Students recreate Rhodes statue

A group of students swopped their lunchtime food for scrubs and soap on 24 April to clean the decades-old statue of Cecil John Rhodes at UCT.

Members of the Residence Sports Council, an initiative of the Student Representative Council comprising sport representatives from residences, cleaned the dirt on the statue "in recreating the image of the man recognised in South Africa".

Mzo Daphula (pictured left), SRC member for sport and recreation, said the statue, unveiled in 1934, was in the main area of the university, and cleaning it was a sense of identifying that "he (Rhodes) is still with us".

"We should forget about the past and what people may attach to him. Away with reverse racism! If this image was not needed, it could have been removed. We see the significance of it on our campus, and the least we can do is to clean it," Daphula added.