The fight for equality is valid but the burning down of our universities is not the revolution or decolonisation any of us should want
UCT
Posted inEquality, General
Condemnation of UCT lecturer misses context
Groups slam UCT professor’s Hitler comment without an understanding of the lecture’s purpose
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
The Place of Sara Baartman at UCT
The label “Hottentot Venus” continues to haunt our memory of Sara Baartman. This moniker, used in Jean Reaux’s posters to advertise the exhibit of Sara, may have been repudiated by renowned scholars such as Pumla Dineo Gqola, Zine Magubane, Yvette Abrahams, Patricia Hill Collins, Sander Gilman among others, but it has persisted as the lens […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The princess waitress and the dark forces
Myth and myth-making can be traced back to the origin of our species and is the archetypal language through which our spiritual and creative selves make sense of our world and fashion meaning. The mythic imaginary though, is not entirely free of religious or political bias. While certain archetypes are common to the collective human […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
The art of hypocrisy: Appeal to re-constitute Shackville
By Shobane A wave of condemnations and outrage hit the media after University of Cape Town artworks were burnt on campus. Even those academics, who from the rooftops declared their support for the fees must fall movement were very quick to distance themselves from what they saw as a particularly “senseless” act. This violence, it […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, Lifestyle, News/Politics
If Rhodes must fall, art must burn
By Zinhle Manzini Last week it was reported that the Rhodes Must Fall students had removed paintings from the university’s walls and set them alight. While some people remain unclear about the motive of such an act, some were quick to see it as property damage. Rumours have it that the paintings that were set […]
Posted inNews/Politics
#RhodesMustFall: Universities are crumbling under the hegemony of youth morality
The burning of assets at UCT is not solely about the vandalism of property, but rather the depreciation of the sum total of parts that make an education valuable. It is safe to say that many students do not want knowledge primarily for knowledge’s sake; if that were the case then many more might consider […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
#Shackville is your struggle too, black graduates
By Michelle October What a time to be alive, students revolting and the flames of rebellion licking at the doors of the colonisers. The Rhodes Must Fall movement’s reignited its efforts and burning historic artworks at the University of Cape Town. This activism could just as easily be airlifted and placed outside Parliament’s doors because […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
In defence of Rhodes Must Fall
By Andrew Verrijdt It’s hard to justify the destruction of historical and cultural items that Rhodes Must Fall is undertaking, and I’m not going to. But how many of us have taken the time to find out what this current protest is actually about? It may interest one to know that the most immediate cause […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Transforming higher education: UCT students’ visions for the future
By Josie Cornell Vicky* had not thought much about her blackness, or what it meant. This changed rapidly upon her arrival at the University of Cape Town (UCT) as a first-year student where, for the first time, Vicky felt black. This “feeling of blackness” for Vicky and for other black students like her, particularly those […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Of black pain, animal rights and the politics of the belly
By Shose Kessi It is interesting how bodily and affective experiences are often weaved out of what is deemed “rational” theorising of current events and political talk. How can my mind operate separately from the rest of my being? Where does the separation occur? At the eyes? The nose? The mouth? The belly? The waist? […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Redressing Rhodes’ legacy
When Rhodes fell in South Africa it reverberated globally. His statue, gazing over a changed country, is a metaphor for modern-day South Africa. Even though the country’s transition was relatively bloodless, its change mostly peaceful, and its black majority theoretically free; the Rainbow Nation’s democratic achievements are fiercely contested. The inherited systemic inequality, made worse […]