Conclusions and ‘twitter’ summary of a much, much longer piece

Was/Is the University of Cape Town (UCT) an institutionally colonialist/sexist/racist institution?

The answer is: yes, no and, sadly, yes once again (but in reverse).

Emeritus Professor Tim Crowe – B.A., M.Sc., Ph.D. and FUCT

October 2017

Even before day 1 as formal university, the University of Cape Town (UCT) was unquestionably institutionally, British-colonialist, sexist and racist, until the end of World War II. Howard Phillips’ 482-page The University of Cape Town: 1918-1948 – the formative years published by UCT Press in 1993 documents this meticulously. Also, like it or not, UCT is also a realization of a vision and legacy of the justifiably much-maligned Cecil John Rhodes. He bequeathed his estate, Groote Schuur, to his envisioned South Africa to create a national teaching university, as well as to provide its governmental leader with a residence and the nation with the world-famous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens.

Rhodes’ purpose for the university was to effect a reconciliation between male English colonialists and long-standing Afrikaner settlers, through the cultural assimilation of the latter. This purpose became viable only through massive financial bequests from two of Rhodes’ unabashedly colonialist business associates - Sir Otto Beit and Sir Julius Wernher. Thus, even from before day one, UCT was institutionally colonialist.

Also, one cannot “undo” Rhodes’ arguably most significantly positive legacy, his creation of the world’s foremost educational trust. Rather than fostering ‘white’ supremacist, Anglophile capitalists, it educates international young leaders expected to strive at “promoting cross-cultural understanding and peace between nations.” Even more surprisingly, he specified that the scholarships be awarded without regard to race or religion. This is undeniably a deliverable on his most uncharacteristic quotation: "I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour." Finally, he instructed his Trustees to adapt his plans for the scholarships to “respond effectively to changing circumstances”.

Advocates of “context”, please note this.

To name a few of the nearly 8000 Rhodes Scholars:

Alain L. Locke (1907) First black scholar - gay writer, philosopher, educator - "Dean” of the Harlem Renaissance

Jan H. Hofmeyr (1910) South African educationalist and liberal politician who anticipated an end to racial discrimination

William Fulbright (1925) US senator and originator of the Fulbright Fellowship programme. To date, more than 325 000 individuals from 155 countries have received Fulbright Grants, including winners of 53 Nobel Prizes and 78 Pulitzer Prizes.

Bram Fischer (1931) Anti-apartheid activist and lawyer

Bill Clinton (1968) 42nd President of the United States

Edwin Cameron (1976) South African Supreme Court Justice, gay rights and HIV/AIDS activist

Max Price (1980) Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town - his daughter is a current Rhodes Scholar.

Roxanne Joyal (2001) and Marc Kielburger (2000) Founded the Free the Children International Charity

Eusebius McKaiser (2003) South African public intellectual and gay rights activist

To end my comments on this dead, Anglophile, ‘white’ supremacist, hyper-capitalist, imperialist, megalomaniac, Afrikaner students first formally demanded its removal in the 1950s. This is because of the painful memories it engendered over the deaths of +-25000 aged, women and infant Afrikaners in concentration camps during the Second South African War (‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ fought for both sides) and the rapacious conquest of their Republics. Had there been unsuppressed ‘blacks’ at UCT then, I wonder if that they would have joined them, since similar numbers of their brethren died in racially segregated British concentration camps and, of course, they have other well-documented reasons to hate Rhodes. Nevertheless, UCT never formally celebrated the man or his legacy in any regular or special manner. Perhaps UCT undergraduate males should have emulated their colleagues from Harvard University, where it is a ritual prank (and no vulgar sign of disrespect) to urinate on the statue of John Harvard.

But, in the end, had there been no Rhodes, although many would not have suffered, the world,

Africa, South Africa and UCT would be profoundly deficient in mega-infrastructure, human capacity and leadership.

The ‘kosher’ UCT

UCT chauvinists like to claim that it’s nearing its 190th birthday by linking it to the establishment of the South African College (SAC) in 1829 [I think on April Fool’s Day.]. In fact, in 2018, it will hit its century as a ‘kosher’, degree-awarding, university. UCT goes beyond being ‘kosher’ in the colloquial sense. From its early days, a significant proportion of its community were Jews who feature strongly in UCT’s history: hence the institutional generic nickname “Ikeys”. Jews also feature strongly as fellow victims of discrimination at UCT and were pioneers in ‘liberating’ her in the sense of VC T.B. Davie.

From its inception until the late 1940s, UCT was a second-tier, male-dominated, ‘whites’-only “athletic institution where intellectual advancement [was] not altogether discouraged”.

Despotic leadership, ego-centrifugal pedagogy and professorial dictators

Up until 1980, UCT was run by vice chancellors who were ‘Enlightened despots’, often allowing students some leeway, but drawing a firm line at what first VC Sir ‘Jock’ Beattie regarded as less than “decent behaviour”. During the 1930s, the unacceptable activities of the right-wing, racist, anti-Semitic, nationalist Afrikaner Nasionale Studentebond (ASB) departed from “decent behaviour” and Beattie threw it off campus.

Thereafter, UCT cease in whatever efforts remained to assimilate Afrikaners, male or otherwise.

During pre-WWII, teaching at UCT was an “essentially ego-centrifugal” process. There was little contact between lecturers and students outside the formal, scheduled teaching environment. Students were not coddled and had to ‘sink or swim’. Departmental research was determined by the preferences and dictates of generally aloof, all-powerful professors/heads-of-department, some of whom ruled for decades. When they replaced their predecessors, they were selected by an ‘Old Boys’ network.

One noteworthy exception to this nefarious norm was Zoology Prof. Lancelot Hogben, an anti-eugenicist, physiologist/medical-genetic-statistician with a fascination for linguistics. To correct the impression that hooliganism and challenges to hegemony are confined to UCT’s recent history, students disliked “arrogant, supercilious and caustic” Hogben so intensely that they rolled his car down the embankment where the R.W. James Physics Building now stands and burned his effigy outside the Zoology Department Building!

Centralized administration

UCT’s administrative department (according to its first registrar Wilfred Murray) was decidedly supportive and decentralized:

“The administrative staff must justify its existence by setting standards and methods of procedure of high order. It has no claim to existence in a university unless it can relieve the teaching departments of the responsibility for those duties which can be carried out more efficiently through a central office”.

Now for “BUT” and some “context”

But, many of the foremost universities world-wide (Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Brown, etc.) have similarly tainted creators, donors, academics, administrators and histories. UCT’s ‘dark period’ notwithstanding, her 1959 dedication to Academic Freedom set UCT apart from other all-’white’ South African universities (except perhaps Wits) as a fervent opponent of Apartheid. UCT was, in effect, a refuge of ‘principle driven’ excellence. The remaining English-medium, ‘white’ universities, Rhodes University and the University of Natal lagged far behind.

Furthermore, Afrikaans-medium universities (especially the University of Pretoria) actively colluded academically and financially with the Apartheid government and aggressively promoted Volkekunde as ‘standard’ Social Anthropology and racialized genetics. I know of no instance of any UCT academic seeking or taking funding from the Apartheid government, except for medical research.

So, context and praxis should be applicable throughout history, not just in 2017.

What happened after World War II?

World War II had profound political and socio-economic effects throughout the world. It presented previously highly effectively oppressed ‘nations’, ‘races’, genders and individuals with opportunities to demonstrate capacity and develop self-confidence/identity. UCT also changed profoundly academically with the influx of dozens of young, brilliant, politically ‘less-closed-minded’ home-grown and global expatriate scholars. Many had fought/protested in formal battle and/or otherwise protested locally to create freedom world-wide. These academics cared for fellow South Africans in general, and their students in particular.

UCT’s first South African-born Vice Chancellor - T.B. Davie who served during 1948-1955 – changed UCT irrevocably. Unlike any VC before or since, his passionate commitment to academic freedom and non-racialism led him to consider urging his students to “take up arms” against an oppressive government to challenge its racist laws.

In 1950, Davie ‘nailed’ his and UCT’s academic principles to the ‘mast’. Universities should be populated by “those fitted by ability and training for higher education” … “aiming at the advancement of knowledge by the methods of study and research founded on absolute intellectual integrity and pursued in an atmosphere of academic freedom”. This should allow “real” universities the autonomy to decide:

1. “who shall teach – determined by fitness and scholarship and experience;

2. what we teach – the truth and not what it is demanded by others for the purposes of sectional,

3. political, religious or ideological dogmas or beliefs;

4. how we teach – not subject to interference aimed at standardization at the expense of originality;

5. and [most importantly] whom we teach – [individuals] intellectually capable and morally worthy to join the great brotherhood which constitutes the wholeness of the university”.

But he was not done. He went on to say that the university community should:

1. ”reflect the multi-racial picture of the society it serves;

2. give a lead to the cultural and spiritual development of the different race groups as part of the developments of the community as a whole;

3. aid the state by providing training for and maintaining standards in the learned professions and public services;

4. and serve the community in the true sense of the university, i.e. as a centre for the preservation, the advance, and the dissemination of learning for its own sake and without regard to its usefulness, to all who are academically qualified for admission, irrespective of race, colour, or creed.”

Hence, it is fit and proper that the annual T.B. Davie Memorial Lecture on academic freedom was established by UCT students to commemorate the memory of Davie’s devotion to principles.

In the first T.B. Davie Lecture honouring Davie in 1959, UCT Chancellor Justice Albert van der Sandt Centlivres emphasized Davies’ “fearlessly fighting for” “absolute intellectual freedom”, “intellectual integrity” and taking the unshakable position that “advancement of knowledge” should involve “the untrammelled pursuit of the truth”.

He succinctly summarized Davie:

“He gave his heart and soul to the University.”

The Duminy ‘Doldrums’

Davies’ was succeeded by honorary Dr ‘J.P.’ Duminy who respected Afrikaner nationalism and did not harbour Davie’s strong antipathy for the National Party government. Under his ‘reign’ (1958-1967) and that of his successor soldier/cricketer/colonialist civil servant Sir Richard Luyt (1968-1980), UCT went through two decades of “Duminy Doldrums”. During this era, UCT suffered greatly under systematic, hyper-effective, Verwoerdian Apartheid repression. Boldness and adherence to principles were not strongly characteristic of the Duminy Era. The small number of ‘non-white’ students actually declined at UCT.

However, had Duminy/Luyt been more aggressive and renounced and/or actively resisted racism in all its guises, the overwhelmingly oppressive, highly perniciously effective Verwoerd government and major conservative donors could have taken punitive action, financial and otherwise, to cripple and/or destroy UCT.

In 1959, the Extension of University Education Act formally made South African universities non-universal in nature and non-“real” in Davie’s sense, reverting (to varying degrees) to exclusionary centres of academic inbreeding. Furthermore, the University of South Africa’s status as an open, distance-education university and the establishment of separate tertiary institutions for ‘blacks’, Indians, ‘coloureds’ and ‘whites’ were used as an additional ‘excuse’ for UCT’s evading to admit ‘non-white’ students.

Principled and caring men and women

Post-war UCT sparkled with outstanding academics. They followed the UCT norm of uncompromisingly demanding excellence from staff and undergrads. They did not supervise postgraduate students closely, let alone ‘mentor/nurture’ them, following the ‘sink or swim’ ethos.

Archetypical of this was Zoology’s HoD John Day (1946-1974), a disabled war-veteran and one of many young professors appointed after WWII. The highly principled Day was an academic ‘dictator’, often insisting that “his” staff and postgraduate students work as a team on marine taxonomic/ecological topics chosen by him. Having said that, he followed the UCT norm in not supervising his postgraduate students closely, in some cases allowing them to work independently for years at a time.

Nevertheless, he was demonstrably concerned with the views and general welfare of students and junior staff. He introduced an annual field camp that encouraged close personal/professional communication/collaboration with them. During anti-apartheid protests in 1972, he made off towards the troubles as quickly as his artificial leg allowed saying: “Must support my students”. In the subsequent altercation, he was bitten by a police dog, fortunately on that tissue-free leg!

From the late 1960s, younger academics meaningfully ‘decolonized’ many departments, both academically and socially. This involved implementation of the concept of a rotating Head of Department, much more rapid ad hominem promotion, and the initiation of intra-/cross-departmental/institutional cooperation and collaboration. This promoted a massive injection of expertise sourced locally and internationally.

This transformation is entertainingly chronicled in Prof. Alec’ Brown’s Centennial history of the Zoology Department, University of Cape Town, 1903–2003: A personal memoir. Trans. Roy. Soc. S. Afr. 58 (1). 2003. Pages 11–34.

Nurturers

Sprinkled throughout UCT were largely unsung academics, generally woman (e.g. Naomi Millard and Jennifer Jarvis in Zoology) who literally acted in loco parentis, nurturing students at all levels 24/7. UCT would not be in the dire situation it is today if more of its current academics emulated them.

But, perhaps the most famous female UCT academic of that era was Prof. Monica Wilson, Africa’s foremost social anthropologist. Although most commonly ‘known’ as the mentor/collaborator of/with prominent theoretician, empirical researcher and political activist, Archie Mafeje, Wilson’s internationally respected research dispelled many myths about African society that had arisen from racially based history and anthropological writings, particularly regarding colonial rule and the justification for apartheid.

The beginning of racial decolonization

The first steps toward racial ‘decolonization’ of UCT came much earlier than the “Duminy Doldrums’. ‘A.C.’ Jordan “opened the door [for decolonization] of UCT and kept it ajar”. He intellectually pioneered African Studies internationally when he was appointed as a senior lecturer in African Languages (1946) and UCT’s first ‘black’ Ph.D. graduate (1957). Sadly, he was forced into exile in 1961 and died soon after. He was a humanist and a gentleman – the antithesis of radical Fallists.

The Mafeje “Affair”

Other than current intimidation/violence/destruction and its repercussions, the most disgraceful event in UCT’s history was its Executive and Council’s capitulation in 1968 to threats from ‘Jan’ de Klerk (Minister of ‘Education’ – father of F.W. de Klerk). VC Luyt and the UCT Council refused to confirm the merit-based appointment of Archie Mafeje. His appointment [endorsed unanimously by a Selection Committee] may still have also been sabotaged by UCT’s ‘Old Boy’ network who feared his hardegat, “I won’t be adopted by anybody”, empiricism.

Students and some staff strongly protested UCT’s leaders’ dastardly ‘inaction’, but still primarily because it violated UCT’s academic freedom. It was not a bold challenge to Apartheid or a broad-scale demand for non-racialism.

Davie’s dreams realized

Whatever vestiges of institutionalized colonialism, sexism and racism that remained at UCT were eradicated after the retirement of Luyt in 1980. Luyt’s successor, medical professor, physician ‘Dr’ Stuart Saunders [whom he had appointed as deputy principal for planning (DPP)], put the decolonization ‘pedal to the metal’ while catapulting UCT to the world stage in terms of research excellence.

With regard to decolonization ‘credentials’, he took an unprecedented decision to publicly resign from the Medical Association of South Africa to protest, its failure to condemn members complicit in the brutal assault/murder of Steve Biko. One of Saunders’ first ‘executive acts’ was to defy the Group Area Act and open UCT’s student residences to all ‘races’. He also found/raised funds to cover the costs of accommodating black students who were eligible for support. Furthermore, unlike his predecessors, he met openly with all banned UCT academics/staff/students, making representations on their behalf to the Minister of ‘Justice’. When their banning orders expired, they were not renewed. With one exception, his capitulation to politically motivated students who illegally violated academic freedom during the Conor Cruise O’Brien ‘Affair’, he continued to draw a firm line at what he regarded as less than “decent behaviour”.

Saunders further promoted decolonization by aggressively pursuing the preferential recruitment of ‘non-white’ staff, the procedures for which were still evolving and which were not uncontentious. One such recruitment in the Faculty of Science resulted in an unsuccessful challenge in the labour court by a disgruntled ‘white’ contract staff member who alleged that he had been victimised by ‘affirmative-action’ procedures. The talented ‘non-white’ appointees went on to have highly successful careers.

Saunders significantly developed the world-first Centre for African Studies and establishing its A.C. Jordan Chair. These endeavours were funded largely by Chancellor Harry Oppenheimer (in his personal capacity) and his ‘Rhodes-derived’ mining companies, DeBeers and Anglo American. Saunders broke fertile ground by supporting the genesis of the Gay and Lesbian Association and massively developed the UCT Fund Inc. (launched by Davie) whose primary aim is to provide financial support for ‘black’ students. Unlike his predecessors and some of his successors, Saunders visited ‘his’ departments annually to keep his finger on UCT’s academic ‘pulse’. As VC, he chose his senior supporting executive wisely, met with them regularly, and encouraged them to debate with him and each other during what he called his weekly “Monty Python” meetings.

I could go on and on.

