Turmoil at UCT: Students should emulate Mandela's values
18 March 2015
On 16 May 1996 Nelson Mandela rededicated the Grahamstown 1820 Settlers Monument. Instead of tearing down a monument created to glorify the colonial project, Mandela congratulated the city's leaders for incorporating its settler past into a forward-looking living memorial to an inclusive democratic future based on equal rights, diversity and hope for all.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) should emulate these values by the father of our nation. The University should rededicate its existing monuments and create new ones to rededicate and commit itself to a project and vision to actively make the greatest university in Africa a home for all.
This is entirely possible and could be done in a practical and not just theoretical manner. Indeed, thorough debate is necessary, but action is also required. Mandela did not support the tearing down of monuments. They must remain to remind us of when history takes a wrong turn, as we, as fallible human beings, will make wrong turns too.
Why not build a statue of another figure that engages Rhodes in perpetual conversation? This would symbolize the dialogue and reflection that must happen in each generation, not in the absence of the past, but precisely because of it. Righteousness is not the sole preserve of some; neither is morality the possession of the victors or rulers of the day. We must also, as Mandela did so admirably, incorporate the past into a vision for the future.
UCT's founder Cecil John Rhodes did awful things as part of his colonial project. But through forward thinking by later generations good was able to come, specifically in the area of education, locally through UCT, and globally, by providing resources as part of the Rhodes Trust that will continue to educate generations of excellent scholars at Oxford University. More latterly, the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, led by Njabulo Ndebele, provides scholarships to students studying at African universities.
UCT must therefore incorporate Rhodes' statue and Memorial into an inclusive vision and project in pursuit of its mission, which as a university must be to pursue the truth untrammelled by political correctness, a community that values the humanity of all its citizens and an institution that has a culture shared by all in a context where the good quality of ideas matter.
Statement issued by Dr Wilmot James MP, Federal Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance, March 18 2015
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