OH dear, but the situation at the University of Cape Town is apparently far worse than previously supposed. This week it was reported that bouts of severe respiratory problems were further bedevilling a campus already deep in turmoil.
"We can no longer breathe," students' representative council president Ramabina Mahapa declared as he stormed out a seminar on transformation on Monday. "The winds of change are blowing through UCT."
That may well be, but as far as we're concerned, here at the Mahogany Ridge, it is not the South-Easter or even the North-Wester that is the problem, but - obviously - that sculpture at the bottom of the Jameson steps overlooking the sports fields.
It has, as we all well know, been smeared with human faeces. Then it was covered in black plastic bags. But all to no avail. The statue of Cecil John Rhodes continues to exert a powerful malevolence over staff and students alike and seemingly squeeze the very life from their lungs.
Clearly something must be done. But what?
The clamour to have it removed grows ever more shrill. The Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, has now joined the fray. Like many others, he believes it should be carted away and "stored in a museum". Yet others, like UCT vice-chancellor Max Price, believe it should be relocated on campus.
This did not mean it should be hidden, Price added. As he put it, "I just think it should not be there - it should be moved. This will not compromise our ability to record and debate the role Rhodes played in the city's and continent's history."
In this regard, there have been suggestions from several commentators that the statue be moved to an "educational" space and displayed in a contextual manner. Those who wish to do so could then seek out and engage with the statue as they consider, and all the while keeping their thoughts to themselves, the various contradictory Rhodes tropes: tyrant, benefactor, arch-capitalist, wild-life enthusiast, louche man-about-town, and so on.
The big problem with this otherwise wholly sensible suggestion is, of course, the student body. They're not very bright. This, at least, is the opinion of the vice-chancellor of another university, University of the Free State rector Jonathan Jansen.
Commenting on events at UCT, Jansen wrote in The Times, "I would fail in my duty as a teacher if I did not also point out the appalling lack of education, of informed opinion, that accompanied the protests. Most of the crowd of students that assembled on the steps of Jameson Hall did not do history at school. Fewer can give you a fluent account of Rhodes the imperialist or his henchman Leander Starr Jameson and their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Boer government of the Transvaal.
"I doubt there were serious seminars on the land Rhodes donated to UCT and what the legal, political and ethical dimensions of the challenge to his statue might involve. What I heard as the microphone was passed from one protester to the next was little more than populist sentiment intended to stoke a crowd rather than educational substance to feed a mind."
This was a grave insult, a serious slight on UCT's proud academic record. Instead of yesterday's hullaballoo, students should rather have gathered up the usual Portaloos and rushed off to Bloemfontein to lay siege to the UFS administration buildings.
But back to the statue. My own sensible suggestion - and here I must acknowledge that I've pinched the idea from those other white imperialists, the Romans - is that we merely remove its head, and leave the rest of it where it is.
Think about it. The head could then be more easily accommodated in some sort of glass cabinet in that "contextual" exhibition, maybe on a platter with an apple in its mouth. Perhaps we could even get Chumani Maxwele, the political science student who flung the dung in the first place, to dance alongside it, rather like Salome.
The rest of the statue needn't be headless for long. The pantheon of Struggle heroes is indeed large and their "portraits" - for that is the technical term for sculptures of the head and neck, as opposed to busts - could all be set in place on Rhodes's shoulders on a rotational basis.
We would of course need to remove Rhodes's name from the plinth and in its place instal a blank metal sheet. The name of the latest incumbent could then be spelt out in those brightly-coloured novelty refrigerator magnet letters.
My first choice would be the Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown. But we can talk about it. It's not, you know, as if it's a decision cast in stone.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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