Academic excellence

Immediately upon Science Faculty Dean Jack de Wet’s retirement in the early 1980s, he was ‘head-hunted’ by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to become the “architect and intellectual driver” of its research programmes. His last academic ‘brainchild’ was a rating system for researchers based on the quality and impact of their research as assessed by international peers. It transformed South African university/museum research from a relatively mundane, idiosyncratic, project-driven exercise into an internationally renowned, globally competitive individual/innovation-driven activity. Ultimately, Jack’s “baby” evolved into the National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Rating System. http://www.nrf.ac.za/rating

Saunders encouraged (even cajoled) UCT researchers to subject themselves to NRF-rating to help assess them for ad hominem promotion, especially to full professor. UCT’s large contingent of highly NRF-rated researchers attracts considerable funding for research, promoting UCT’s status as a world-class research university. If used as an unbiased means of developing academics, this system could be (but hasn’t been) an important tool in eliminating academic ‘chaff’, reaping the ‘wheat’ and effecting meaningful academic decolonization.

The downsides of the Rating System were that it originally favoured highly-academically-focused, ‘elite’ individuals and unintentionally discouraged aggressive participation in mentoring and nurturing ‘black’ under- and especially post-graduate students.

This is no longer the case, especially since the development of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI). For more on this, read UCT emeritus Prof. C.L. ‘Kit’ Vaughan’s 2015 biographical/historical account. On the Shoulders of Oldenburg: a Biography of the Academic Rating System in South Africa. National Research Foundation, Pretoria.

I also advocate another major criterion for academic rating. This is an assessment of the career success of students supervised. In the case of undergrads, it could include Distinguished Teacher Awards, student course assessments and those of more senior in-house peers. At the postgrad leve, this could involve employment success, i.e. how many of your grads become leaders in their chosen professions? I call this Academic Fitness, since the things counted/measured relate to your educational ‘offspring’.

VC Mamphela Ramphele: dynamic decolonization

After Saunders’ retired in 1996, UCT was led by the visionary and aggressive academic ‘decolonist’ and anti-sexist VC Dr Mamphela Ramphele [recruited as a DVC by Saunders]. During her administration, Ramphele and her team took even more decisive action than Saunders.
Violence on campus became a thing of the past and the rare instances of illegal protest and intimidation and destruction of university property were dealt with decisively. Academic justice was meted out within departments headed by senior scholars who had requisite academic authority and administrative power and who sought out leadership. When alleged victims were dissatisfied by within-department decisions, there were structures allowing appeal within faculties led by similarly scholarly deans with vision. The few incidences of indiscipline that could not be handled within faculties were dealt with by university-wide structures run jointly by democratically elected students who sought leadership and an executive that understood the educational process and was resolutely dedicated to academic freedom.

Robustly demanding students

To deal with student demands, Ramphele developed a new mission statement for UCT, improved trust between all parties and an ebbing of scepticism. But, she, unlike the current VC, had a bottom-line vis-à-vis student involvement with university policy:

“Given their status as a transient population … students cannot be allowed to participate in decisions where conflicts of interest are so glaring as to make a mockery of the integrity of higher-education institutions.”

Outsourcing

Ramphele was also scorned by some non-academic workers, who continued their disruptive/ destructive behaviour prominent during the Saunders Era. In the end, she slashed the salaries of, and fired/outsourced, hundreds of them so she could increase the pay of academics. This profoundly unwise policy was ‘justified’ on the basis that it gave priority to UCT’s primary mandate - education/research. But, it inadvertently planted ‘seeds’ for the ‘blossoming’ of Fallism to come much later.

Academic demographic decolonization during the 1990s

Ramphele aggressively and strategically attracted highly visible and competent ‘non-white’ (especially female) academics to change the ‘white’-male profile at UCT. This was done without compromising “excellence”.

The missing piece of the decolonization ‘puzzle’
What was (and still is) missing at UCT were/are cohorts of young, progressive (ideally from demographically ‘underrepresented’ groups), developing academics. This new breed of educator/researchers was/is needed desperately to:

1. mentor rapidly increasing numbers of almost exclusively ‘black’, socio-economically oppressed, inadequately financially and materially supported matriculants who are educationally ‘disabled’ by a post-Apartheid Basic Education System arguably more academically emasculating than the hideous, deliberately crippling, Bantu ‘Education’; and

2. transform (constructively adapt) curricula and teaching methods to make them more Afro-relevant without compromising internationally recognized excellence.

N.B. I in no way suggesting that there are inherent ‘race-based’ differences in any measure of the ‘quality’ of UCT students or human beings in general. I deliberately use the term ‘disabled’ and not ‘underprepared’, ‘disadvantaged’ or under/dis-anything to describe matriculants produced by the current horribly administered and grossly incompetently and corruptly implemented Basic Education System from those generated by ‘efficiently poor’ Bantu Education. The latter was hideous and openly racist: designed specifically to hamstring ‘black’ education to produce proficient, low-level servants or functionaries – most definitely not critical thinkers. In sharp contrast, from day 1, the former fails to produce competent graduates at any level – let alone leaders and critical thinkers.

Progressive academics were in short supply during Ramphele’s ‘reign’ because, for the previous two decades, ‘core’ (largely ‘white’ male) academics in traditional departments were rewarded and promoted (certainly to full professor) primarily for performance as researchers and supervisors of post-graduate students, most of whom were also ‘white’. Therefore, they effectively evaded mentoring ‘coloured’, Asian and ‘African’ (in toto ‘BCM Black’) undergrads who could have continued post-graduate education and developed into 21^st Century professors.

Nevertheless, Saunders and Ramphele, set UCT firmly on the path to becoming a “research university”. An unintended consequence of this strategy was to reduce the number of academically well-rounded Bachelors and Honours graduates who could shine as high school teachers and, ultimately, principals.

Ad hominem promotion

Ramphele also tried, but was not broadly successful in, persuading faculties to institute transparent, merit-criterion-based processes for ad hominem promotion, building on the widely admired policies introduced by Science Faculty Dean Cliff Moran in the 1980s.

Academic support

During the 1980s, the ‘gap-filling’ education of educationally ‘disabled’, almost exclusively ‘black’, first-year citizens-in-training at UCT (350 in 1986, >7000 in 2017) was relegated by the administrations of Saunders and Ramphele to the centrally-recruited-developed-controlled, often separately taught (even from the Faculty/School of Education!), Academic Support/Development Programmes (ASP/ADP). These structures were staffed largely by contracted, ‘outsourced’, often disciplinarily-inexperienced and unspecialized lecturers.

The rationale and history of ASP at UCT are covered excellently in a 2005 paper (Equity and Excellence in Higher Education at the University of Cape Town) by ASP Prof. Ian Scott et al. It is available on my Blog Site (timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za). Below, I quote extensively from it, but those seriously concerned with ASP should read it in full.

A key feature of the ASP policies of the early 1980s was that UCT’s traditional approaches and curriculum structures were taken as a given. Maintaining the status quo was generally equated with maintaining ‘standards’. Policies of the time determined that there should be clear limits on how long students would be given support, and that support tutorials and coursework outside the established curriculum could not be counted as credits towards a qualification and had to be externally funded. The ideal around which the Academic Support Programme was originally designed envisaged admitting exceptionally talented students who, with material and some initial academic support, would be able in a short time to overcome the disadvantaging effects of their educational and social backgrounds and ‘come up to speed’ with the traditional student body. While there certainly were, and have continued to be, students like this, this idealistic model was to prove grossly inadequate.

Once this ‘academic support’ ceased, these kids joined the rest of the ‘unsupported’ undergrads and encountered the full brunt of UCT’s “sink or swim” educational ethos. Consequently, their academic progress plummeted and attrition rates and financial indebtedness became extremely high.

Growing in house human timber ‘then’ was essential to pave the pathway to professorship envisaged ‘today’, thereby “creating a pipeline of researchers, challenging the university community to think meaningfully and innovatively about the direction and emphasis of research”. The ‘choice’ of many young ‘blacks’ not to follow this career path was/is especially telling for young graduates expected to help support other family members.

Rather than abandoning the ‘marginalizing’ and arguably deficient ASP/ADP and requiring core departments and academics to educate all undergrads from day 1 to ‘under-graduation’ (and beyond), at the end of the Ramphele Era, academic support became BIG business. It was incorporated within a much larger, expensive, still separate, faculty-like structure: the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED). CHED was, and remains the creation of centralized academic bureaucrats, and continues to fail (with a few noteworthy exceptions) to deliver large numbers of satisfied and successful ‘black’ undergraduates who graduate with high marks within three years.
Finally, there is the career reality that, at UCT, it takes +-20 years [it took me 25] of high quality performance post-Ph.D. to develop skills. wisdom and a body of independent research and supervision of post-graduate students to warrant promotion to full professor at a world class university.

Getting the right ‘student stuff’

Ramphele aggressively pursued the development of a demographically representative student population by recruiting high-scoring matriculants from non-traditional feeder schools, identified and streamed using novel alternative admission tests and raising funds necessary to support them. The key factor in ensuring their success was effective academic support from CHED.

She also commissioned a careful ‘size-and-shape’ analysis for student recruitment co-ordinated by NRF A-rated, ‘BCM black’ Mathematics Prof. and Science Faculty Dean Daya Reddy. It was decided, strategically, to admit more, but not massively more, first-years and rather to focus on building up numbers of ‘black’ post-graduate students who could be jump-started to leadership roles and professorships. This strategy was well-suited to fast-track the production of the young academics so desperately needed. In doing so, UCT resisted the government’s pressure for “massification” of educationally first-years ‘disabled’ by South Africa’s grossly deficient Basic Educational System.

This is one of many examples of Ramphele taking tough, unpopular decisions.

Administrative reorganization and development

In terms of UCT’s institutional structure, Ramphele was also critical of UCT’s Council, which she regarded as "an old boys network that had paid more attention to continuing traditions than to management and maintenance". This legacy of neo-colonialism somewhat frustrated her efforts to transform the university. To cope with this, she instigated the transformation of Council into a broadly representative and effective governance agent, thereby potentially benefitting her successors. Indeed, in one of her final addresses, she stressed:

"I think that possibly the thing I am most proud of is changing the institutional culture of UCT."

Sadly, Council is currently dominated by individuals who appear to condone (or be intimidated by) actions of extreme pro-Fallists.

The Ramphele ‘Downside’

The Mamdani ‘Affair’: Soon after becoming VC, Ramphele encouraged A.C. Jordan Professor and Director of the Centre for African Studies (CAS) Mahmood Mamdani’s efforts to challenge what he called “South African exceptionalism”. Mamdani had been appointed during the Saunders Era, out-competing an even more bitter Archie Mafeje.

Mamdani developed a radically novel, controversial and broadly Afrocentric foundation course for first-year students. Its challenging name, "Problematizing Africa", was supposed to fit within UCT’s African Studies and Humanities/Social Sciences curricula. However, several colleagues in the Social Sciences objected to aspects of its syllabus, challenging its content and structure pedagogically. Some (including powerful DVC and CHED Director Martin Hall) prepared an alternative course. Although Ramphele attempted to mediate the dispute, the alternative, arguably Eurocentric, course was ultimately implemented. However, it was not a success and was abandoned after a couple of years.

Regardless of one’s perspective on it, the manner in which the Mamdani ‘Affair’ was handled does no credit to Mamdani, the academics who opposed him and the history of academic freedom and academic excellence at UCT.

Read Hall’s (Social Dynamics 24.2 (1998): 86-92) and Mamdani’s position papers.

Sadly, because of bitterness stemming from the undermining actions of ‘Old Boys’, Mamdani left UCT, ultimately taking up an arguably more prestigious chair at USA’s Columbia University that allowed him to reconnect his fractious academic relationship with Makerere University in Uganda.

In the end, it was the students who were deprived of desperately needed education, and UCT lost another Afro-relevant academic ‘catalyst’.

Quoting Lungisile Ntsebeza (current A.C. Jordan Professor and past CAS director): “From there on, the Centre for African Studies was never the same and, for reasons best suited for another discussion, gradually ‘deteriorated to a point where by 2009 there was a distinct possibility that it would be ‘disestablished’.”

Now that the CAS is reasonably well-staffed, highly rated internationally and there are many more Afro-relevant academics, units and departments throughout UCT, the time is ripe for its academic ‘resurrection’ – this time under the theme Creating Africa. This could involve inter alia pursuing synergistic, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), foundation and other undergraduate courses and inter-disciplinary Afro-relevant post-graduate education and research that take our beloved continent from a chunk of Gondwana to the day before European settlers arrived.

This will, however, require unfettered debate and cooperation between ALL interested and affected parties.

More centralization of power/control, faculty/departmental mergers and curriculum restructuring

There were several other circumstances at UCT during Ramphele’s short ‘reign’ that, in retrospect, were negative 'tipping points' in the structural and academic transformation of UCT. The first was the creation/empowering of administrative 'Executive Directors' and very powerful DVCs who began to further impinge on (even usurp) the academic authority of the Deans and of the HoDs (now reduced from team leaders to 'middle managers'), especially in matters of planning, departmental expenditure and the appointment of staff. Another possible compounding negative influence on decolonization was the introduction (enforcement?) of faculty mergers (from 10 to 5 – strongly impacting the Humanities) and departmental mergers (often followed by overall reductions in staff). This created unwieldy, academically diffuse structures that were difficult to manage, and verging on impossible to lead with vision.

Restructuring undergraduate academic pathways

Ramphele felt that the longstanding, Eurocentric academic programmes at UCT, especially in the Humanities, were “antiquated” and “non-structured”, and produced students that left UCT with a “collection of credits but no lucid knowledge base that could guide future development of their careers”. She therefore promoted the radical reorganization of undergraduate teaching (encouraging inter-disciplinary teaching) organised into relatively rigid 'Programmes'.

Most departments in the Humanities simply refused to implement Programmes, and the Faculty of Science dropped them soon after Ramphele’s departure.

This ‘Big Brother’ approach contributed to the development of a ‘laager mentality’ that promoted resistance by academics to further decolonization.

What Ramphele and her successors should have done was to challenge the core academics and departments, through positive reinforcement, to ‘get their own acts together’ to produce academic structures and policies that deliver graduates (especially from socio-economically oppressed and educationally ‘disabled’ sectors) who have meaningful careers.

To do this, one should implement the advice of US NFL gridiron football coach Vince Lombardi [who would have kneeled beside protesting players]:

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

I close this section with my favourite Ramphele quote:

“The past cannot be undone: it has to be transcended.”

She and Saunders followed this policy. Her successors and pro-Fallists have not. For them:

“The past is still present”.

For more details on how VC Ramphele decisively dealt with decolonization, sexism and racism, see her 2008 book: Laying Ghosts to Rest: Dilemmas of the transformation in South Africa. Tafelberg, South Africa.

Despite their ‘downsides’, if T.B. Davie gave heart and soul to UCT,

Saunders and Ramphele gave her a spine and guts.

Decolonization takes a dive

The first eight years of the new millennium saw the administration of the highly experienced administrator, VC Prof. Njabulo Ndebele, an eminent scholar, fiction author and public intellectual. Unlike Ramphele, he was perceived as the universal ‘pacifier’. Key beneficiaries included ‘core’ academics (who pushed for the continued primacy of academic excellence and merit-based equity) and ‘progressive’ academics and students who demanded demographic “inclusivity” and generally nebulously defined/motivated ‘decolonization’ sensu lato. This resulted in massive increases in the number of inadequately supported, educationally ‘disabled’, first-year ‘black’ students without concomitantly increasing that of academics (let alone ‘progressive’ ones) and key support staff or making profound changes in curricula and/or teaching methods.

What the Ndebele ‘Team’ did do was to implement the aggregation of the now Academic Development Programme (ADP) and other components involving learning into a separate, new, faculty-like entity, the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED), greatly expanding the original aims, scope and responsibilities of the Saunders-initiated Academic Support Programme. In retrospect, I (and several knowledgeable academics – including ASP/ADP/CHED educationalists – whom I have interviewed) am convinced that the creation of CHED was a wrong decision, since it dramatically reduced the responsibility for academic support/development of the Core Departments and the School of Education.

To put it bluntly, when the UCT leadership needed to intervene both in the horribly dysfunctional Basic Education System and simultaneously providing meaningful mentoring/nurturing for much increased numbers of educationally ‘disabled’ students, it missed the ‘aircraft carrier’, not just the ‘boat’.

Perhaps most perniciously, this abrogation negatively targeted ‘black’ students who, despite obtaining deliberately inflated ‘high’ matric and UCT-developed add-one ‘test’ results, were effectively separated from their ‘normal’ colleagues and required to undergo ‘academic support’. Many felt humiliated, even excluded from ‘mainstream’ undergraduate education. When, after Ramphele’s departure, CHED still failed to produce high-quality undergraduates within the stipulated three years, and many other ‘black’ students who were able to avoid academic support were even less successful, this laid much the ‘firewood’ and opened the door for the Fallist ‘conflagration’ and ‘blitzkrieg’ to come years later.

