TAJ HARGEY
LONDON: Writing on this cold windblown wintry day as an Oxford alumnus and an Oxford-based academic with South African roots, I applaud the belated boldness of Oriel College to preserve the statue of Cecil Rhodes.
This decision brings to a thundering halt the puerile efforts by South Africa-linked students in Oxford to emulate what was achieved at UCT last April when Rhodes’s statue was unceremoniously toppled.
While there is no doubt that Cecil John Rhodes was an invidious Victorian-era imperialist, there is near unanimity from across the political spectrum that he is not a suitable rolemodel for any right-thinking 21st century Briton or South African. But the proposed removal of his likeness from a prominent building on Oxford’s High Street at the behest of supposedly “offended” black students would have been a terrible travesty of the truth and a malevolent move towards Stalinist-type historical revisionism and intellectual censorship.
History with warts and all, whether in the UK or South Africa, cannot be erased or excised just to appease ill-informed critics of today; at best it can only be re-interpreted by present-day onlookers. You cannot remove history, or change history to suit your views; history defines who you were and what you are now. And there will always be a “Rhodes” in South African life.
For a while, it seemed that vocal protesters had succeeded in intimidating Moira Wallace, Oriel’s Provost and her lily-livered dons. They veered towards a cowardly willingness to submit to sustained student pressure demanding the removal of the statue.
Fortunately, Oxford came to its senses. Fortified by Lord Chris Patten, Oxford University’s Chancellor and by Professor Louise Rich-ardson, the new Vice Chancellor, Oriel College’s governing body did the right thing by stopping this campaign in its tracks. The college was to be spared the monstrous spectacle of orchestrated vandalism. For once, my alma mater has not caved in to the demands of contemporary student activists motivated by political correctness and fleeting fixations.
The move to import last year’s sloganeering and strategy of the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) campaign at UCT to Oxford has been led by a pair of high-profile bursary-financed South African postgraduates, Ntokozo Qwabe and Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh.
These two exemplify the inherent hypocrisy and duplicitous selectivity of their trendy crusade. Both are studying in Oxford as a direct result of external sponsors. The former is a beneficiary of the Rhodes scholarship, while the latter is a poster boy of elitist black privilege in South Africa and is pursuing a degree in international relations while bankrolled by London’s Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust. Both these South Africans would not be attending Oxford’s hallowed halls without generous British financial donors.
Instead of being appreciative of the exceptional opportunity to pursue higher education at one of the most renowned seats of learning in the world, these two young men have seen fit to bite the hand that feeds them. Qwabe not only wishes to eradicate all traces of Rhodes in Oxford, but is also eager to jettison what he regards as an excessively Eurocentric curriculum at Oxford (Is it not in Europe?).
When confronted by the unpalatable reality that he is funded by the Rhodes legacy, he obfuscates this in the same way he rejects Nelson Mandela’s decision to endorse the creation of the Mandela-Rhodes Foundation. This upstart is dismissive of South Africa’s revered father figure: “My own experiences are as valid as Mandela’s.” Mpofu-Walsh, on the other hand, is on record as bragging that his leadership of the RMF campaign will achieve far more than any preceding generation of Oxford students.
What astounding hubris.
Curiously, Qwabe has focused his antagonism against Rhodes at Oriel College because the statue apparently infringes his “safe space” when he strolls along Oxford’s main thoroughfare. But he has remained conspicuously silent about the main memorial to the 19th century robber baron.
Is it because Rhodes House is the administrative headquarters of the scholarship fund that gives him over R25 000 each month? Such inconsistency and hypocrisy is mind-boggling.
Despite their brazenness, Qwabe and Mpofu-Walsh completely misjudged the mood at Oxford. Since they are only temporary sojourners in the City of Dreaming Spires, without any proper understanding of Britain and its scholastic traditions, they believed that loud protestations and belligerent actions – that had proved so successful at UCT – could be easily transplanted to Oxford. And when naïve and guilt-ridden British students, anxious to atone for the perceived sins of their imperial forebears and the UK’s colonial heritage, joined their RMF campaign, the South African duo thought they were home and dry.
Big mistake.
Influencing a transitory student population, which is replaced every three years, is one thing. Convincing permanent university staff and administrators is another matter. While their South African counterparts indulged in relentless public bullying by menacing their opponents in a now practically lawless South Africa, these tactics had no traction at Oxford. They were doomed to fail in a law-abiding and sophisticated society.
Lacking compelling scholarly evidence, resorting to political hyperbole (Rhodes was a Hitler perpetrating genocide against Africans) and unable to marshall any effective counter-arguments against the uncensored preservation of the past and the sanctity of institutional history, the RMF protesters lost the political initiative as well as the intellectual battle.
While there are few defenders of this arch-colonialist at Oxford today, exaggerated untruths and pathetic hysteria will not work at Oxford where reasoned debate, not radical rhetoric, rules the roost. This university does not take kindly to intellectual hotheads and will not permit malcontents to dictate what a proud and ancient institution must do. Both Qwabe and Mpofu-Walsh have self-professed political aspirations in South Africa. The former envisages himself as a judge on the Constitutional Court while the latter foresees a role as a major public figure. Certainly, their current notoriety in trying to expunge the residue of colonialism at Oxford will enhance their credibility with a public at home more obsessed with past white criminality than with present-day black malfeasance.
The RMF campaign in Oxford is now a busted flush and its two most visible representatives would do better to concentrate on their studies rather than continue with their call for the removal of a long-dead 19th century colonialist. Instead of taking down his images at Oxford, both Oriel College and Rhodes House should install interactive electronic information boards that will place this British adventurer in his chronological context while juxtaposing this with history’s balanced verdict. Indeed, this was the thrust of my Friday sermon at the Open Mosque in Cape Town last April opposing the toppling of Rhodes at UCT. His statue should have remained on campus, but with a huge interactive facility emblazoned with the heading: NEVER AGAIN. Never again will South Africa permit cavalier buccaneers to rob, pillage and plunder the resources of the country.
Such a powerful educational tool would have been most instructive for today’s youth when they witness the avaricious black ruling class in action.
The RMF campaigners were undone by a fatal blind spot.
By solely blaming white imperialists of yesterday, without any reference to black tyrants of today, this compromised their integrity and damaged their cause.
Had they been consistent and not selective in resisting all forms of exploitation and racism – both past and present – they would have garnered more support in the UK. But the reality is that the British public has come out strongly against tampering with their history to suit the whims of two transient students.
What Qwabe and Mpofu-Walsh need to grasp is that they cannot change yesterday, but they can help shape tomorrow. Perhaps this is the lasting lesson that these two visiting South Africans at Oxford will take with them.
l Hargey is the president of the Open Mosque in Cape Town and director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford