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

The Rhodes Statue : what’s the big stink?

Guest writer Johan Van Eksteen braves the internet once more to bring us another serving of truth. Today’s topic on the menu: the Cecil John Rhodes statue at UCT. Should it be removed?

Friends, I want to be clear about one thing: when I saw this story pop up in my newsfeed, I had to take a step back, and think logically. You know, emotion is a powerful thing. Ya, sometimes when you’re angry it can be a good thing, like, if you clearly asked for Peppersteak sauce and the chick brings you Monkeygland; but we can’t forget that our emotions can also blind us.

Not literally though. You’d need extensive corneal damage for that to happen, for example from staring at the sun, or accidentally mistaking that bottle of Hydrogen peroxide for the similar bottle of contact lens solution you keep on the same shelf for some reason, or even just from reading the stupid comments on my wall about this story.

And how much emotion there was! It was a real hotpot debate; it mixed all the well-loved elements of many famous South African ‘debates’: Race, history, apartheid, race, privilege, race, racial privilege, politics and race.

So I had to take a few days to think. To let the air clear: not just because I wanted to talk sense to you guys, but also because that kak stank to high heaven, and it needed a day or two for the cleaning staff to get the air on the Jammie stairs breathable once more.

And what I think I’ve decided is that it’s not time to break out the sledgehammers just yet.

It looks nice

So before we ask ourselves what position the inevitable replacement Nelson Mandela statue should be in, we need to ask ourselves: what is this statue all about?

First of all, the statue is "flippen’ kiff" as my son would probably say. Just look at it. I don’t care what people say about his “legacy of horror” and his “merry band of genocidal racist maniac henchmen”, just look at that bronze and brass, set in magnificent foreboding concrete. Look at the eternal expression etched into his face. That’s a face that means business - exactly the kind of person we want our Uni kids to be, instead of flippen’ spending my flippen’ money getting drunk all the time and pretending it’s “because of tuition and expensive textbooks”.

If we ignore what the story books say and don’t think “shit ya this oke was pretty bad”, it’s just a statue.

Change is expensive

Secondly, demolishing or breaking down the statue will be expensive, even if we use the cheapest low-class labour operating without Union protection. Hell, even if we put together a workgang of terrified, easy-to-control illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe and Malawi who won't say boo to a goose for fear of being deported back to their respective hellholes and tell them "enda lapa na breaki lo statue faga naconcrete lapaside", we’re still looking at spending thousands of Rands that could be better spend elsewhere. Like on funding a cool society that throws cool parties.

I myself went to university, and I can tell you that my knowledge and respect for Hellenic Culture and the great legacy of the Greek people grew and grew with every shot of Zorba and each toga party. Do we want to deny our children this opportunity?

Should we ‘photoshop’ History?

Like it or not, Rhodes was a part of our history. I can admit, it would be nice to remove all painful reminders of our past – just like how I wish I could erase my ex-wife’s Facebook profile, or the sms notifications I get from people commenting on stories like this - but painful reminders of our harsh past can make us better people. I remember once I beheaded a beloved family pet using a rusty panga, and I can tell you that the awful dreams mean I probably won't do it to Fido 2.0. Unless he also eats my entire bag of biltong and there's nothing in the fridge by carrotsticks.

But if we do decide Rhodes Must Fall - if we start with this one statue - who knows how far this will go? Ya, lots of people like to pretend that we don’t have to pick between two polarised, binary extreme opposites – that there’s space for a nuanced middleground between the two sides – but we all know that’s a lie.

What’s to stop okes smashing sculptures of past presidents? What will stop them rioting en masse and utterly demolishing the Union Buildings, the Parliamentary buildings, or even beheading someone who shares a surname with any of these notorious historical figures?

And what about the pictures of our esteemed President hanging in every government building? Has there ever been so vivid a daily reminder of how we are less than garbage, a populace of taxpaying buffoons who are subjected to a hateful regime on a daily basis? What about those bloody liberals polluting our country and my Twitter feed? Why do we let these slide; where do we draw the line?

In any case, removing the statue is totally unnecessary – if you want our children to grow up in a South Africa free of reminders of our painful past and our difficult, divided society, well, Zuma and Motshekga are doing a bang-up job by making History books and a decent education a thing of the past. We're entering a bright future where our children won't even know who these people are.

Besides, I think we can all admit: photoshop is hard.