Exposing the ‘handicap’
Ndebele’s arguably major administrative achievement was, in his capacity as head of Senate, commissioning a 2007 survey: Matters pertaining to heads of academic departments at the University of Cape Town.

In short, the survey found that inordinate power is concentrated in the ‘managerialized’, ‘fiscally-focused’, ‘commodified’, centralized administration. It needs to return to academics and students, the people who are responsible for UCT’s core ‘business’ – education and research.

Neither VC Ndebele nor his successor acted decisively on the findings of the ‘Moran Report’ [which is published in full of page 3 of my Blog Site – timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za].

Neither Ndebele nor his successor implemented its recommendations.

Still, both during and especially after his time as VC at UCT:

Ndebele gave her a “conscience”

Visible racism during 1973-2008

During this period, I saw no evidence of or heard of any substantive rumours, let alone proven instances, of racist acts perpetrated at UCT by individuals or racialist structures. If anything, VCs aggressively confronted racism and pursued the recruitment of ‘generic black’ students and staff across the board

I close this section with a 2016 extended quote relating to ‘academic support’ from eminent, NRF A-rated, UCT mathematics professor and subsequent university rector/VC Chris Brink, who was a past major visionary in academic development:

“This blunt reality [the need to develop more ‘black’ students to the requisite standard] taught me an important lesson about ‘widening participation’: what matters, in terms of both quantity and quality, is not entry, but exit. What matters is not so much the standard at which students enter your Department, but, more importantly, the standard they have attained when they leave.”

Wheeling and dealing

The selection of Ndebele’s successor was a highly contentious process. The UCT academics’ initial favourite was probably pro-managerialism Research DVC Cheryl del la Rey. The other prominent in-house candidate was Cambridge-educated, internationally respected archaeologist/historian/ educationalist/UCT-Fellow Prof. Martin Hall. Hall was could be described as an ‘Old Boy’ due to his major involvement in the ‘Mamdani Affair’, academic transformation (as DVC with that portfolio) and his strong identification (as its Director/Dean) with the Academic Development Programme/CHED. Indeed, he ‘wheeled-and-dealed’ this influence to successfully protest against his exclusion from the VC search shortlist.

The two ‘outsiders’ were the controversial educationalist Prof. Jonathan Jansen, former Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria, and Dr Max Price, noted for his transformation (decolonization) of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand while he was Dean.

For a particularly insightful commentary on the evolution and implications of Fallism, read Prof. Jonathan Jansen’s 2016 book: As by Fire: the end of the South African University.
In the end, the selection committee [chaired by Council Chairperson and prominent UCT anti-Apartheid activist Geoff Budlender] recommended that Price become the new VC.

Great expectations

VC Max Price’s ‘transformation’ administration began with enormous anticipation. His inaugural address in 2008 touched on a range of ideas including:

1. “defining the essence of a university as still very much a space of focused intellectual inquiry, imaginative thought, experiment and analysis a space of ideas, critique and the pursuit of truth;

2. scientific rationalism [within which] universities offered a space which encouraged new ideas, controversy, argument and challenges to orthodoxy - the primary purpose of a university;

3. consideration of heretical views which is not tolerant of attacks on people based on their background, what they believe in or who they are;

4. insist[ing] on the debate being about ideas and their evidence and their logic;

5. requir[ing] that people respect each other and give them the benefit of the doubt that all are equally committed to seeking truth;

6. not call[ing] someone a racist as a way of challenging their views since this closes down the space for constructive debate and the expression of different opinions;

7. focus[ing] the university on the future rather than the past;

8. not label[ling] someone an affirmative action appointee since it communicates diminished respect for that individual and assumes their individual intellectual contribution and contribution to the institution to be less worthy without evaluating the substance of their views; and

9. promoting international competitiveness”.

This Price persona was T.B. Davie incarnate.

An ‘Afropolitan’ UCT

To make these Daviean ideas “realities”, Price proposed transforming UCT into an “Afropolitan university”.

The ‘Afro’ element connoted “engagement with the world from the standpoint of Africa”. According to this pan-African and Sobukwean persona, such engagement depends on “growth in African studies, particularly the economic sociologies of different African countries and regions”.

“Politan suggests cosmopolitan and signals firstly, a sophisticated and future oriented approach to understanding Africa, as opposed to a sentimental, naïve, often ‘rural peasant and wildlife’ view of what an African perspective is. Secondly, UCT will be cosmopolitan in the sense of the mix of staff and students, from Africa, Latin America, Asia and from the North”.

One could say that this Politan Mandela/Tutu persona epitomized ‘Rainbow Nationality’ dedicated to “attract[ing] the best students and academics from around the world”.

Perhaps to assure worried elements of the UCT Community concerned with campus security, Price shifted to, yet another, protection-persona, and identified “crime - particularly violent crime” as a “fatal threat”, and undertook to “defend the university’s tradition and rights of autonomy, independence, and academic freedom”.

Phoney decolonization

For much of his first five years as VC, Price followed in Ndebele’s wake of placation. Buildings were built, more money was attracted and thousands of new undergraduate (largely educationally ‘disabled’ ‘black’) students were added to the population, increasing their (but not ‘progressive academics’) numbers by 70% since Ramphele’s departure.

UCT was quiet and ‘business’ went on ‘as usual’.

A non-racial ‘toe in the water’

The beginnings of Fallism can be traced back to 2013, the year that President Mandela died. Soon after that, Price tried to implement non-racialism favoured by Davies, Saunders, Ramphele and Mandela and ideas developed largely by the late Dr Neville Alexander and Transformation DVC Prof. Crain Soudien through their participation in a Commission into Student Admissions.

Alexander was a leading, pro-Black Consciousness, anti-apartheid struggle veteran who spent a decade on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela et al. He was an internationally acclaimed linguistic scholar and education theorist/practitioner. Soudien was/is also a nationally and internationally acclaimed African sociologist/educationalist with an NRF B-rating, specializing in ‘race’ theory and racism within universities. He had been Director of UCT’s School of Education and was DVC for Transformation.

Nowhere is the Fallists’ racial fallacy and nefarious activity better exposed than by Soudien in his final public address as an employee at UCT in July 2015. According to Soudien, ‘race’ in humans has no essence or ontological status biologically, culturally, socially or politically. He elaborates on this in his book Realising the Dream: “Race is an invention … only being framed in opposition to whiteness … an ideological smokescreen … viscerally inscribed in our heads and in our bodies”. In short, race is a relational concept and has no inherent reality in the absence of an antithesis - whiteness.

VC Price describes Alexander and Soudien as “bone-and-marrow UCT persons”, having been students, academics and administrators for combined total “lived experience” as ‘blacks’ at UCT nearing 70 years. Both also were/are resolute supporters of non-racialism. Alexander, in particular, supported the use of merit, across the board, when dealing with student admissions and staff appointment and promotion.

This non-racial, meritocratic strategy was promoted subsequently by eminent UCT philosophy professor David Benatar.

In short, the Commission recommended abandoning UCT’s student admissions policy that used ‘race’ as the key criterion in affirmative action admissions. Price outlined that the commission “recommended that the current race-informed system be retained [for a couple of years] until 2015 when a new policy based on economic disadvantage would be adopted”, a strategy consistent with the primary aim of South Africa’s National Development Plan, the eradication of poverty.

“Decent behaviour”, debate and rationalism replaced by defamation and resurrected racism

Even before Price’s tentative moves towards meaningful non-racialism in UCT’s admission policy, there was a collapse of ‘decent behaviour’ at UCT. For example, in December 2012, prize-winning author Assoc. (now full) Prof. Imraan Coovadia used his critique of J.C. Kannemeyer’s biography of eminent Prof. J.M. Coetzee to defame the Nobel laureate and the Department of English at UCT [rated top in Africa and amongst the top 100 worldwide] as a whole.

Coovadia’s only evidence ‘exposing’ the dysfunctional Department of English relates to poor success of students educationally disabled by Basic Education who cannot cope with a language-linked, university-level curriculum.

In the meantime, Coovadia focused further criticism on VC Price.

Soon after the defacing of Rhodes’ statue, in a public intellectual article entitled The Day of the Jekyll , then pro-Fallist Coovadia described Price’s inaugural speech as “practising tokenism without the tokens”, accusing him of embodying “two personalities – one rational and benevolent [Jekyl], while the other is irrational and undecipherable [Hyde]” and having a “genius for spreading confusion” and someone who “present[s] a number of additional arguments of stunning implausibility”.

In short, he branded Price as a two-faced populist.

Once again, no discipline for defamation.

Overt racism at UCT resurrected

In the same ‘Jekyl/Hyde’ article, Coovadia implied that UCT’s leadership encouraged students and others to denounce ‘black’ staff for various improprieties and then hide behind anonymity, citing the ‘Mafeje Affair’ as an example. Furthermore, he then outright stated (without any evidence) that ‘black’ professors were expected by the Price-led UCT Executive to have sterling qualifications (e.g. an NRF A-rating), and that their ad hominem promotion could take about two decades of high performance to achieve. ‘Whites’, on the other hand, could become professors 10-15 years sooner and only have a C-rating. Later, UCT Associate (also now full) Professor Xolela McPherson Tennyson Mangcu argued similarly (Business Day 3 November 2014: Black academics are getting a raw deal), debunking the use of measurable criteria, saying that he could: ”smell that talent from a distance”.

Coovadia and Mangcu were not held accountable for this racist characterization of UCT’s leadership.

Mangcu, “possibly South Africa’s most prolific public intellectual”, in the Cape Times (20 February 2013) “UCT's Senate is the Problem”, condemned Price’s open letter vis-à-vis a non-racial admission policy because it was “a slight of hand”, “conditioning” the university community to accept the commission’s recommendations. Mangcu then stated that, because the UCT Senate is “a predominantly white structure”, it would “rule in their own favour” (i.e. against ‘blacks’) on this matter”, a bit like the “wolves [UCT professors] inviting the lambs [‘black’ students] over for dinner.”

In other words, Price is a ‘conman’ and the Senate is a “slaughterhouse for racial justice”.

He further stated that senior academics represented on Senate, a broadly representative body of 360+ that has been primarily responsible for “academic matters” at UCT for more than 90 years, are also not competent to be involved in such decision making. They should “stick with empirical research [rather] than to wage an ideological assault on affirmative action.” He described the UCT Executives as advocates of non-racialism as “purveyors of swartgevaar (‘black’ peril) [who] argue that there is already too much race — read ‘black’ — in UCT’s admissions policy”.

In short, UCT had deliberately failed to achieve demographic goals because it was led by racist exclusionists terrified by ‘blacks’.

Mangcu’s statements and others that followed, provided no South African-sourced supporting evidence and, like Coovadia, he was not held accountable for this racist defamation.

Price only responded to Mangcu by downgrading the ‘economic disadvantage’ admissions policy, morphing it into a “hybrid policy” within which ‘race’ features strongly.

Mangcu, then attacked UCT's ad hominem promotions policies by extrapolating from some shocking statistics on the paucity of black academic staff at UCT. (Ripping the veil off UCT's whiter shades of pale, Sunday Times, 6 July 2014). Price countered that it generally takes more than 20 years from getting a Ph.D. to becoming a professor. In doing so, he inadvertently emphasized the failure of UCT’s Core academic system to ‘grow its own timber’ during the previous two decades. Finally, he correctly attributed the paucity of potential ‘black’ academic employees to competition from the government, civil service and corporate sectors.

Defamation replaces debate

In 2015, soon after the illegal and vulgar defacement of Rhodes Statue, DVC Soudien respectfully criticized Mangcu’s views on the role and importance of ‘race’ and racism debate (Cape Times - UCT stands devoted to debate - April 14 2015). He expressed his “surprise” and “worry” at Mangcu’s various statements, summarizing them as “an attack on the legitimacy of the very institution on which he [Mangcu], in his own work, depends”, i.e. a structure dedicated to investigating competing ideas based on evidence debated in an open, rational, respectful manner. Mangcu’s evidence, he said was “characterised by assertion and argumentative short cuts”. He expressed his concern that Mangcu supports the view that ideas of certain eminent scholars (because of their temporal, racial, gender-based and geographical provenance) should be eliminated from UCT’s current curricula because of their “rationalist conceit”.

Most tellingly, Soudien expressed his fear that some students and faculty members (including Mangcu) appear to prefer “action” to rational debate and “that there are sections of the UCT community [which] should not be involved in the matter of this debate.”

He summarizes: “We should hear all the views, even those we disagree vehemently with” and “to disavow the need for debate is to disavow the lifeblood of the university.”

In his ‘rebuttal’ to Soudien (Cape Times - Assault on idea of academic freedom - April 14 2015), Mangcu responded as follows.

1. He dismissed Soudien’s comments as “personally offensive” and “the kind of statement that has sowed a culture of fear among many [‘black’?] academics at UCT” who are “reluctant to speak out publicly about the university’s policies.”

2. Because of his “position of authority” Soudien “can reign in legitimate academic debate.”

3. He accused Soudien and other advocates of a ‘disadvantage-based’ policy of admissions (which he describes as merely “tampering with rules”) of “insulting and patronising” him and ‘black’ applicants because using and their families’ socio-educational-economic disadvantage to assess individuals fails to consider past “oppression”.

4. He viewed UCT’s “liberal” (whatever that means) approach to affirmative action as nothing more than “helping poor black children” by “giving them handouts” and then “walking away feeling they have done something”.

5. He summarized the situation of ‘black’ students at UCT as “despised by their classmates, despised by their lecturers, despised by the university administration”.

6. He dismissed Soudien’s view that the university should be a community within which individuals can come together to freely identify and discuss problems and, through that discussion, influence action that can deal with them. Indeed, Mangcu advocates abandoning such discussion as an “assault on the very dignity and the very humanity of our [‘black’] children”.

7. Lastly, he implied that Soudien is a ‘baas’ who wants him to become an “Uncle Tom who sings for his supper”.

In short, Mangcu (who has no NRF rating, a low-citation rate for his publications and no post-graduate students listed in his CV)) branded this eminent, NRF B-rated, BCM ‘black’ academic who has spent most of his life experiencing, studying ‘race’, educating dozens of post-grads to follow in his wake, and fighting against racism in a South African university environment as: a patronising, character-assassinating, authoritarian co-conspirator in a ‘white’-supremacist, anti-’black’ racist institutional hegemony which has no appreciation of what it means to be a ‘black’ university student.

Not long after this defamatory attack, Soudien resigned.

Once again, Mangcu was not held accountable for racist defamation.

Price reacted by only offering a well-reasoned, evidence-based rational counter argument, saying that UCT “builds talent slowly and incrementally, takes no short cuts, does not compromise on quality in the short term but takes a long-term view”.

Fortunately for Price, since their ad hominem promotion to full professor, Coovadia and Mangcu’s writings have shifted to be critical of Fallists, at least of their hate speech and violent and destructive modus operandi.

Some earlier Ndebelean wisdom

In September 2014, former VC Ndebele wisely commented:

"I fear that, for black South Africans in particular, the dominance of [racial] conflict perpetuates the conditions that produce it. I was a product of the Black Consciousness Movement, and it is precisely because I am at peace with myself as a result of that path that I don't need to be proclaiming myself as such in an environment in which political power is supposedly in my hands," he said. "I do not need to behave as if the source of relief comes from elsewhere other than myself. Seeking for the relief beyond me constantly puts others in a position ... of power over me.”

March 2015: Fallist Blitzkrieg:

N.B. From now on. I chronicle events as they unfolded with my comments (labelled TC:) interspersed.

TC: Although VC Price described the Fallist Movement as a ‘spontaneous’ eruption or tsunami of long-repressed rage against an unresponsive, uncaring, unprincipled, dictatorial and racist “system”, it actually unfolded as an organized blitzkrieg that rapidly overwhelmed an unprepared, rudderless regime.

9 March 2015: In the presence of Daily Voice photographer Ayanda Ndamane, then 30 year-old, academically highly unsuccessful, political science undergraduate student Chumani Maxwele (infamous for his earlier debacle with President Zuma’s security personnel) defaced Rhodes’ statue with human excrement.

TC: Maxwele’s vulgar actions were planned and choreographed in the presence of people from the news media. Price was away from Cape Town and, on his return, took no decisive action. When interviewed by the Sunday Times’ Chris Barron, Maxwele pronounced: “I don’t have to justify anything to a white male or a white institution. Nothing whatsoever”.

In the days following the defacement of Rhodes Statue, lots of ‘things happened’ quickly.

Largely non-racial peaceful demonstrations vis-à-vis removal of the statue assumed the mantra: "His [Rhodes] name must be blotted from history books".

