THE doors of learning and culture shall be opened to all. So runs the Freedom Charter. And fair enough, but we were just wondering, here at the Mahogany Ridge, what if the doors were built by a reprehensible colonialist?
This, apparently, has been the source of much anguish for political science student Chumani Maxwele. So much so that on Monday, he tossed the soupy contents of a Portaloo over the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the University of Cape Town campus.
The press had been invited to watch and Maxwele dressed for the occasion. Stripped to the waist, he hung two placards around his neck reading "Exhibit White Arrogance UCT" and "Exhibit Black Assimilation UCT".
A pink construction worker's helmet - an indication, perhaps, of the risk of potential injury when mucking about with excrement - topped off the ensemble. Quite why he had wanted to resemble an effigy on a Guy Fawkes bonfire remained a mystery.
As an aside, it should be noted that the last time Maxwele attracted our attention it had also been due to a demonstration of unhappiness - but back then he was presumably more appropriately attired.
He'd been out for a jog on De Waal Drive when he'd allegedly given President Jacob Zuma's siren-blaring motorcade the finger. A black BMW pulled over, three blue light goons waving assault rifles bundled him into the car and he duly spent an uncomfortable night in a Mowbray police station holding cell.
That was in February 2010 - which prompted some Ridge regulars to remark, perhaps uncharitably, that Maxwele appeared to be in no rush to complete his studies. But I mention the date only because it took the then Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa a full four years - and a court order - to apologise to the student.
The apology followed the undisclosed settlement Maxwele accepted after taking Mthethwa to court in 2013 in a R1.4-million lawsuit for wrongful arrest.
But back to Rhodes. Maxwele has now spoken, in an interview with Eyewitness News political correspondent Stephen Grootes, of the great pain, frustration and humiliation he has endured over they years by having to see that statue on a daily basis.
He did have a point about colonial symbolism, I'll give him that. And out it came in that sing-song, oratorial cadence so beloved by rabble rousers and botherers like the late Eugene Terre Blanche and Allan Boesak. Because he has the voice for it, Maxwele, I suspect, can look forward to a great future in politics. Who knows? One day, other Capetonians may even salute him with their middle fingers as his own motorcade forces road-users into the ditch.
"Rhodes," he continued, "was a brutal racist colonialist, you know? He has no energy to unite us as South Africans."
He pointed out that Rhodes wasn't the only "colonial symbolism" on campus. The venue hosting the annual Steve Biko memorial lecture was even named after the imperialist Dr Leander Starr Jameson. What kind of "collaboration" was this, he asked, where Biko's name could be associated with Jameson Hall?
But then it was down to business.
"The symbolism of throwing the faeces is in fact the idea around the psychology," he explained. "It's a very strategic psychological approach. We knew that the moment we do anything that is deemed violent or damaging to the statue will be [met] with the stereotype of black violence.
"We sat down and through this thing and actually because of our lived experiences we knew that we had to use our psychological pain and the trauma that the statue gives to us. I am traumatised right now! I am deeply traumatised at that statue!
"And we thought, Let's take the pain of our parents, the pain of our brothers and sisters in Khayelitsha, of using porta-porta toilets for the rest of their lives - or for a large part of their lives. That is my pain. That is the pain of my parents, my brothers and my friends. Let me take that faeces back where it belongs so the elite can feel how it feels to be black and how it feels to using porta-porta toilets."
In addition to being, uh, not violent or damaging, the other great advantage of k*k-chucking, if I may call it that, is that someone else - probably a woman, probably poor, probably black, probably from Khayelitsha - gets to clean up the mess.
It's odd that no-one's bothered to speak to them, but I wonder what UCT's cleaning staff make of the Maxwele's suffering every time his gaze fell upon the Rhodes statue - and of his attempt to put the brown stuff back where it belonged.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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