Our children’s children need to know that there were once men such as Verwoerd and Rhodes, writes Vuyisile Msila.
Johannesburg - “I would one day have Verwoerd’s picture in my office. I would have proved to him that black people can move beyond being just hewers of wood that he so wanted us to be,” a great friend of mine exclaimed after a dreary history lecture at varsity. He confused not only me, but a few other blokes as well. Of all people, Verwoerd, students whispered.
Seventeen years later this friend’s burly bodyguards allowed me into his office for a short meeting. He had a rare free 15 minutes for me and, as I stood there waiting to be ushered in by the muscle-flaunting men, I remembered what he had said as an ebullient and ambitious student. This was the first question I asked him as I saw a huge picture of President Jacob Zuma smiling down from his wall.
Looking around I saw no honourable Dr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd adorning his walls.
When I asked, he retorted, “No, man, I tried that, but I found his smile sickening and colleagues appeared silently to question my integrity, so after two weeks I had to throw him in the rubbish bin.
“He kind of haunted colleagues and I also learnt to hate him! I had to protect my children from his sight.”
What a lost opportunity, I thought. But history is back to haunt us today.
If you travel the Eastern Cape today you will come across towns such as Bedford, East London, Grahamstown, Queenstown and King William’s Town, all symbols that confirm the British conquests in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Eastern Cape had become a small England, home away from home for the mighty British.
The University of Fort Hare was named after Major-General John Hare who was an acting lieutenant-governor of the Eastern Cape.
The university was built on the grounds of one of the British forts in a small town named after a Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria. It was interesting to listen to the debates a few years ago when a certain group suggested that Robert Sobukwe’s name should replace Hare’s.
But of course the group lost the debate because, to many, Fort Hare is a brand name known around the world for producing great African leaders.
Was this a lost opportunity to replace a colonial symbol?
It is another part of history that is a plague to many people, especially when one thinks how great warriors died at the hands of the British. King Zanzolo Hintsa kaPhalo and Chief Jongumsobomvu of the Xhosa are examples.
They come to mind because students at the University of Cape Town (UCT), which I attended, want Cecil John Rhodes’s statue to be removed from the campus.
To show their disgust, they poured poo over the silent Rhodes, who had stood there gallantly and stoically, yet nonchalantly, for years. I passed him several times as a student and Cecil never really seemed to care.
It matters for the students today and, as others have asked, what difference would a statue’s removal do to the running of a university? As in the case of the University of Fort Hare, would it really change anything if the university’s name were changed to that of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe or Stephen Bantu Biko or Albert Mvumbi Luthuli?
As others have argued in the past week, the transformation of universities needs more than name-changes and the removal of hard-hearted statues.
There are many pressing issues at our universities, including ensuring that they assume the identity of real African institutions.
But the African renaissance epoch has paradoxically put Africa at a crossroads.
Conscientious Africans in Africa and the diaspora, intellectuals and academics, have called consistently for the Africanisation or indigenisation of the curriculum at higher education institutions to strengthen Africa’s future in a global world.
However, others voiced concern that there may be serious implications for standards should institutions of higher learning drop the exclusively Western tradition in education. Yet arguments constantly surface that the cultural hegemony reflected in African education hampers the education of an African child.
Arguably, in a world of global growth and knowledge-building, Africans should also stand strong among other nations as they reflect on their African heritage.
It is an opportune time for Afrocentric methods in education, through research and teaching our higher education needs to reflect relevance and how education can redeem many in communities.
Right now, in the face of high unemployment among graduates, we need higher education that will illustrate ways in which the youth can use knowledge by creating jobs rather than waiting for employment. Transformed curricula should empower citizens to be in the forefront of change in society.
Transformation in higher education also means that massification should open doors to many indigent families whose young people are not able to further their studies because there are no resources for them when the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is overstretched.
Universities need strategies to see that all deserving young people are at higher education institutions of their choice.
Real transformation is about ensuring that education’s doors are open for all who want to drink from the fountain of knowledge, as the historic Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955, says.
All African children need education and it should be education that advances their lives.
In October 1949, Sobukwe spoke of the need for education to be a barometer of African thought and that it should mean service to Africa and humanity. Decades later, even after apartheid’s demise, have universities attained this?
It is true that we cannot throw the much-established Western thought away, but Africa also needs to be heard on a par with Western ideals.
Sobukwe exhorted students almost six decades ago: “Let me plead with you, lovers of my Africa, carry with you into the world the vision of a new Africa, an Africa reborn, an Africa rejuvenated.”
There is just so much that needs attention as people try to bring real transformation to universities.
Maybe some would agree that there are bigger struggles to be fought, where we need power to transform higher education rather than concentrating on docile statues and universities named after once-gigantic but silent major-generals from some British subjugation.
We need more black people in the professoriate, even in these historically white institutions such as UCT We need to see transformation of the curriculums in all higher education institutions.
There is a problem when graduates complete their studies in an African country knowing more about Europe than their own land.
All this shows that we have a bigger battle to wage, for educational transformation, than merely displaying hostility for effigies.
Arguably, though, the UCT students have a point because symbols play a huge role in society.
They influence the perceptions that people have of African institutions. In building African institutions we may graciously have to displace symbols of domination and oppression. Some represent people who sowed meekness among indigenous people.
Rhodes, the colossal British imperialist, ensured that industrialists benefited as the indigenous people were displaced from their land. He is one of the symbols of dispossession and the amassing of British wealth.
Maybe his symbol needs to be put somewhere else.
It would be a miscalculation, however, if people wanted such characters to be obliterated from history. Our children’s children need to know that there were once men such as Verwoerd, Rhodes and hundred of others who trampled on souls. These truths need to be known because they should be the origin of reconciliation, if it is to traverse generations to come.
We need to see their faces being preserved so they may haunt us for eternity. After all, they discovered and created this Africa that we are trying to redesign.
* Vuyisile Msila is a professor and head at Unisa’s Institute for African Renaissance Studies. He writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Sunday Independent