TC: But soon, students (even members of the SRC) and some staff (including those mentioned above who employed defamation and racism) and alumni ‘self-identify’ into racially-delimited ‘groups’, refusing to discuss history, transformation, disrupting rational/contextual discussion/debate about Rhodes and UCT sensu lato (either in terms of history or current context).

The Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment ran a poll on whether or not the statue should be moved. Nearly half of those eligible voted, 60% against the removal of the statue. Similar results were announced for informal surveys in Faculties of Science and Commerce.
16 March: A seminar: "Heritage, signage and symbolism" chaired by DVC Soudien was disrupted by a student walkout led by Students' Representative Council president Ramabina Mahapa. In ensuing discussion, a student asked: “How can we engage when we are intimidated and treated like criminals?” Soudien asked: “Is this [institutional racism] really true?”
Executive Director Russell Ally commented tellingly: “Whether it’s true or not is not an issue.”
TC: Remember Ally’s quote when “truth” is mentioned again.

The Students Representative Council (SRC) refused to meet with the UCT Executive and supports an "indefinite occupation” of Bremner Administrative Building.

17 March: Price and many members of the UCT Community suggested that the Statue be “moved from upper campus to a less prominent place on campus” and all "apartheid paraphernalia" on campus be rounded up and put together in a space where it can be "critically engaged with" on a regular basis.

This suggestion was rejected ‘non-negotiably’ by Fallists and the SRC, and Price agreed to “a more accelerated process to facilitate a more rapid decision about the statue”.
Price called for open debate on “the role Rhodes played in the city's and continent's history” and stated that “it will not change our acknowledgement that UCT acquired its site from the Rhodes estate, and the positive contribution that it has made to our institution and its students”.
TC: He soon changed his tune.

17 March: Academics Union President and spokesperson Prof. Tom Moultrie stated that its executive: “supported the substance of the [RhodesMustFall] campaign”, but called for “reasoned debate and argument and that due process should be respected to secure the broadest possible consensus among all stakeholders resulting in a clearly-defined process”.

TC: Tom also soon changed his ‘tune’.

18 March: UCT fine arts alumnus Wandile Goozen Kasibe described the statue as “a disturbing feature and a glaring reminder of African ‘black’ people's genocide whom Rhodes had killed mercilessly” that “invokes the intergenerational agony that ‘black’ African people have endured for centuries, and represents the toxic collusion between the institution and the broader colonial project whose legacy still exists today”. Its “deadly racist ethos has injected itself into the institutional 'DNA' and 'heartbeat' of UCT”. His supporting ‘evidence’ for this was a quote from Frantz Fanon: "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill (sic) it, or betray it" and that "what matters most is not to know the world but to change it".
TC: This could be Karl Marx speaking from the grave.
19 March: Some former SRC presidents sent an open letter describing UCT as “Rhodes' vision of a university built exclusively for ‘white’ males” that “systematically discriminates” against ‘blacks’.
There was at least one dissenter, Gwen Ngwenya, also a former UCT SRC president.
She subsequently described what has happened at UCT as “a series of decisions by the executive, grounded in the appeasement of unelected and unrepresentative student lawbreakers and ideologues who have been party to violence on campus and who have not been able to articulate their philosophy in any manner as to result in its common comprehension”.
She characterized “decolonization” and the Fallists as follows: “No indication is given as to which version of meaning is therefore being supported. It is as unfathomable as conceding that you do not understand the terms of a contract but agreeing to sign it regardless. It is particularly questionable when the other party has given no evidence of negotiating in good faith in the past”.
With regard to the UCT Executive: “There is nothing in the agreement that reasserts the university’s commitment to academic freedom, free speech and debate; nothing to suggest its commitment to the value of ideas, and their expression, and that this takes primacy to feelings of offence or alienation. Where is the university’s commitment to stand by its academic staff and what they teach in the face of intimidation? The agreement reads as a long ode to the coalition of the aggrieved, and nothing about the need to maintain standards and to ensure that those who enter its doors can compete in the real world. What is excluded is an agreement with the person who wants a degree of international standing so that they might have a valuable currency to exchange for a decent job. For this person, the ‘academic’ war being waged by the Fallists, using the language of critical race theory as a front for giving legitimacy to incoherent ideas, is secondary to his struggle to change the material conditions for himself and his family”. “There is an admission to not understanding decolonisation and yet it seems there is little the university is not prepared to sacrifice at its alter”. “I hope ideas and principles have not become so quaint, that we care most about ‘what will work’ instead of ‘what is right’.”
TC: For this, Gwen was defamed by Fallists who characterized her as a ‘sell-out” “house ni**er” and besmirched her academic qualifications.
19 March: Ndebele offered wisdom relating to the architecture of UCT’s campus and the vexed legacy Rhodes left UCT, written from the perspective of one sitting on the Jammie steps beside his bronze figure, looking through the lens of time.
The statue “exerts a presence on campus which often prompts a desire for his absence. But, like Moby Dick the whale, he will blow”.
He characterized sitting on the Jammie Steps as: “Community as treasure takes time to coagulate. The mistakes and misunderstandings of first impressions first have to give way to trust, itself a product of time. But at some point, someone has to take the initiative.”
On suppressed culture: “Like a recessive gene, memory retains firm contours of ritual. Appropriate conditions will resuscitate the rituals in their remembered state. Initially, the moment of resuscitation will engender a space of noise. Incrementally, it can evolve into a space of shared understanding.”
“Without being fully aware, we may be passing through the relatively early stages of a subversive moment yet to be fully cognisant of itself.”
TC: How right he was.
20 March: Price applauded students for bringing transformation issues into focus emphasizing the importance of broad consultation on the issue so that "no-one would be left behind".
TC: Remember this promise.

On the same day, the UCT Student Parliament issued a statement on Rhodes statue.
“We will no longer accept the terms of engagement, on issues of transformation specifically, being dictated to us. The management of the University is often guilty of this. The power dynamics of the university are such that it is in a context of a structure which perpetuates racism. It is time for the management of the university to listen. It is time for them to realise that we are not simply bodies that exist to regurgitate information and ways of thinking. They need to realise that we are co-creators of knowledge and that they can often learn a great deal from the individuals which they are supposed to serve.”

Still on 20 March: African Nationalist protesters stormed and illegally invaded and occupied the Bremner Administration Building, "renaming" it ‘Azania House’ and disrupting the work of administrative personnel, forcing them to work from home or from offices in other buildings.

22 March: SRC President Ramabina Mahapa in Whose heritage are we preserving? quoted Biko: "At the heart of true integration is the provision for each man, each to rise and attain the envisioned self. Each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by another." “‘Black’ people reject the notion of just being mere appendages to a ‘white’ society.”

He went on: “We have reached an impasse with the university leadership and are fatigued at asking for meaningful transformation. We have begged, growled, and pleaded with management. NO MORE!! This university cannot continue with its business as normal. It in that spirit I cannot participate in this discussion.”

TC: This and other information given above made the Fallists’ policy of non-negotiation/non-debate crystal clear.

23 March: The Executive invited the UCT community to an assembly in Jameson Hall on 25 March, for “open discussions” to discuss their thoughts and views on the Rhodes statue stating: "It is through these discussions that our collective wisdom on the matter is shaped. These debates will inform our thinking and will further shape our emerging proposal to Council”.

24 March: From the VC: Progress in discussing the removal of Rhodes statue.
“Some of the commentary written on the "Have Your Say" notice boards placed next to the Rhodes statue amounts to [white] racist hate speech.”

“It must be clearly understood that any student or staff member (whether protesting or not) or member of the public who make themselves guilty of intolerance, intimidation of and interference with others are behaving in an unacceptable way and we will take the necessary action.”
TC: Remember this promise.
“We have gone to great lengths to allow a free exchange of ideas on the issue of the statue.”

24 March: Black academics supported #RhodesMustFall campaign.
“TransformUCT [= Black Academic Caucus – BAC], a grouping of ‘black’ academics from different departments and faculties at UCT, stands in solidarity with students in the #RhodesMustFall campaign and supports the removal of the statue. #RhodesMustFall is a non-negotiable prelude to tackling issues of institutionalised racism at UCT - an alienating institutional culture for ‘black’ staff.”

TC: Damning statements. No evidence.

Still 24 March: The big racial divide: Rhodes statue
Noluvuyo Melanau, an information systems student at UCT and founder of Inside Out Mentors, a non-profit organisation dedicated to educating young girls and encouraging them to have an entrepreneurial mindset commented:

“What is concerning for me is to see future professionals and leaders conducting themselves like hooligans. Since when do we have to 'poo protest' to voice our views in a democratic country? Now this is what I call 'black arrogance'. I hope that relevant disciplinary action is taken against those students who think poo is the way to solve problems.”
“The statue does portray an image of 'white supremacy', but we cannot only remember the evil, but should also acknowledge the good things he has done. “
“Now it is up to me to build my own legacy.”
“Transformation can only begin when we see beyond colour.”
TC: A voice in wilderness.

25 March: Must Rhodes fall?
A fourth-year UCT student wrote to the SRC: “You do not represent me.”

“There must be debate. Why is there only one voice being carried out from the students at UCT?!”
Still 25 March: Xolela Mangcu called for abandoning ”scientific rationality that has proven to be bankrupt when it comes to the great moral questions of the day”. He condemned the “moral duplicity of white liberals who insist on the protection of minorities while enforcing racial majoritarianism in the spaces they dominate”.
“I will leave it to your imagination what taste that leaves in the mouths of many blacks. Suffice to say, our white colleagues have not exactly given black staff and students reason to believe they will exercise their majority vote in our interest.”
“We should be able to foresee a racial civil war in this country in the same way we should have foreseen the anger of our students.”
TC: He verged on calling for violent protest. He unequivocally expresses his views on the role of ‘whites’ in the movement: “Let us be all clear about what this movement is: a black-led student movement with white students who have accepted there are times when those who feel the pain must lead.” The same goes for democracy: “This matter should not be decided through majority voting.”
In short, South Africa’s No. 1 “public intellectual” abandons rationality, racially stereotypes his liberal colleagues, disparages democracy and calls for race war. Soon thereafter, he is promoted “ad hominem” to full professor.

Still, still on 25 March: Cry for transformation rings out at packed assembly

At a University Assembly in a jam-packed Jameson Hall, many students came wearing tape over their mouths. Vociferous students, staff and alumni make impassioned demands for Rhodes statue to be removed as a precursor to accelerated transformation.

Disruption when Student Parliament Speaker Keenan Hendrickse's co-chair, Professor Barney Pityana, the new president of Convocation, was heckled and ejected from the chair by a student who characterized the meeting as a set-up: “We don’t want to waste time to listen to the professor. There is no debate here.” Pityana’s parting statement: “‘Consider all the issues and think about them.” He is replaced as meeting co-chair by Fallist student Kgotsi Chikane.
TC: As you read, remember Pityana’s pleas.
There were brief addresses by SRC president Ramabina Mahapa and Price – who was heckled and asks – but does not get - for intervention from chairperson Chikane.

Speaker highlights:
Alex Hotz [later involved in Shackville arson]: “This university doesn’t protect black students. This university protects white privilege and white supremacy.”
Mangcu: “I wasn’t going to come here tonight because I stopped trying to explain things to white people a long time ago.” “With regard to professors, I find the issue of standards racially offensive.” “Í am not here to justify myself to anybody.”

An unnamed speaker: Identifying himself as a ‘black’ Advocate (lawyer), he attributed inordinate attention given to Jewish students/staff complaints about swastikas sprayed on a building “because they have money” and “black pain does not measure up to Jewish pain.” His comments were met with cheers.

TC: If this were a ‘white’, he could be a reborn member of the Afrikaner Nasionale Studentebond.

An unnamed speaker: When he self-identified as a ‘white’ first year engineering student emphasizing that history is an imperative for transformation, he was heckled.

‘Black’ woman accounting postgrad: Aggressively asked Price: “What exactly have you done in your two terms?” “I call upon you to stand up and take leadership. Put your values and policies and implementation where your mouth is.”

TC: Remember Price’s Inaugural Address.

Unidentified ‘Black’ man: UCT is populated by “colonial ghosts who control the curricula”.

Unidentified ‘Black’ man: Regarding the UCT Executive: “Blood is on your hands.”

Unidentified ‘Black’ man: Claimed that he sent an 8-page document to VC without response that described education at UCT as “mental slavery and colonization”.

Former student and SRC member: “This varsity doesn’t care about you; it’s not going to help you; and it’s not going to listen to you.” “Max Price and his management team have failed you.”

Black male student: “For many years my multitude of emails, letters, affidavits to Price have been ignored”.

TC: This reminds me of a famous quote about actor Errol Flynn, famous for the expression “in like Flynn”. “You can always count on Errol to let you down.”

This assembly is subsequently described by Sociology Professors Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass as “hijacked by a well-organised group of Fallists implementing a carefully-prepared plan. Instead of allowing a rich diversity of voices to be heard, examples of racist commentary from the social media were used in an attempt to reduce the debate to ‘us’ (the pained) and ‘them’ (racist critics), whilst students who sought to express dissent were heckled and jeered. We suspect that there are very many students, both ‘black’ and ‘white’, who are disgusted by racism but remain unpersuaded by the SRC, and whose voices were silenced”.

TC: The UCT Executive and Convocation President were, without offering resistance, rapidly marginalized and effectively silenced at the Assembly in Jameson Hall. Almost without exception, speakers castigated ‘whites’, Jews and, especially the Executive from ‘stem to stern’ as ‘unlistening’, unprincipled, uncaring, inconsistent and racist. When any dissenters attempt to speak, they were heckled and received no support from Fallists chairpersons.

Despite clear evidence that significant majorities of some university ‘constituencies’ (Science, Engineering and Commerce Faculties) opposed immediate removal of the Statue and/or its removal from campus, there was no attempt to circulate historical documents relating to Rhodes’ full legacy or how it might be exploited to reconcile UCT’s racist, sexist and colonialist history. Despite calls from a broad range of individuals (covering the full ‘self-identification’ spectrum) and statutory bodies with the UCT Community, there was no effort to consult it systematically regarding the statue or matters more broadly. ‘Black’ staff and students (regardless of gender identity) who called for rational debate were defamed as “sell-outs” and “house ni**ers”.

I regard this event as a pivotal and tragically sad moment in UCT’s history. From then on, even notional discussion of non-racialism (or anything else for that matter) ceased. Following the action/inaction of the Executive, the Senate and Council effectively abrogated their duties and ceded power to chaotic, abhorrent, even anarchistic, elements of the loose Fallist amalgam.

27 March: UCT's Senate voted massively in favour of the removal of the statue, but onlyafter Health Sciences Professor Bongani Mayosi stated emphatically that it could not remain on campus. The alternative strategy to feature the statue of Rhodes as central artefact in a museum or gallery at UCT, dedicated to the critical study of imperialism, ‘warts and all’ was rejected.

Following the vote, the statue was boarded up pending the final decision from the university's council.

29 March: UCT Association of Black Alumni (UCTABA) views on Rhodes statue

“We commend the SRC and the broader progressive student body for so forcefully raising the issue of the removal of the Rhodes statue and by implication jolting the university leadership to grapple with the bigger issue of real transformation in a more direct way. It is our view that the challenge around the so-called Rhodes statue is code for something else that is bubbling under at UCT and at many of our universities and colleges. We further note the tendency by certain parties to pigeon hole this issue about the so-called Rhodes statue and fail to pay attention to the broader and deeper wide scale transformation debate over subliminal and many times overt racism lurking at the university. Many have also resigned from the university out of protest or due to being systematically side-lined. Council needs … to ratchet up the pace of broader transformation at UCT.”

“We unequivocally endorse students' right to protest on any matter; in fact it is their constitutional right with no ifs and buts.”

TC: So, one racialized group “unequivocally” supports another.

Still 29 March: Liberation stalwart and constitutional court judge Albie Sachs suggested to "keep him [Rhodes] alive on the campus and force him, even if posthumously, to witness surroundings that tell him and the world that he is now living in a constitutional democracy”. Albie Sachs: 'The Rhodes debate: How we can have the last laugh'. In: City Press.

31 March: Price summarized Rhodes as “a villain, the perpetrator of ruthless exploitation of indigenous people, land expropriation, illegal wars and vicious conquest”, dismissing the use of historical “context” in any way mitigating his legacy.
TC: Profoundly different from his position on 17 March. So even the use of “context” is contextual.

Still 31 March: 'History changes over time – nobody owns it’ - Ghaleb Cachalot

“We need to come to terms with our history, to understand the contribution of those who made their mark on society – often in a complex and contradictory way.”

