Notre Dame, Woolworths, and even the Great railroads of the United States. Time and time again, where most see just buildings, we see the blood-soaked bodies of the millions whose bones have served as cement and toothpicks.

Until these artefacts are demolished, how can we call the world truly equal and inclusive?

This is just the beginning of the program, however.

Next, we’ll ban religion, destroy every mosque, church and place of worship. After all, almost every religion is built on a disgusting history of slavery, genocide, executions, state-sanctioned torture, and hatred, not to mention Holy Crusades that were little more than giant ethnical cleansings, rampant accusations of paedophilia, extremist terror attacks and brutal beheadings.

Then we’ll destroy all art, all books. These are nothing more than the products of oppressive heritages. Every word and sentence, every brush stroke or musical chord, is a disgusting representation of the systems that oppressed and discriminated millions.

Then we’ll behead every person whose family tree is fertilised with the blood and watered with the sweat of the oppressed.

Then, because humanity itself has destroyed and forced into extinction countless species on this planet, and because our daily existence is at the cost of the lives and freedom of millions of creatures and fellow humans, we’ll mass murder the entire human population, finally ridding our beautiful world of all reminders of how terrible history is.

Some have said to us, “but Eric, there is a nuanced middleground in between these two dichotomous extremes that doesn’t require such an extremist stance on the matter, a calmer, more considered halfway house where we can introduce more level-headed considered programs and actions that will contribute to true social justice instead of sowing dissent by exacerbating entrenched butthurt”. And to this we say, “racism, in any form, requires an extreme response.”

Finally, in this beautiful utopian world where we can pursue academic excellence free from the horrifying realities of the past, we can turn our attention to incorporating progressive changes to the institutional policies and politics of our esteemed university.

Yours in solidarity,

Eric Jeffries

CRS President 2015

“Go fuck yourself” now a legally-permissible argument

Citing the sheer overwhelming number of deserving articles, posts, statuses, opinions and stories posted every minute all over the internet, Supreme justices, advocates and judges at every level of the Legal System have today allowed full legal permissibility and support of the argument that someone should “go fuck themselves”.

According Justice Eric Secutioner of the Supreme Court, the decision was made after many hours of hard,vigorous debate, when one Justice sneakily checked her phone and saw a tweet from part-time “singer” Steve Hofmeyr proclaiming that blacks were the architects of apartheid.

The Supreme Court roll clearly records the events, showing that Justice Annabelle Torrends rolled her eyes and said aloud, “oh, go fuck yourself”, which was shortly followed by her passing around the phone. Other justices then gave various renditions of “just kill yourself” and “choke on a fat one, you fucktard”, eventually agreeing that “go fuck yourself” would be permissible as it made no allusion to homophobic slurs and did not constitute a death threat.

“It’s important to be progressive with these kinds of things,” they explained.

Legal experts now say that this “Go Fuck yourself” legal rebuttal is based in powerful legal precedent, in the form of the Reasonable Person measure.

"Look, when you post shit like this on Facebook and Twitter, it’s clear that any reasonable person would tell you to go fuck yourself,” said legal expert Lawyer. “Or rather, as we say in legal circles, ‘describe to you in graphic detail how to use your genetalia to go commit auto… autoerotica? autosexual something? Eroti… er, whatever fucking yourself is in Latin.”

People across the country have voiced widespread support for this new introduction.

“When I see a dumb post on Facebook or Twitter, I think, geez, I could easily debunk this using a rational and critically-analytical approach, showing the logical inconsistencies and rhetorical weaknesses of the poster’s argument,” said one internet user, “but what with the time and energy it would take to do this, and the likelihood of him actually reading the response with genuine interest and taking to heart my central criticisms and suggestions and ultimately changing his flawed way of looking at the world, it’s honestly just easier and saves more time and effort to simply tell him to take two Viagra, bend his cock under his balls and through his gooch-hair and stick it right up his own ass.”

Other online commentators said that the decision would be well received in the online community.

“Sorry to offend, but in my books dickheads and arseholes tend to be indistinguishable and quite inseparable on the internet,” said another. “So why not also in actual real life with the human body? Go figure.”

Pic of judge (my edit) by maveric2003

Name-change committee to present decision

According to a press release given out today, the committee charged with deliberating on the decision whether or not to rename Grahamstown will present its final decision tomorrow morning.

However, according to head of the committee, Will Renaimit, the decision has not been so clear-cut as many would at first believe.

"There are many issues facing Grahamstown today, such as the water problem, robbery, assault, rape and murder, but these are all subordinated to this new debate. After all, who can care about violent crime and extreme social issues - let alone do anything about it - when you can't agree on where, exactly, it happened?" he told reporters this morning.

Renaimit went on to outline the several options that the committee members have been deliberating since the name-change issue first arose.

"At first we toyed with the idea of just naming it Nelsontown, or Mandelaville, or even Madibasfontein, but we realised that might get our town confused with every street, road, stadium, shopping complex, bridge, highway, office block, university and town square that uses that overused much-loved moniker," said Renaimit.

This easy option out the window, the committee was forced to consider other alternatives.

"There's a Welsh man in our committee, and we know how fond they are of long, complicated names. He suggested that we just throw every option together, and please everyone," he said. However, after some trial runs and tests on official documents, maps and road signs, the committee decided not to rename the City of Saints, ""GrahamskanamakandhaeRhinijozingotownsbergsvillesfontein," he said.

The template for one of Grahamstown ???stown's new name

Soon after this development, tensions were high.

"We were at our wits' end," said another committee member, Rex Consile. "And then someone came up with a brilliant idea: if we choose one name above the rest, we'll only make one group happy, and everyone else unhappy. So why don't we just make everyone equally happy by making them all equally miserable with us?" According to Consile, this move came straight out of a post-2000 ANC Ministerial behaviour guidebook.

So, after almost a year of debates, fights and angry letters, the decision has been made.

"We'll make the announcement early tomorrow morning," said Consile. "We just hope that everyone's happy with the name 'ThetownthatusedtobecalledGrahamstown-town'."

*This article first appeared in Grocott's Mail under the title "A name that might stick..."