However, I’d be an idiot not to admit that the protestors had some great points. I was reading a survey done by UCT recently, and they found that by simply knocking down this one statue we can end all racism and hatred everywhere. In the past, in places like Iraq and Ukraine, simply knocking down a statue has led to an immediate increase in democracy and peace.

What the protestors did was not only make me ask myself hard questions about the things I don’t like in society, they also gave me the means to get tonnes of media coverage and protest around it. In fact, just this morning I had a huge breakfast, and for lunch I had the Double-cheese-Zinger Double-Down hot-wing combo with extra hot sauce at KFC, and I’m cooking up a pretty huge protest against Woolworths as we speak.

But friends, doesn’t this make you think how it could all escalate out of control? Ya, I know some people think that it’s a worrying sign that it took so extreme a form of protest just to get mentioned somewhere other than the UCT twitter community, that it's a disconcerting indication of how marginalised views can be ignored by mainstream media unless extreme measures are taken - but once throwing poo at something goes out of fashion, what next?

I live in constant fear of what the next step up from “giant bucket of diarrhoea” is. Perhaps the next time we see Mr Maxwele in the news he will be voiding his past three meals though every possible orifice, simultaneously crapping, vomiting, urinating and ejaculating all over the stony, oppressive artefacts of white arrogance.

In conclusion, I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to understand why everyone gets so upset. These are serious topics we're talking about - but like with any other respectful, calm debate on the slow-to-anger, understanding and compassionate Internet, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and we should respect that. It's only right that I treat your wrong opinion with the dignity and consideration that I would give to any other foaming-mouthed vituperative and utterly narrow-minded gibberish-spewing idiot whose opinions make me uncomfortable or force me to ask myself difficult, troubling questions.

But what I can't abide is this childish poo-flinging. I mean, I always thought UCT students liked the smell of their own shit, but in public, on their statues?

Sies. Come now.

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit.

“I accidentally shat myself” admits Rhodes statue protester

Academics accused of “reading into things too much, bru” after damning confession is heard.

The controversy surrounding the Cecil John Rhodes statue has blown out of all proportion today, after a scathing interview revealed that creator of the political movement and author of the ‘poop incident’ against the heavily debated statue, actually accidentally soiled himself.

“It’s true,” said the clearly distraught Politics student, Maxwell Troespou.

“I was doing the butt-clenching Prairie-dog duckwalk between the Pol and Social Sciences buildings when the attack struck. As I stood there, a puddle of my own filth pooling in my underrods, I thought, ‘oh shit, what now? I’ve gotta get rid of this. Of course there was no bin around, so I dumped it on the closest thing possible.”

And that closest thing just happened to be the statue. With furtive glances left and right, he attempted to quickly stash his ruined briefs.

“I thought the small crevice in his lap would sufficiently conceal my mistake,” he lamented. Alas this is where his statue-atory jape was spotted.

“This lady came up to me and asked me ‘what the hell are you doing?’. I froze and quickly shouted ‘Apartheid and Race!’ – you know, what I always shout when I get in an argument I’m scared of losing. Lucky for me, I’m a Post-grad and a Pol major, so I’m used to talking convincing-sounding crap at a moment’s notice.”

However, despite the confession, protest supporters have said it’s too late to turn back now, with UCT standing by its decision that the Rhodes monument must be removed.

“It’s kinda snowballed out of control,” said one marcher, who now feels dumb after the 14000 words and 3 676 tweets he’s written online critiquing elitism and institutionalised racism since the furore started. “And not just because of the resounding public support, thousand-strong marches and endless internet debate - just think of the Twitter followers I would lose if I were to back down now?”

This isn’t the first time such an eventuality has occurred on the famous Cape Town campus. Back in 2011, an Art student accidentally spilt paint all over her masters exhibition pieces, which quickly became part of a Masterclass exhibition series in half a dozen galleries.

“I’m in too deep to say anything now,” she said. “I mean, what did you expect me to say to my supervisor when he waffled on about ‘genius counter-intuitivity of a new post-peinture style’ and how ‘these works represented a breathtakingly bold defiance of the reductive transfixion of art into a meaningless product aimed at garnering marks or money’?”

And it doesn’t end there.

“Yesterday I left some blank canvasses in my gallery because I was in too much of a rush to stash them in my studio,” she told. “An art critic saw them, and now I’ve been force to announce my latest ‘Negative White’ series.”