“History is not static and erstwhile rulers come and go – their contributions, good and bad, forming part of that very history.”
“These characters and their role in history have been the subject of much scholarly interrogation and the implications need to be constantly reassessed as time goes by.”
“To call for their [statues and symbols] destruction represents a failing. To smear them with faeces is crass, stupid, unsanitary and frankly, criminal. What is required is scholarly and artistic engagement that posits a contrarian view of the past. Debate has to be widened and heritage protected.”
“These students who are pushing for a more draconian reaction would do better to engage in the realm of ideas and contribute to the contextualization of these offending edifices within the framework of current history. And they would do well to remember that history changes over time and that they – nobody – owns it.”
TC: A whisper from the wilderness.
Still 31 March: Mangcu piece: Dead men walking
UCT is institutionally racist.

April aftermath, May madness and mayhem, and June surrender

1 April: UCT Academics Union statement on #RhodesMustFall
“Regardless of race, gender or rank, we are committed to excellence in higher education; and to the training of the next generation of South African leaders and academics. Engagement, debate and dialogue are essential and intrinsic to the academic project. UCT's failure, over a period spanning decades, to address the institutional racism inherent in the naming of buildings and siting of objects on campus represents a signal failure to engage meaningfully with the symbolism of South Africa's past, and with the university's 'heritage that hurts'. Urgent remedial action is required to successfully engage with and pay attention to the experiences of marginalised voices on campus, especially Black students, academics and other staff. The AU “acknowledges and accepts that it has been complicit in this failure”.

“It is the AU's position that the statue has no place in its present position on campus. The AU agrees with the students that there are specific issues relating to transformation that require the urgent consideration and engagement of academic staff. The most pressing of these relate to

The institutionalised discrimination, including racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia and ableism, experienced by staff members at UCT;
Questions relating to curriculum content and design, and whether these are as appropriate as they should be in the context of transforming higher education in South Africa;
Ensuring greater transparency of the ad hominem process, to ensure that artificial barriers are not being placed in the path of marginalised staff members seeking promotion.”

“Starting in the second term, the AU will convene separate fora on each of these topics. Our first task is to listen, to understand, and to empathise.”

“Transformation – and the challenging of institutional racism – is not an issue important only to a few sections of the UCT community. If we all stand together and openly embrace and enact transformation, we will contribute towards a more inclusive, and unified university.”

“For too long, the Union has been too parochial, concerned only with relatively uncontroversial questions of working conditions, and representation of members' concerns and grievances with UCT's management. “

TC: On April Fool’s Day, the Academics Union joins, the Executive, Convocation and Senate in capitulating to Fallists. But, it goes further and admits “UCT's [complicity and] failure, over a period spanning decades, to address the institutional racism” and commits itself to undertake “urgent remedial action” and “convene separate fora”.

There was no action. There were no fora.

8 April: UCT Council voted in favour of removing Rhodes statue

+-50 protesters illegally invaded and disrupted the UCT Council meeting which had been called to discuss the removal of the statue and was expected to support its removal in a dignified way. But, the invaders prevented fearful members of Council from leaving to avoid provoking violence by invaders. When the chairperson of the council, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, a former anti-apartheid activist who was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, stood up and flapped his hands, gesturing for the students to leave, they climbed up on the table and moved towards him with one saying: “Who made you the policeman of black rage? As a black man?” Another student spat, his eyes filling with tears, saying: “You are disgusting! You are disgusting! Don’t you have your own children?” According to a statement issued by VC Price, protestors also chanted hate speech: "One Settler, One Bullet".

Ndungane issued the following statement regarding the status of the Rhodes statue:

“Vice–Chancellor Dr Max Price had announced a programme to review symbols and names in October last year. This process has been orderly and deliberative, canvassing the views of students, Senate, academic and PASS staff, convocation, alumni, and the public. It has certainly been enriched by hundreds of articles in the newspapers, discussions on radio and television and on social media. We have noted the extent of the support amongst all the groupings for removing the statue. This process has been vindicated by the number of people who have come into the debates opposed to removing the statue and who have changed their minds as a result of the frank engagement. This is exactly how a university should work and we believe is an example to the country in dealing with heritage issues.”
“The University has obtained a permit for temporary removal for safekeeping and we will remove the statue tomorrow.”
“The university will now continue with the planned review of other symbols and names over the remainder of this year. Furthermore, the student engagement on this issue has added an energy and urgency to addressing many other aspects of transformation and has mobilised members of the university community not previously seized with the issue. The university management will partner with the students, different staff structures and the UCT community to review and refocus our transformation plans.”
TC: Bullied by lawbreaking Fallists spewing hate speech, Council is the next domino to fall to the Fallists, with the Chairperson actually praising the ‘process’.

9 April: The Rhodes statue was removed.

Still 9 April: SRC ‘Fallists’ in line

Excerpts vis-a-viz “transformation” from a statement by SRC President Ramabina Mahapa to the UCT Association of Black Alumni

“The ‘black’ folk's problem is still chiefly the potency of whiteness.” “Our path leads only to despondency and destitution; is dystopia the end we seek?” We therefore need to consolidate our power and break the resistance of the ‘white’ community in trying to preserve the status quo. Blacks need to rally behind dismantling ‘white’ supremacy to its very core.”
UCT's environment propagates Uncle Toms (i.e. ‘black’ liberals) who will take every opportunity to ridicule blacks who speak of the problem of racism; they claim that class is the issue.
For “black folks [to] rid themselves of the ulcer called assimilation, we need to eliminate the need to assimilate in any way, shape or form to whiteness.” “Unity amongst blacks is a necessary first step and the goal is self-determination towards the creation of an independent African society.”
TC: The SRC fall in line with Fallist racists bent on taking power through dismantling ‘white’ supremacy to its very core. ‘Blacks’ who refuse to toe the line are ostracized as Uncle Toms.

10 April: Excerpts from an urgent update from Price on the Rhodes statue and Bremner occupation

“SRC and other students and staff continued to occupy parts of ‘Azania House’. This severely disrupts the work of UCT administration, including, from time-to-time, behaviour that had the effect of harassing staff and evicting some from their offices, and disrupting meetings. Management had not yet acted on the student occupation. Staff still worked in other buildings and some from home. The Executive tolerated this disruption to allow the process of consultation and decision on the removal of the Rhodes statue to run its course.” “We can, of course, and will, take disciplinary action against those who have behaved in an intimidating way.” “We will investigate charges against them.”

The SRC had always indicated that it would end the occupation of the Bremner building following the removal of the statue, and honoured this commitment.
Fallists did not, stating: “Going forward we will no longer compromise. Management is our enemy." They also stated, "the Constitution (is) a document which violently preserves the status quo".
Price states he is “aware of the incidents of chants of "one settler one bullet" as was heard at both the Council meeting on 8 April and at the occasion of the removal of the statue on 9 April.
He undertook to investigate referring these cases to the Human Rights Commission.

TC: There is no evidence that he did. There certainly was no punitive action.

13 April: Transformation: Vibrant student spaces needed

Fallists called for more spaces in which students cold continue talking and reflecting on transformation transparently.

“We believe that the UCT community should be proud that it has seen the emergence of a creative, generative student-led movement and look forward to the positive contribution it can make to questions of higher learning regionally and nationally.”

“We therefore urge the management to step back from the divisive stance it has taken towards the student movement. A policy of criminalisation, of bearing down with punitive power on students, staff and faculty associated with the Rhodes Must Fall movement might find the university management on the wrong side of history and its best possibilities.”

Supported by 141 signatories including Prof. Loretta Feris – then vice-chair of the BAC now DVC for Transformation.

TC: Fallists now see their lawbreaking as creative and generative and demand that management ceases to criminalize it.

Still 13 April: Summary of the BAC’s 'The future is watching'

The BAC backs Fallists and “pleas with management at the University of Cape Town to withdraw any charges against students or staff; step back from its divisive, intimidatory and unproductive rhetoric and course of action that has most explicitly taken hold since the removal of the Rhodes statue. This rhetoric attempts to criminalise students, staff and other stakeholders who have created a generative space through their occupation of the main administrative building. This rhetoric aims to minimise the demands put forward by student leaders and staff as out of touch and petulant.”

“As committed citizens of this institution, BAC stands in solidarity with the #RhodesMustFall movement and demands transparent and earnest engagement by management with the movement toward the full transformation and decolonisation of our institution. We ask that, as signs of good faith and commitment to the work ahead, management action the following:

1. assurances that no student or staff will be prosecuted;

2. swift allowances for excluded students to register; and

3. provision of adequate physical space for the work begun in the occupation to allow momentum to be carried through until a decolonized curriculum is on the table.

“History will ask what you did when several of our institution's best and brightest students stood up for change. Do not let it be that you retreated from the invitation to transform higher education in South Africa. The future is watching; what happens in the next 72 hours will shape the legacy of your leadership.”
TC: Fallists claim to be on the ‘right side’ of history.
15 April: Special meeting of the UCT Convocation
Price said that he was unable to take action against Maxwele because he had used excrement to deface Rhodes’ statue. Had he used paint, Maxwele could and would have been prosecuted. He further stated that, should Maxwele re-offend, he would take “decisive action”.

TC: Throughout April: Price takes no ‘action’ against the hate-speaking Council invaders. Instead, he grants them amnesty, invoking “restorative justice [that] repairs the harm caused by crime” ... through “victims, offenders and community members meet[ing]” to place criminal acts into proper ‘context’ because “it emphasizes accountability and making amends”. He avoided retributive justice to avoid undermining the future of potential “leaders in the future”.

25 April: Mcebo Dlamini, then president of the Students' Representative Council (SRC) of Wits University, stated in a Facebook post that he "loves Adolf Hitler" and admired him for his "charisma" and "organisational skills”. In the same post Dlamini also stated that he "loves Robert Mugabe", and later declared during a radio interview on PowerFM that "Jews are devils." For this and other defamatory and illegal actions, he is removed from office by the Wits leadership’

29 April: Fallists occupy Avenue House.

1 May: Maxwele reoffended, allegedly assaulting a ‘white’ female lecturer in the Mathematics Building , barraging her with hate speech, stating (witnessed by two others) inter alia:

1. that she was "a white woman who takes all the rights of the black students";

2. "the statue fell; now it's time for all whites to go"; and

3. “We must not listen to whites, we do not need their apologies, they have to be removed from UCT and have to be killed."

He also:

1. “continuously shouted and swore at the lecturer and two other witnesses to the incident;

2. started banging on the lecturer's office door (after she had entered the office and locked her door);

3. when the lecturer opened the door, pushed her in his attempt to enter; and

4. continued to shout and scream at her and bang on her desk.

Based on this “indisputable evidence of hate speech”, the “University considered Mr Maxwele's alleged actions to be threatening and intimidating, and to have been unprovoked” and considered him to be a “potential risk to staff and students”.

TC: Price fails to follow up on his 15-April promise to take “decisive action”. Furthermore, in the intervening two years, this faeces-flinging, founder Fallist has repeatedly (I hear eight times) evaded subjecting himself to a just, fair and reasonable disciplinary process within UCT. Indeed, Maxwele accused the assaulted woman lecturer of racism, but offered no corroborating evidence or witnesses. She was required by the UCT Executive (and willingly subjected herself) to undergo adjudication and was vindicated of these charges unconditionally. This victim has heard nothing for many months from the UCT Academics Union, the UCT Executive or Ombudsman.

Less than a year later, Maxwele allegedly assaulted another woman in Johannesburg, this time a ‘black’, lesbian protester, known as “the Honourable Spigga” or “Hanjie Ms wane”.

5 May: From a letter to SRC Presidents by Ramabina Mahapa (UCT SRC President)

“I wish to address matters of blackness, shared experiences of dehumanisation, discrimination and racism in a place that is hegemonically ‘white’, patriarchal and heteronormative. It is pierced by the thorns of hatred and injustice. For too long we have subdued our thirst for justice and our rightful place under the sun. Our attempts at the restoration of our dignity have been met with deceit from our oppressor. This is self-evident as we reflect upon the outcomes of our negotiated settlement.

The ‘white’ community has lost its moral prestige.”

“They further continue to show the same disregard for ‘black’ life just as their ancestors. What they call sins of the past they perpetuate today and this is what keeps things the way they are.”

“There is more than enough to go around, but the whites must empty their pockets.”

This requires that we “dismantle white supremacy”.

TC: Well, unlike the VC, at least he’s consistent.

7 May: Rhodes Must Fall tweeted "Why Mcebo Dlamini's views on Hitler are not outrageous." Eyewitness News reported that the Rhodes Must Fall movement stated that it "rejects the removal of Wits SRC President Mcebo Dlamini."

8 May: Excerpts from BAC’s Drop punitive policy, give students space

“The BAC stands against the university's decision to pursue punitive disciplinary action against those involved in the Rhodes Must Fall movement and their policy of criminalisation, of bearing down with punitive power on students, staff and faculty associated with the Rhodes Must Fall movement, placing the university management on the wrong side of history.”

11 May: UCT confirms suspension of student

The University of Cape Town confirms that a student [Maxwele] was suspended on 7 May 2015 and will face disciplinary charges following an incident that occurred in an academic department on Friday, 1 May 2015.

11 May: On Rhodes, decolonisation and UCT management

Emeritus Professor Tim Crowe responds to SRC President Ramabina Mahapa

“At the meeting held in Jameson Hall to discuss the future of the Rhodes statue, speakers stated (and were applauded for) that this Constitution is a document of 'oppression' and should be overturned. At the meeting of the UCT Council to discuss and vote on the future of Rhodes statue that was invaded by supporters of the Rhodes Must Fall initiative, councillors were threatened with the assertion of 'one settler, one bullet'.”

“I suggest that some/many key student supporters of the Rhodes-must-fall initiative have failed to perform [academically] adequately at UCT and this is the primary motive behind their behaviour. This certainly seems to be the case with regard to Chumani Maxwele.”

“What actions (and when) have/will be taken to discipline student proponents of hate speech?”

“Will future meetings held at UCT to deal with matters concerning transformation be fully representative UCT administration and senior academic staff who might defend the status quo or present acceptable alternative action?”

15 May: UCT upholds suspension of student [Maxwele] pending disciplinary hearing

“The University of Cape Town confirms that it has suspended a student pending a disciplinary hearing following an incident that occurred in an academic department on Friday, 1 May 2015.

The terms of the suspension, which takes effect from today until Sunday, 19 July 2015, allow the student to write his exams.”

“The suspension will be discharged upon either the acquittal of the student or the implementation of any sentence imposed on him by a tribunal in respect of charges.”

18 May: Price announced still further accommodation with Fallists
“Today we have made an executive decision to grant an amnesty in respect of all protest-related incidents that occurred between the first protest on 9 March 2015 and 18 May 2015. No disciplinary action will be brought against any student or staff member in respect of these events. Granting an amnesty means that we recognise that there were incidents of unacceptable behaviour that contravened UCT rules, but that we will not pursue any punitive action with respect to these contraventions. Disciplinary action may have a deterrent effect through the harshness of its consequences, but it is unlikely to change the views of the accused, or to bring them around to seeing things differently. It is unlikely to be educational in a profound way.”

He went on: “I have spoken with many of the victims of verbal assault or alleged intimidation, whether those who offended them were students protesting, staff members with hostile attitudes to protesters, or campus security personnel. Most of them recognise that if the aggressors are simply punished, usually the accused become defensive, denying they have done anything wrong. They may be unlikely to change their attitudes in the future, feeling rather that they have been victimised and left angrier than before. There is also little hope for reconciliation.”

“We have come to this decision for two main reasons. The first is that mentioned above: namely, an interest in proceeding with a collective transformation project. Disciplinary action against the large number of students and some staff would take months to resolve, would be an ongoing source of conflict and protest, and would prevent the subjects of the disciplinary action, as well as those showing solidarity with them, from participating in the next phase of planning the transformation agenda. This risks losing the energy and will to change that has built up these last two months.”

“The second reason derives from a process of intense consultation and debate within the institution since the call for disciplinary action was initially issued. This has persuaded me that restorative justice may achieve more than punitive disciplinary action aimed at deterrence through fear of consequences.”

Soon after this, Maxwele thanked Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price for "igniting a spirit of activism".

29 May: Professor Crain Soudien resigns

Replaced as DVC for Transformation by Prof. Anwar Mall and later by BAC’s Prof. Loretta Feris

TC: Finally, the BAC gained formal representation on the Executive.

5 June: Facts related to suspension & disciplinary charge against Mr Chumani Maxwele

“Maxwele has made serious claims against [the assaulted] UCT lecturer – and if these claims are found to be baseless, they would be damaging and possibly actionable.“

“We have been guided by principle in this matter.”

TC: Which one?

“On Mr Maxwele's own version of the incident, the lecturer did not threaten or incite violence. Furthermore, Mr Maxwele's complaint arrived 10 days after the alleged incident and investigators could find no witnesses to support his statement.”

10 June: Suspension of Mr Chumani Maxwele

Set aside on technical grounds

TC: In short, all formal UCT structures fell to the Fallists, providing them

‘vibrant, safe spaces’.

Is this ‘Separate Development’ revived?

UCT’s now totally “Silenced Majority” is still waiting for the emergence of ‘best and brightest, creative Fallist student leaders of the future” from these ‘generative, vibrant spaces’ and hearing/reading their “imaginative positive contributions”.

In the meantime, Fallists’ early victims are abandoned by the UCT Academics Union, the UCT Executive and Ombudsman, who allow Fallists to write their exams while they identify new ‘white’ targets who, according to SRC President Mahapa, “must empty their pockets”.

For this, Maxwele thanked Price for "igniting a spirit of activism".

Winter intermezzo followed by bedlam

18 August 2015: UCT and Rhodes Must Fall signed mediation agreement

In response to UCT withdrawing charges against law-breaking protesters, Fallists agreed to accept possible disciplinary action for law-breaking in the future.

TC: UCT was non-violent for a while, until the Fallists chose to renege.

1 October: Next Generation Professoriate

Based on the premise that the career paths of ‘black’ academics at UCT towards ad hominem promotion to full professor may be influenced negatively by “patronage” (discriminatory favoritism of ‘whites’) disadvantaging them, Price introduced the Next Generation Professoriate (NGP). The NGP is headed by socio-educationalist Prof. Robert Morrell, and its aim is to rapidly transform mid-career ‘black’ academics from a broad cross section of faculties into professors.

TC: The creation of the Next Generation Professoriate is tantamount to an admission by Price and UCT of institutional anti-black discrimination in long-standing ad hominem promotion processes. Neither he, nor Morrell offered evidence of discrimination nor new premises/goals/criteria/ standards to eliminate it. Morrell, says that to do this, requires “open processes that have been put in place to ensure fairness and transparency” and that “these processes are the guarantors of legitimacy” which will replace the ‘old’ ones based on patronage. He nowhere described/explained these new “open processes” and who developed/endorsed/validated them. He suggested that the “old” ones (also not described/explained) were illegitimate, but never explains why. He just stated: “Promotions in the past were often poorly understood and quite secretive processes. They were rightly suspected of nepotism, the influence of old boys’ clubs and racist and sexist bias.” He alluded to, but never elaborated on, “nepotism”, ‘patronage”, “secrecy” and “bias” in any form.

The old (still continuing in the Faculty of Science) processes were, in fact, based on clearly outlined criteria: “research and publication, teaching and learning, administration, management and leadership, and [more recently] a fourth area, social responsiveness”. In most, but not all, UCT faculties, the review committees “allocate numerical scores for each area and a total score is stipulated for successful promotion” and demonstrable excellence in research was essential for promotion to full professor. Also, unsuccessful applicants are informed on their deficiencies (I certainly was) and could appeal. In short, the current system is clear, fair and transparent.

6 October: Price declared that outsourcing is most efficient, cost effective option for UCT support services.

19 October: All activities were cancelled on Upper, Middle and Lower Campus due to marked increase in intimidation, violence and erection of barricades, soon after UCT announced that fees would be raised by 10.5%.

Price: "The situation on campus is serious. Large groups of protesters have disrupted several lectures on upper campus. Fire extinguishers have been released in some lecture venues. Various lectures have been suspended".
Overnight‚ protesters threw petrol petrol-bombs after campus security tried to prevent them “unlawfully occupying” the Steve Biko Students’ Union building. Police have to be called onto campus‚ and an officer is injured as he “attempted to bring the situation under control.”

Fresh, new ‘negotiations’ between students and the Executive began. But, when students start blocking vehicle access by placing rocks, dustbins, and benches on the roads leading into the campus and the Rhodes Must Fall movement occupied the university's administration building, UCT applied for and received a court interdict to prevent illegal protests at the university. Riot police are called to forcibly evict the protesters from the Students’ Union Building with over 25 students being arrested. Reportedly over a thousand students then gathered at the Rondebosch Police Station and held an all-night vigil calling for the student's release.

Riot police stand down.

21 October: Students from both the UCT and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology formed a crowd of around 5000 protesters and marched on the South African Parliament There was continuing student unrest at universities across South Africa, with “small numbers of students causing a lot of violence”. Some students were arrested and some injured.

22 October: Statement by Barney Pityana, President of UCT Convocation and leading Black Consciousness intellectual on UCT’s responsibility for the fees crisis

“The campaign to scrap all fees at higher education institutions has become a national crisis. It is no longer a matter that should be left to the universities to “sort out” and resolve within the financial constraints that all universities function under. This has become a matter of public policy. Whatever view one takes of the manner in which the protests were conducted, there can be no justification for the use of excessive force of the kind that was witnessed on television on 21 October 2015, yet another day destined to go down in history as a Black Wednesday.”

Price’s subsequent speech was heckled and eventually drowned out.

TC: So, the ‘real’ villains are in government, not at UCT.

UCT academics' demands relating to #FeesMustFall

The Academics Union and the Black Academics Caucus hosted a meeting of about 200 concerned academics about the #FeesMustFall campaign. This group identifies a number of demands to be delivered to UCT Management.

The interdict issued on Monday be withdrawn unconditionally and with immediate effect, and charges against the students dropped. Police brutality must stop. The UCT Council must urgently formulate a policy on the circumstances under which police are invited onto campus, together with possible limitations on their actions, so that the disproportionate reaction against students seen on Monday evening never occurs again.

An open forum for academic staff be convened by UCT Management by the close of business on 27 October at which each member of the UCT Executive must personally account on their role in seeking the interdict, and in allowing the violence on campus this week to take place.
The University must reschedule exams, and consult and communicate with both academics and students about what the plans are to conclude the year.
The University must engage, as a community of students, staff, workers and management, with government and other stakeholders to resolve the national funding crisis of higher education in South Africa. Holding government to account for its role in precipitating this crisis must be an important component of that engagement.
UCT Management must make transparent the University’s financial and budgeting processes, as well as the University’s current income and expenditure, so that academic staff can understand the long-term financial constraints faced by the University, as well we the implications thereof.

Still 22 October: Price stated that he is committed to lifting the interdict and dropping police charges brought against students in the preceding days.

23 October: CHED released statement of solidarity with Fallists

29 October: UCT Executive abolished outsourcing

TC: This reverses his previous firm position; costs UCT key academic and support posts; and lays the firewood for protests, strike action, violence and conflagrations to come.

9 November: Fallists violently disrupted special Senate meeting.

About 150 Fallists were able to invade because members of the Campus Protection Services were focusing on the security of students who were studying on campus or in the process of taking exams. Price was surrounded by protesters who refuse to enter into discussion or any form of negotiation. “They particularly targeted Price with utterly unacceptable verbal abuse and threw bottles, food and other articles at him”. “They intimidated staff members, physically threatened people, racially abused people at random, humiliated individuals and generally acted in an unruly, aggressive manner.”

TC: If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.

11 February 2016: UCT condemned hate speech in any form.

“UCT condemns in the strongest terms possible any act or expression that incites violence or promotes hate speech or intimidation in any form. Free speech includes the right to offend, even the right to be offensive. But what free speech specifically excludes is the right to incitement or a call to action that can result in grievous harm to another person. Such expression has no place in society, let alone in a university that upholds the values of tolerance, human dignity and respect.” Gerda Kruger

TC: Remember this principled position.

15 February: Fallists constructed a shack at a heavily used pedestrian crossing on Residence Road at the base of Jameson steps at the university's main campus and cordon off the area, calling it Shackville. The shack was set up to protest what some students perceived as a lack of housing for black students and racism in the allocation of student housing, especially in favour of ‘white’ international students. The University responded constructively disputing students’ allegations, stating that the shack needed to be relocated by 17h00 the following day, as the shack's placement was causing traffic congestion. The following day, the shack was removed after 18h00 by the University.

In response, Fallists:

vandalise [with paint – punishable according to Price’s statement of 15 April 2015] two statues, one of Jan Smuts and another of Maria Emmeline Barnard Fuller;

burn paintings, predominantly portraits of ‘white’ people, collected from university buildings, including a portrait of highly revered anti-Apartheid activist, Molly Blackburn, and five anti-apartheid-themed paintings by black artist, Keresemose Richard Baholo, who was the first black student to receive a master's degree in Fine Art from UCT and who later supported the activists' actions. The 24 pieces, including 16 portraits and a wooden plaque, have a total insured valued of R682 500, as well as immeasurable historical and cultural value;

torch three vehicles, including a Jammie Shuttle transport bus a Biological Sciences bakkie essential for research in an oppressed ‘black’ community; and

petrol-bomb Price’s office.

The Executive responded in ‘context’. The shortage, 6680 beds for 27000 students, was due to:
greatly increased student numbers caused by lower fees,
students rewriting deferred exams caused by the protests the previous year, and
the clearance of historical student debt increasing the number of returning students.
The Executive stated that its ability to respond to the housing problem was hampered by the occupation of three buildings hosting the Student Housing department by Rhodes Must Fall protesters.
It also:
refuted Fallists’ claims of prioritising the housing of white students, stating that 75% of students in university residences are black;
claimed that a number of the protesters were not university students; and
due to the "intimidation of others, demeaning utterances, and distortion of facts" it took unprecedented criminal action against the protesters.
Eight protesters were arrested on charges of public violence and malicious damage.
Subsequently, Judge Rosheni Allie granted an interdict in favour of UCT, which effectively barred RMF leader Chumani Maxwele from entering the campus for the next five years. The judgment meticulously outlined the facts, the chronology of events and the context of those events which led to an incendiary device being thrown into the office of Dr Max Price which was gutted.
Judge Allie describes a collusion between two respondents, Alex Hotz and Chumani Maxwele, in the torching of a Mazda bakkie used by the Department of Biological Sciences to service rural communities, then a Jammie shuttle bus. This was followed, later that night, by the petrol-bombing of Price’s office.
In her judgment she pulled together these threads. Based on circumstantial evidence, Hotz was directly involved in facilitating the lighting of fires and consequently the burning of artwork on campus. The car driven by Hotz was on the campus that night and played a significant role in the arson. It was used to transport three tyres onto the campus and someone was seen alighting from it carrying “… a red Castrol can that later contained approximately 3 litres of petrol.” Hotz was also seen carrying a tyre to the area where protesters had already made the fire that was used to burn paintings and photographs.”
Hotz did not deny this.
Judge Allie also revealed the role played by Maxwele in the arson attacks. He was present when the bus was torched and he rolled drums into the road shortly before the bus was burned.
In the same week, ‘white’, ‘coloured’ and Asian students were barred from the UCT residence's dining hall by Fallists and denied food from the cafeteria.

Price statements:

“They [Fallists] even set fire to Table Mountain. Most of the fire brigade was diverted from campus to the mountain because it was a serious arson fire, which would have spread to the suburbs.”

He reiterates: “No student is [to be] turned away”

“I have always been committed to a non-racial and democratic South Africa – since my youth.”

“Universities in particular are here to solve problems through debate and through thinking and through ideas.”

“It is almost disruption for the sake of disruption.”

The burning of paintings and the racist exclusion of students from a dining hall at the University of Cape Town started to rattle the legitimacy of the Fallist campaign. Some students in residences affected by the destructive protests this week complained that they refuse to join in the violence, want to get on with their studies and fear for their lives. They are too afraid to let the media identify them.

The World War Memorial is defaced with spray paint: “Fuck White People”.

A 22-year-old third-year ‘black’ BA social sciences student stated: “They [Fallists] are taking something that was pure and good and turning it into a fight: black against white”.

Fallist students laid charges against the university, saying that they had been assaulted by private security guards and police. They called for Price to be “arrested for undue use of force” and to “resign”.

He refused, believing that he “has the confidence of the council and senate”.

TC: To paraphrase US President Teddy Roosevelt – speak softly and let the other guys carry the big stick.

March: Ramabina Mahapa, former UCT SRC president and Rhodes Must Fall leader, provides chilling insight into the militants’ motivations in a student publication
“The aim is to get the university to reach a stage where they will be unable to concede to any more significant demands and therefore resort to use the state policing apparatus and private security to repress student protests. The expectation is that this will detach the black masses from the hegemonic bloc of the ruling party and thereby awaken the ‘sleeping’ masses that will then redirect their frustrations and rage towards not only the universities but the state.”

11 April: Price ‘justified’ widespread removal of UCT artworks without consulting artists as “curation, not censorship”. It is intended “to help create a process of inclusive engagement and discussion to help advance transformation in the area of art curation”. “Current removals are provisional. It is our belief that the artworks will all ultimately be on display once curatorial policies have been developed.” “The decision to cover and take down some works is motivated by two concerns: the first is to signal that we have started a process of debate and discussion about how works of art should be displayed on campus, and that we will respond to this debate with seriousness and urgency. The second is in recognition of our custodial obligation to protect our art collection, especially those works of art that have become controversial (whether for good reason or not), noting that in the absence of an art gallery, almost all of UCT’s art is displayed in public spaces. This is necessary while we conduct the discussions about how and where these works should be displayed.”

Nevertheless, “various articles and letters in the media [some by the unconsulted artists “offered highly critical views”, stating that “UCT is practicing self-censorship or giving in to the demands of a small radical student group. A number of the works “depict black poverty and naked black bodies, in sharp contrast to the lack of anything similar in the depiction of white people, an effect exacerbated by an absence of artworks that would encourage black people to feel proud of who they are.” “Full of portraits of white people creating an unconscious stereotype that academic excellence and leadership has a colour (and gender).”

Fallist students refused to justify their objections item-by-item. These perceived negative attributes have “cumulative offensive effects” – “for cultural, religious or political reasons”. The Arts Task Team proposes that “the curation policy, which will also affect the policies on acquisitions, should be developed through an open consultative process that includes the different voices on our campus”. “will respond to this debate with seriousness and urgency”. We will “conduct the discussions about how and where these works should be displayed”, including “all members of the University community” so that “everyone can readily identify with the institution”.

TC: Nothing is resolved.

Both sides go to court.

11 May: An interdict against a number of University of Cape Town (UCT) students was made an order of court on 10 May. As a result, five (of the original 16 named respondents) students were effectively expelled and not allowed on campus for an indefinite period of time except with express written consent of the vice-chancellor: Alex Hotz, Masixole Mlandu, Chumani Maxwele, Slovo Magida and Zola Shokane. They were required to pay UCT’s costs including the costs of two counsel.

Judge Allie wrote: “Concerning the disruptive and destructive form that the protests took, it cannot be said that the apprehension of it recurring is not reasonable given the great lengths to which some protesters went, to perpetrate the destruction. The unrepentant stance adopted by the respondents, led the applicant to believe that the harm could recur if an interdict is not granted prohibiting the misconduct complained of.”

But, on 6 December, charges were withdrawn against UCT students who burnt paintings.

May: Ntokozo Qwabe is a South African Rhodes Scholar who was one of the founders of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at Oxford University. His subsequent comments following the 2015 Paris attacks and behaviour towards a white waitress in South Africa were criticised in news and social media, leading to a petition for his removal from Oxford which was rejected by the university. He has rejected accusations of hypocrisy for receiving money from the Rhodes scholarship scheme, claiming that he is merely recovering wealth stolen from Africans by Rhodes during the colonial period.

Two days after the Paris Attacks of November 2015, Qwabe posted a message on Facebook saying he did not stand with France and calling for a ban on the French flag at universities, describing it as a symbol of a state "that has for years terrorised – and continues to terrorise – innocent lives in the name of imperialism, colonialism, and other violent barbarities." In a subsequent interview with The Sunday Times, Qwabe compared the French flag to the Nazi swastika.
Qwabe also posted comments on Facebook about an incident when he was in a South African restaurant with a friend:
“They take a pen and slip in a note where the gratuity/tip amount is supposed to be entered. The note reads in bold: “WE WILL GIVE TIP WHEN YOU RETURN THE LAND”. The waitress comes to us with a card machine for the bill to be sorted out. She sees the note and starts shaking. She leaves us & bursts into typical white tears (like why are you crying when all we’ve done is make a kind request? lol!). Anyways, so this white woman goes to her colleagues who are furious. She exits to cry at the back & a white male colleague of hers reluctantly comes out to address us & to annoy us more with his own white tears telling us that he finds our act "racist".
Qwabe was subsequently involved in student protests at the University of Cape Town, commenting on Facebook about one incident in which he was accused of violence:
“It is NOT true that I 'assaulted' and 'whipped with a stick' a white student during our shutdown of the arrogant UCT Law Faculty yesterday! Although I wish I'd actually not been a good law-abiding citizen & whipped the white apartheid settler colonial entitlement out of the bastard - who continued to video record us without our consent - this is not what happened as the media is reporting.^”

TC: So, Qwabe is an owner of one of Roosevelt’s ‘sticks.

1 June: A group of about 30 people protested outside the Bremner building, demanding the withdrawal of the court interdict against five Shackville Fallists. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Francis Petersen accepted the protesters’ demands. The group insists that UCT should have 24 hours to respond these demands. At around 17:00 a group of Fallists formed a chain across a public road preventing vehicles and foot traffic to pass and interfering with the normal flow of traffic. Some of the protesters interfered with and intimidated motorists and passengers. The public order police unit had to use a teargas canister to assist in dispersing the protesters so that the flow of foot traffic and vehicles could return to normal. The UCT Executive commits to assisting the SAPS in identifying individuals. If any are UCT students, they will in addition face internal disciplinary charges.

TC: Nothing is done. How many times have I written this so far?

Late in July: The Price-led UCT Executive overturned a statutory action taken 16 months earlier by the “vitally important” UCT Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) relating to the selection of the speaker (Flemming Rose) for the T.B. Davie Memorial Lecture, “a flagship event that celebrates academic freedom”.

TC: In refusing at the last minute to allow Rose to speak, I and many others maintained that the Executive undermined the very structure and governance of UCT and violated its statutory responsibility to defend the “fundamental and cornerstone rights” of academic freedom and unfettered debate of “ideas, even unpopular ones”.

The UCT Executive justified its act of censorship (taken less than two weeks before the scheduled lecture) on the basis of anonymous/unspecified:

1. allegations of “bigotry”, “blasphemy and Islamophobia” against the speaker;

2. “very serious security considerations”; and

3. need to abandon academic freedom depending on “context” in general and, in particular, “directives of our Constitution” relating to “hate speech” and “incitement of imminent violence”.

After more illegal protest, one multiple-offending Fallist, Masixole Mlandu, was arrested by SAPS for: malicious damage to property, housebreaking, and intimidation. A UCT Toyota Hilux double cab bakkie is petrol-bombed and repair-costs of smoke damage to a ventilation system that serves a Geological Sciences laboratory housing highly sensitive equipment mount to millions of rand. A case of arson is opened but, to date, has produced no prosecutions.

With time running out, four members of the Executive and nine Fallists mainly from PASMA [a relatively poorly supported student group that is ideologically monolithic, revolutionary movement “guided by the philosophies of Pan Africanism and Marxism-Leninism whose goal is total liberation of all humanity through the working class revolution and establishment and construction of classless society” and does not tolerate individualistic “opportunist elements”] signed the November Agreement that capitulated to Fallists to allow the completion of final exams for the following three weeks. It also laid the foundations for an Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission (IRTC) within which the “Other Student Constituency” has representation equivalent to Council, Senate and the Executive. The IRTC’s primary tasks are to deal with clemency/amnesty for Fallist law-breakers, eliminate fees, reduce security on campus and, fundamentally, to “decolonize” UCT.

A month later, charges against Shackville arsonist Fallists (including Maxwele) were withdrawn and commuted to “community service”.

A week after this, the Annual General Meeting of the University of Cape Town Convocation was disrupted/prevented by Fallist invaders. They opposed a motion by me and Ms Gwen Ngwenya (former UCT SRC president and current COO of the South African Institute of Race Relations) to force the Executive to consult alumni vis-à-vis their views on the Executive ‘negotiating‘ with law-breaking Fallists.

We were misrepresented by former Council Chairperson (and chairperson of the committee that selected Price), advocate Geoff Budlender, who maintained that we wanted Price et al. to resign or be dismissed. Ngwenya and I were heckled by many, including Chumani Maxwele (who was violating conditional amnesty granted according to the November 6 Agreement). I was branded variously: “racist” and “Jim Crow”, “apartheid activist” and “killer of black people”. When other legitimate attendees attempted to tell their stories of the negative consequences of protests, they were shouted down. Law academic Dr Cathy Powell was mocked openly, with mimed clown-tears and cat-calling: “Shut up bitch.” Subsequently, Ngwenya was subjected to ‘hate speech’ and referred to as a “house ni**er”.

As we left the venue, I heard a young person exhort “There will be no UCT in 2017!” Her fellow crowd members supported in glee.

For my and others’ ‘objective’ accounts of the meeting, see: UCT convocation descends into chaos.

For a pro-Price/Fallist perspective on the AGM, see Learning to engage with chaos cultivates by current CHED Dean Suellen Shay.

For another, blatantly anti-‘white’ account of the disrupted AGM see Beneath the surface of the UCT Convocation AGM.

To end on a positive note, DVC Phakeng’s comments on excellence being “non-negotiable” were very encouraging, provided that “context” intrudes minimally.

20 September: Lower Campus and North entrances blocked by Fallists. Access to the Medical School Campus is also blocked. Lectures were suspended.

28 September: Price showed his ‘true colours’ and called for UCT lectures to resume, but stated: “There can be no doubt that there are multiple valid reasons why people protest, and that we all agree on the need to make fundamental changes to both our education environment and the broader South African society. UCT has already changed in many ways over the last months and there is no doubt that much more change is necessary. We need to heed the call to transform ourselves and our institution and we should all accept this collective responsibility.” Today, however, I write with a plea that this transformation agenda, this responsibility to ensure change, are driven and insisted on in ways that do not include the shutdown of UCT operations. The shutdown harms everyone. It will rob everyone of the opportunity to learn from this experience and to change in ways that make us better people, a stronger institution and an improved society. A longer-term shutdown will work in no one’s interest except if your interest is the destruction of the institution. The greatest impact will be felt by our poorest and most vulnerable staff and students. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that we are standing on the edge of a precipice. If UCT does not reopen on Monday, 3 October, the consequences will be severe for all of us and it may lead to a situation where we will be unable to recover much of what will be damaged or destroyed. Severe consequences may include a loss of confidence from educational partners, donors and funders, and potential employers of graduates. Furthermore, the financial implications may mean a forced reduction in staff and a collapse of UCT’s contribution to financial aid. The collapse of the semester study abroad programmes may become a reality and our ability to attract international scholars and research partners will be diminished. Students are the worst and very directly affected as they may not be able to complete this academic year and will have to extend their time of study with multiple financial and other consequences. Many, particularly the vulnerable, may simply fall out of the system. Our capacity to do impactful research that benefit communities directly and our ability to continue critical services in communities (some of which involve life-saving interventions) will be lost. Another direct consequence will be the potential loss of our international accreditations, which will have direct consequences for the value of our degrees. In the final analysis, the consequences of a longer-term shutdown are real and drastic. We stand to lose a generation of students, much as we lost countless students to the protests of 1976. No matter what changes we wish to bring to society, we can’t make those changes by destroying the higher education sector in South Africa.”

October: The Department of Education estimated that the total cost in property damage due to protest by Fallists since 2015 had amounted to R600 million.

Price: The university had tried to engage with Fallists, but “some members have made it abundantly clear that their aim is to create confrontation and to shut down the university.

3 October: Fallists blockaded entrances to UCT Upper Campus. Price said: “The executive and Council have decided that while we continue to attempt to resolve the current conflict through continued dialogue, the minimum security should be used in order to protect the academic programme, recognising also our legal obligations to secure the safety of students, staff and property”. “We will use the minimum private security required to ensure the safety of all students and staff."

13 October: UCT laid a charge with the SA Police Service (SAPS) after a group of about 70 protesters allegedly broke through the door into the offices of the Campus Protection Services (CPS) on 12 October 2016. They are alleged to have intimidated staff members forcing them to vacate their workspaces. One Fallist member of the group, Masixole Mlandu, is arrested by SAPS. Charges include malicious damage to property, housebreaking, and intimidation. This was the second consecutive day when a group of protesters, under the leadership of Mlandu, entered UCT offices to remove workers from their jobs. The actions of the protesters were in direct contravention of a specific agreement made between protesting students and the university’s executive that CPS officers are a critical service and should be able to continue to work.

14 October: A UCT Toyota Hilux double cab bakkie used by students and researchers in the Geological Sciences Department was petrol-bombed and destroyed by fire just after 03h00. No people were injured, and members of UCT’s Campus Protection Services were able to extinguish the fire so that it did not spread to neighbouring vehicles or UCT buildings. Smoke damage to a ventilation system that serves a Geological Sciences laboratory housing highly sensitive equipment, mounted to costing millions of Rands. A case of arson was opened but, to date, has produced no prosecutions.

Still 14 October: Price and two members of the University of Cape Town executive met with a small group of Fallists outside the Bremner Building. After engaging with the group, Price explained that he needed to leave as he was due at another meeting. Some of the protesters encircled him and started pushing and pulling him. Dr Price attempted to walk away when he received two punches to the body. A colleague attempted to protect the Vice-Chancellor. Members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) stepped into the group to escort Dr Price away. When the scuffles and pushing escalated, police officers use stun grenades to disperse the group. The Vice-Chancellor and members of the executive were then escorted back into the building. The Fallists left and later disrupted a soccer match taking place on a field nearby.

TC: Nevertheless, Price and his Executive overruled police and arrange for Mlandu’s release and still seek continued engagements with radical Fallists, including Mlandu. Their intention is to find a negotiated solution that will allow for the continuation of the academic year without further violence, regardless of the consequences.

While negotiations ‘progressed’, two private security guards were brutally attacked without provocation on upper campus. Both sustained significant injuries and needed to be admitted to hospital. The Executive “utterly condemned these attacks” and stated that “any person who is identified as committing any unlawful acts on UCT property will face legal charges and, if they are UCT students or staff, disciplinary action”.

Nothing was done and UCT remained shut down.

Price and his executive still sought continued engagements with Fallists, with the intention of finding a negotiated solution that will allow for the continuation of the academic year without further need for extensive security.

19 October: Two private security guards were brutally attacked by Fallists on upper campus. One was beaten up by a group of Fallists near the food court. The other had a rock dropped on his head from an upper storey of the Steve Biko Student’s Union building. Initial reports on the incidents indicated that these attacks were unprovoked and deliberate. Both security guards sustained significant injuries and had to be admitted to hospital. The Executive “utterly condemns these attacks and all other forms of violence by any person, including throwing of dustbins, invasion of buildings, threatening and assaulting staff and students, and malicious damage to property”, and states that “any person who is identified as committing any unlawful acts on UCT property will face legal charges and, if they are UCT students or staff, disciplinary action”.

TC: Nothing was done.

6 November: Four members of the Executive and nine Fallists signed an Agreement that allows the completion of final exams for the next three weeks, while laying the groundwork for an Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission (IRTC).

TC: NB: note the conspicuous absence of Truth in the name!

The IRTC is to broadly address questions of transformation, decolonisation, curriculum change, institutional culture, names of buildings and symbols, rape culture and gender identities.

In the spirit of restorative justice, more clemency or amnesty will be granted.

In the context of this agreement, conditional amnesty means that the sanctions that were previously imposed as a result of an SDT will be suspended if the particular student has agreed to the principles of clemency (as stipulated in the point above). Amnesty can be revoked if there is good reason to do so, for example if the student acts unlawfully or in a disruptive manner.

The Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission will:

i) look into what is referred to as the “Shackville protests” of February 2016, including any related and subsequent protest actions;

ii) invite submissions from all constituencies on the amnesties granted and make recommendations on how the university should deal with such matters in the future; and

iii) make recommendations on institutional culture, transformation, decolonisation, discrimination, identity, disability and any other matters that the university community has raised over the past 18 months or may wish to raise.

The university was to host university-wide meetings/seminars to launch the IRTC / Shackville TRC process. These meetings/seminars will be led by skilled external facilitators with the purpose of explaining the origins and role of the IRTC / Shackville TRC process and the principles of restorative justice.

16 November: Excerpts from a speech by new DVC for Research Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng
To cope with the uncertain future that we face, we need three things: an unrelenting commitment to excellence, an exceptional focus on transformation and the courage to do things differently.
We need to talk about excellence because it is time for us to think differently about the excellent work that we do and how we can ensure that it is sustainable. What made us excellent yesterday, is no guarantee that it will make us excellent tomorrow. To continue in our trajectory of excellence requires the keen ability to manage the change and master adaptability.
The second reason why it’s important to talk about excellence is that excellence is not innocent, especially in a country such as ours, with a history of discrimination and oppression. Excellence always has a context. We need to celebrate all ways of excellence, the many ways we rise, our skill at thriving and surviving despite our difficult past. Excellence, when it is too rigidly defined, leaves us valuing certain stories over others, leaves us assimilating instead of reaching towards newer and better ways of being.
I believe in excellence and, despite its complexity, I remain convinced that, in a business such as ours, excellence is non-negotiable.
We should guard against a tendency to downplay excellence in favour of mediocrity, which is usually done unwittingly in interactions and considerations about equity, transformation and capacity development.
In the same way, we should challenge the perception that excellence resides only in one group of people or a particular section of our society. We should also challenge the view that we cannot deal with issues of equity, transformation and capacity development at the same time as we encourage, pursue and recognise excellence.
The complexity of excellence means that it always has a context – it means different things to different people. This is the reason why, when I talk about excellence, some people ask, “excellence for whom?” and, when some people hear that I am committed to supporting excellence, they misguidedly think that I am only interested in supporting academic indulgence. And, so when I say "if not excellence then what," they ask, what about the pressing challenges facing our society? What about Africanisation? What about decolonisation? And what about transformation? It is as if by supporting excellence, one is necessarily against the decoloniality project, Africanisation and transformation.

There is a narrative that argues that there is a trade-off between excellence and transformation. According to this narrative, is the believe that inherent in the idea of transformation is a lowering of standards for the instrumental purpose of allowing more women and black Africans into the academy and up the professorial rank, without letting them be measured against the objective standards of a meritocracy.
When others hear that I am committed to supporting excellence, they think that I want to use our resources to support the elite at the expense of everyone else. And then they ask: what about using UCT's full potential? What about black researchers? What about the young and emerging researchers?
My vision is to ensure sustainable excellence in UCT’s research performance, and this includes creating an enabling environment for all UCT researchers to conduct research that can contribute to society and the improvement of the lives of people; and helping to create a sustainable future. So, I am committed to excellent researchers, who are passionate about the work that they are doing. These are researchers, who do not just do research simply because it is indicated in their job descriptions, but those who do it because they love it!
I am committed to the development of excellent researchers and making sure that those, who are already excellent, stay there. So, under my leadership of UCT’s Research and Internationalisation portfolio, we will continue to support UCT’s best researchers, because they are in a global competition with better resourced rivals and with new rivals emerging every day. However, to be able to do so, we must all be committed to transformation, because without transformation, our excellence will be unsustainable.

The research landscape is not flat – peaks of excellence can spring up anywhere. But excellence cannot be everywhere. This is as true for any university, faculty, department and individuals within universities as it is between universities. But this does not mean that we should have only a few excellent researchers or research entities that succeed at the expense of others.

Excellence doesn't develop on its own. It requires nurturing and resources. And that is why supporting capacity-building, especially for black African South African women researchers, is an important part of my vision.
More than resources, excellence requires the right philosophy – a commitment to transformation; a willingness to identify particular strengths and opportunities that may mean difficult choices as part of our research strategy. Excellence also requires a willingness to work to build up the right conditions and practices over many years.
We have far more in common with each other than things that divide us. Let that essential truth guide us as we come together to face this uncertain future with courage.
We owe this to our students, our disciplines, our country and ourselves.
TC: Pardon the pun. “Excellent” news. My worry is: When and if do “context” and “right philosophy” ‘Trump’ excellence determined by international peer review?

For much more on this, see my piece Mamokgethi Phakeng explains UCT's position on excellence and decolonization on my Blog Site – timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za

15 December: the Annual General Meeting of the University of Cape Town Convocation that was to be ‘held’ is invaded/disrupted/prevented by Fallists, primarily because of a motion proposed by me. At the urging of Dr Lydia Cairncross (Faculty of Health Sciences) and Adv Geoff Budlender, and with the approval of Convocation President Barney Pityana, the ‘protesters’ were allowed to stay and protest “silently”.

They protested, but not in silence. There was heckling and hate speech.

Contrary to Fallists and Fallist/Price supporter Geoff Budlender, my motion did NOT even suggest, let alone call for, the resignation/dismissal of Vice Chancellor Max Price and his deputy VCs. It called for the 100000+ registered alumni to be:

“balloted (anonymously and, if willing, by fine-scale ‘self-identification – by ‘race’, gender, age, etc.) to consider a vote of no-confidence in Dr Max Price and his senior Executive acting as representatives of the interests of the UCT Community as a whole in negotiations with UCT students, staff and others who have been adjudged to have broken the law under the pretext of legitimate protest.”

This motion was yet another of my and other’s attempts to ascertain – democratically via polls/referenda - precisely what the views of the UCT Community are (by ‘race’, age, gender, employment status, etc.) on what’s happening (and will happen) at UCT vis-à-vis a broad range of critical issues.

Time and again, Dr Price refused to conduct such surveys and ignored/dismissed the results of a range of polls and petitions, conducted to date, all of which challenged his and the DVC’s actions/inactions.

Indeed, with regard to my motion, Ms Gwen Ngwenya (former UCT SRC president and current COO of the South African Institute of Race Relations – with whom I communicated only in the two weeks before the meeting) - and I had agreed that she should attempt to reinforce the true intentions of my motion with an amendment concerning the status of Price et al. Unfortunately, she was unable to do so because she was continuously interrupted by Chumani Maxwele who was granted conditional amnesty according to the November 6 Agreement.

When I attempted to explain my motion and to counter some of Budlender’s claims, I was interrupted and jeered persistently and labelled variously: “racist” and “Jim Crow”, “apartheid activist” and “killer of black people” (by a woman attendee who refused to give her name when allowed to comment and aggressively confronted a legitimate alumnus when she was photographed). Maxwele called me a “known racist”.

Another, Cathy Powell, international law academic, tried to tell her story of the negative consequences of protests, but was mocked openly, with mimed clown-tears and cat-calling: “Shut up bitch.”

Throughout the ‘proceedings’, VC Price, Convocation President Barney Pityana and Registrar Royston Pillay did nothing to counter or prevent disruption.

As we left the venue, I heard a young person exhort “There will be no UCT in 2017!” Her fellow crowd members supported in glee.

22 December: UCT issued its first bland characterization of events at the meeting. The author, Communications Officer Ms Elle Williams, endorsed the Budlender ‘misrepresentation’ of my and Ngwenya’s motion and further misrepresented Pitanya’s actions: “The Chair spoke out against all forms of hate speech”. Pityana’s only action in this regard was to condemn the use of the word “bitch” during another incident. Furthermore, Ms Williams minimized the invaders’ vulgar behaviour as “disorderly” and “holding up posters speaking against the militarisation of campuses, outsourcing and tuition fees, among other issues”.

28 December: UCT issued a second, more detailed, but still bland characterization of the meeting, authored by Registrar and Secretary of the Convocation Royston Pillay. Despite the facts that many previous meetings, lectures and other legitimate activities at UCT (including those of its Council and Senate) had been violently invaded previously by Fallists employing violence and hate speech, Mr Pillay described the invasion of the Convocation AGM as “unexpected”.

Like Ms Williams, he further endorsed the Budlender misrepresentation of my motion as a call for the Price-led Executive’s resignation/dismissal. He also erred in literally repeating Ms Williams’ inadequate assessment of Pitanya: “The chairperson spoke out against all forms of hate speech”. However, Pillay ‘upgrades’ the aggressive behaviour of lawbreaking invaders as “provocative heckling” and “charges of racism against speakers supporting the motion”.

2017: Make or break

UCT was relatively peaceful over the December holidays and January.

Consultation motion vs obfuscation

22 February: I e-mailed Prof. Pitanya, VC Price, Registrar Pillay and Ms Ngwenya to clarify the meaning of my motion to the Convocation AGM. I wrote:

“I want to make my motion to be presented/debated/considered (unfettered and uninterrupted) at next week's rescheduled UCT Convocation AGM crystal clear. It is as follows [word-for-word].

I would like the entire UCT Convocation to be consulted as to whether they have confidence (or the lack thereof) in the UCT Executive's policy of negotiating with individuals who have broken South African laws and UCT regulations/codes and/or those who refuse to condemn those (and any organizations) who do so or advocate such unlawful actions.

It’s as simple as that. If you, or any member of the Convocation, has any issue with its content or requires any clarification, please contact me before the rescheduled AGM to be held on 28 February so I can have the opportunity to react timeously.”

TC: I was not contacted.

Artistic freedom, bureaucracy, demographics and statistics

February ongoing: The Artworks Task Team (ATT) of the Council of the University of Cape Town was created and appointed by Price and the SRC and is a largely pro-Fallist assemblage. It was chaired by archaeologist/BAC Chairperson Assoc. Prof. Shadreck Chirikure, supported by Assoc. Prof. Jay Pather (Department of Drama – who subsequently became chairperson); Assoc. Prof. Adam Haupt (Centre for Film and Media Studies); Prof. Carolyn Hamilton (Department of Historical Studies), Assoc. Prof. Berni Searle, Dr Nomusa Makhubu and Assoc. Prof. Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz (Michaelis School of Fine Art); and students Khanyisa Pinyin, Keenan Hendrickse, Rorisang Moselle and Noxolo Ntaka.

It started its work in October 2015 by “conducting an audit, assessment, and analysis of statues, plaques and artworks on campus that may be seen to recognise or celebrate colonial oppressors and/or which may be offensive or controversial”. Concurrently, it formulated proposals for action to be considered by the Works of Art Committee (the committee actually responsible for Art-matters at UCT) before being submitted to Council for its consideration.

The ATT’s strategies were “adaptable, depending on the ever-changing situation on the ground” guided at times by the Registrar and selected members the University Community. The Team focused on artworks that were known to have “generated controversy”. For unspecified reasons, it delayed meeting again until after the Shackville Protest and artwork arson in February 2016 when the Works of Art Committee (WOAC) removed many selected artworks “for safe keeping”.

This bureaucratic action was interpreted widely as censorship by artists (and other staff) within and outside of UCT and the public. Removed pieces include those of a major UCT benefactor, Robert Broadley, (Flowers in a Vase, Roses in a Jug, Roses in a Vase and Tree in Blossom). Perhaps Price, the SRC, Chirikure, Pather or other members of the ATT and WOAC can explain why these pieces are so offensive that they “dehumanize blacks” and “catapults you into unhealed wounds inducing a schizophrenia and distension”. Apolitical Broadley was a keen golfer and portrait and landscape artist – nothing more, nothing less. His bequest to UCT was used to support bright, young students.

Later, Pather even challenged the integrity of censored artists and dismisses their views because they “benefited under apartheid and indeed developed international reputations as a result”.

Based on the ‘findings of its Interim Statement” - and not on arguments relating to individual pieces – the ATT concluded that:

1. an “unintended cumulative impact of the University’s artwork collection and the way it was currently displayed”;

2. the “absence of a considered and contextually sensitive curatorial policy”; and

3. the insufficient ‘museum’ capacity

were detrimental to some (Who? Why?) members of the UCT Community.

The Team’s task was complicated by controversial interpretations of the Executive’s published statements vis-à-vis freedom of expression. This may have led to the resignations of Carolyn Hamilton and Berni Searle.

Audits of artworks et al. were performed by student “volunteers” and “generated a database which was then interrogated to generate basic descriptive statistics relating to gender and race”.

TC: So: now art policies at UCT are interpreted/interrogated by non-artists appointed by bureaucrats and student volunteers armed with audits and ‘race’/gender statistics?

Three of the ATT’s immediate conclusions were:

1. that the artwork “acquisition pattern and profile reflected the [white] racial composition of the art school and its graduates” and “experts at the exclusion of others”;

2. current ‘policies’ “create a negative feeling amongst some students and staff”; and

3. there was a need for “a new and inclusive acquisition policy and new membership structure for the WOAC that is transformation sensitive were developed and approved by Council”.

The Team also recommended that the way ahead requires:

1. “the establishment of a high-level heritage committee responsible for the integrated management of the University of Cape Town’s heritage”;

2. building an art museum serviced by a more broadly sensitive curatorial team; and

3. “reserving 50 % of the acquisition budget for UCT related artists”.

TC: These conclusions and recommendations based “cumulative impact” affect selected artworks. They are tantamount to accusations of institutional artistic racism at UCT and incompetency and racial bias of current academic artists. They also require more bureaucracy and money.

For much more on this topic, see: IT’S ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND FREE SPEECH THAT ARE ‘VISIBLY’ AND INSTITUTIONALLY REPRESSED, WHILE FALLIST FASCI-RACISM REIGNS AT A ‘DECOLONIZING’ UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN in my Blog Site – timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za

24 February: UCT statement on The David Goldblatt Collection - The University of Cape Town (UCT) proudly housed The David Goldblatt Collection. It is a South African heritage treasure. We regret that Mr Goldblatt could not be persuaded out of his view that freedom of expression, artistic freedom and rights of artists were no longer protected at UCT. We respect and understand his decision. UCT will continue to promote, protect, attract and collect artistic collections and work with artists into the future. The institution, the UCT Libraries, and the faculties working in this field are committed to freedom of expression, artistic freedom and the rights of artists.

Goldblatt said that the events signalled a new tide in the development of anti-democratic thought in today’s youth. “Differences are settled by talk. You don’t threaten with guns. You don’t threaten with fists. You don’t burn. You don’t destroy. You talk. These actions of the students are the antithesis of democratic action,” is blatantly censoring of selected works. “It’s different fundamentally [from curatorship] because they did so selectively. They selected certain works. Now, to select certain works is to censor.”
Censored artist Breyten Breytenbach reinforced: “You have no chance of it (the work) being seen for what it is intended to be, no guarantee it will survive the orgies of destruction these institutions foster and no responsibility or accountability (let alone preservation) will be forthcoming from the ethically and aesthetically spineless but oh so glib ‘collaborators’ running the universities.”
UCT philosopher Elisa Galgut was even more specific: “What this indicates is that UCT has abandoned the core principles that constitute a university. Despite the harsh criticism from artists, members of the public, and voices within the university, the UCT Exec continues to display a brazen and unrepentant disregard for freedom of expression. This is an utter disgrace, and the UCT Exec should be thoroughly ashamed of itself for capitulating to tyranny. If UCT continues on this path of obsequiousness, it will cease to be a university. This will have terrible implications for the future of both higher education in South Africa, and for the country itself. The short-sighted behaviour of the Executive is staggeringly misguided.”
Alumni not consulted about negotiating with lawbreakers

28 February: The ‘good news’ is that the re-scheduled Convocation AGM was not disrupted violently. The ‘bad news’ is that attendance dropped markedly from that of the sabotaged AGM in December 2016. Several previous attendees informed me that they would not attend for reasons of security. Also, President Pityana and Registrar Pillay made no effort to communicate my clarification motion.

Worse still, Chairperson Pitanya announced that he and the UCT Executive acceded to demands by Fallists to, once again, “peacefully” attend the meeting, make a 5-minute presentation and remain thereafter.

The Fallist speaker, Simon Rakei, failed to stay within the allotted time. He began by implying that the AGM was illegitimate because the majority of attendees were “white”. He then went on to describe UCT as ”institutionally racist” and underpinned by “a system of rules designed to oppress blacks”. His presentation descended into hate-speech. Three times he referred to me as “Jim Crow”.

There was no mispronunciation.

Pityana, Pillay or Price made no effort to “speak out against all forms of hate speech”.

Finally, Rakei demanded that UCT disband the current ‘layover’ Students’ Representative Council or there would be “consequences”.

TC: When I was allowed to speak to my motion and attempted to preface my statement by challenging Rakei’s comments, he and Fallists (now in the audience) shouted me down, calling “read the motion”! When I attempt to read the clarification of my motion ignored by Pityana/Pillay, they and other pro-Fallist members of the Convocation shouted me down again: “The words are not the same”! In the end, my address to the Convocation is restricted to half the length of the Fallist’s.

In the subsequent discussion, Dr Cairncross and a Convocation member (apparently an advocate) called for my motion to be dismissed without discussion because the text differed from my original one. My attempts to counter their proposals were cut short by Pityana.

There was no discussion of the merits of consulting members of the Convocation as to their views on Price et al. negotiating UCT’s future with lawbreakers.

In the end, my motion was voted down. So, there is still is no consultation with one of the major components of UCT’s “silenced majority” about its views on UCT’s present situation and future.

Another major result of this meeting was the election of Ms Lorna Houston – an outspoken pro-Fallist – to succeed Pityana as Convocation President. She is well known for her statement “the [apartheid] past is still present” and for controversial views on what constitutes “violence” and “justice”.

29 February: The UCT Executive denied Fallists’ demand to participate similarly at a UCT-controlled meeting addressed by Law Dean Prof. Penelope Andrews on the topic: Transformation and decolonisation at UCT: Capitulation to student protests or a constitutional imperative? Nevertheless, several Fallists vilified her as a racist supporter of militarism on campus and as a pawn for rich legal firms during “question” time.

Education ‘hamstrung’

1 March: UCT academic year was seriously delayed because of programmes such as the mini-semester (3-20 January) and deferred exams (23 January-10 February) – initiated to help students overcome the difficulties of completing the 2016 academic year because of the closure of campus by Fallists and the Executive.

Non-racialism abandoned in favour of “praxis” and defamation

3 March: A talk by literary giant Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is widely advertised and hosted by UCT’s Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) lecture series ‘Great Text/Big Questions’, was organized by Xolela Mangcu. It was a public lecture at the Baxter Theatre, created in 1977 as an integral non-racial part of UCT dedicated to promoting the arts. Prof. Ngũgĩ is noted for his call for the abolishment of the English department at the University of Nairobi.

Just before Ngũgĩ stood up to give his address themed “Decolonizing the mind, securing the base” through emphasizing the importance of prioritizing African languages and culture, he was interrupted by Fallist student Kolosa Ntombini who demand that ‘white’ "oppressors leave".

Ntombini is a third-year, cis-woman, BSc student at UCT and member of the Pan-Africanist Students Movement of Azania (PASMA) Mangcu took the podium and declined to implement the demand. Later, Prof. Ngũgĩ had to pause his speech when a woman walked on stage carrying a protest poster that read: "SAn Edukation system is excluding poor, black disabled people."

During the question time, a woman in the audience challenged Mangcu with dispensing respectability politics and creating a “boys club” on stage. When a ‘white man’ attempted to ask a question, he was shouted down, despite Mangcu’s pleas to let him speak. Exasperated, Mangcu ended the public lecture.

In subsequent, published commentaries in the cyberjournal Black Opinion, Mangcu was reviled by “Comrades” Ntombini, Sisipho Fongoqa and Lindsay Maasdorp (activists and members of the Black First Land First Student Movement. Fongoqa is a UCT student. Maasdorp is not, but was an unpunished active participant in the 2017 invasion of the Mafeje Room).

Mangcu was described as:

1.“nothing more than a liberal who holds dearly the notion of a bilateral approach, involving both black and white in dismantling a white capitalist patriarchal society”;

2. an “imitation of his master and treating radical black intellectuals, in the form of student activists, as perpetual under-16s” using “condescending and anti-black rhetoric”;

3. a pseudo-intellectual with many accolades who wallows in contradictions and massages and tip toes around whiteness.

4. “a house negro, embarrassed that there would be no seamless swaying of speeches in this “decolonial” space.”

5. an opportunist who “uses the black struggle for upward mobility within academia” while he “continue[s] to please his Maasta”.

6. “the defeated psyche of a slave” who, “no matter how many decolonial lectures”, “remain[s] a kaffir to [his] white baas.”

Ntombini further objected to the use of the words “ladies and gentlemen” by Mangcu because they: “erase those bodies that do not identity with those two classifications”. With regard to ‘race’, she opined: “the presence of white people in decolonial spaces does not make sense”. She was even more specific about the role of ‘whiteness’ in education: “we are not here to massage whiteness with decolonial talks in fancy universities”.

“Decolonization will no longer remain just a rhetoric and a conversation starter, but will fulfill (sic) its soul (sic) purpose which can only be discovered through praxis. The time for grandstanding and sloganeering has come to an end. The time for praxis is now.”

“Black Consciousness as a liberation tool remains theory outside of praxis. Decolonization is defined as an act and not a coherent process, without actually actively decolonizing, it will remain a conversation starter and a buzz word for pseudo-intellectuals and for ‘wokeness’.”

Perhaps these Fallists should listen to the wise words of the palaeo-BCMers: Barney Pityana (and younger brother Sipho) and Ramphele who favour constructive transformation.

Later, Mangcu used his column in the Sunday Independent to castigate the protesters for their lack of respect. Quoting Steve Biko, he wrote that disrespect for the elders was an unforgivable sin, concluding that “Decolonisation that assaults African values is not worth its salt.” More specifically, Professor Mangcu complained that Ms Ntombini had “demanded” that Ngugi ask ‘whites’ to leave and that the protesters also “called him [Ngugi] names when he refused”.

TC: I guess Mangcu now knows how I feel to be defamed by him and other Fallists.

Tim Crowe's Blog

Monday, 2 October 2017

Was/Is UCT an institutionally colonialist/sexist/racist institution? Part 1

Roxanne Joyal (2001) and Marc Kielburger (2000) Founded the Free the Children International Charity

But, on 6 December, charges were withdrawn against UCT students who burnt paintings.

For much more on this, see my piece Mamokgethi Phakeng explains UCT's position on excellence and decolonization on my Blog Site – timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za

For much more on this topic, see: IT’S ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND FREE SPEECH THAT ARE ‘VISIBLY’ AND INSTITUTIONALLY REPRESSED, WHILE FALLIST FASCI-RACISM REIGNS AT A ‘DECOLONIZING’ UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN in my Blog Site – timguineacrowe.blogspot.co.za

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