#RhodesMustFall: A distinct historical chapter in theorising black struggle

The Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement, which was sparked at the University of Cape Town (UCT) on March 9 2015 and gained traction through the #RMF hashtag on social media, is one of the student-led societal uprisings that can rightfully claim to have reignited decolonial discourse and scholarship in the African continent and beyond.

The movement has earned its rightful place in the history of student-led protests, alongside the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and other such formations that were part of the Civil Rights Movement in North America in the 1960s.

On the African continent, student activism became part of the struggle for political liberation, starting in the 1940s and continuing into the 1980s in an unprecedented wave of protests in universities across West and Central Africa. In South America, beginning in 2006 with high school students and culminating in 2011 with university students, violent state responses to the post-Pinochet-era Chilean student protests stand out, with students calling for comprehensive reforms to the education system.

Chilean university students called for “free, public and quality education”, demanding an end to profiting in higher education. Student-led protests are thus a global phenomenon and often link students’ educational hopes to national aspirations.

Numerous articles, chapters, doctoral theses and books have been written, emanating from the disruptive yet generative protests that gave RMF its own unique character and place in the history of black struggle. There have also been many conferences hosted and keynote addresses, with terms such as decoloniality and decolonisation featuring prominently, and careers enhanced for those who either found their voice for the first time in academia or saw the RMF moment as an opportunity to pivot towards what they viewed as newly emerging scholarship that held currency. Of the latter, many have since fallen off the proverbial bandwagon.

There has been no turning back for those who discovered their voice anew during the RMF moment. They continue to advance decolonial discourse and scholarship. Among them are students, workers and academics who refuse to unsee the savagery, evil and destruction of colonial lies and be trapped in a world where there can be no alternative to racist, patriarchal, ableist and capitalistic ways of being and doing in the world, driven by Western/North American geopolitical dominant interests in an unequal world.

My choice in this article to focus on RMF and not merge it with Fees Must Fall (FMF), which also gained traction in social media, is deliberate. To conflate the two movements is to deny ourselves the opportunity to reflect on unique lessons we can draw from RMF as a distinct historical chapter in theorising black struggle. In all fairness, protests about fees were not new in South African universities. They had long been a common feature at historically black universities before 2015.

“They offered Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism and Radical Black Feminism/Intersectionality as three interlinked theoretical threads to engage not only curricula but also ways of knowing (epistemologies), being (identities) and doing (practices) in the world.”

What made the RMF moment unique was the well conceptualised focus on the statue of Cecil John Rhodes (CJR) as a symbolic representation of white male supremacist racist arrogance and imperial imposition on the continent, juxtaposed against deepening poverty in the Cape Flats and black townships, a legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Attention to the CJR statue provided a powerful platform to launch a sharp critique of how UCT continued to serve colonial interests.

A figure associated with imperial British interests and the subjugation of first nations, including black people in Southern Africa, occupying a place of pride on campus with a gaze that stretched the length and breadth of the Cape Flats and beyond, portrayed the reverence with which UCT not only embraced but celebrated its colonial heritage. Through several intellectual engagements, RMF activists articulated how the CJR statue was emblematic of a much bigger problem at UCT, highlighting the need to decolonise the academy. They offered Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism and Radical Black Feminism/Intersectionality as three interlinked theoretical threads to engage not only curricula but also ways of knowing (epistemologies), being (identities) and doing (practices) in the world.

As a movement, RMF chose to avoid a hierarchical structure in how it organised itself and opted to be non-partisan, in that political affiliations were muted within the movement. Uncharacteristically, and compared to many protests in the South African context where a burning tyre is a common feature, nothing burned during the RMF phase of student protests at UCT and beyond, including at Oxford University's Oriel College. It was only when RMF merged with the broader FMF movement, which started at Wits University, that barricades and burning tyres, including arson, became part of protests at UCT.

The main forms of protest staged by RMF until that point were sit-ins, “silent protests” and performance art. Sit-ins were often accompanied by lectures, with student activists inviting black academics and artists, such as the late poet, author and publisher James Matthews, as part of deepening intellectual engagements around black struggle. The UCT Black Academic Caucus (BAC), previously known as TransformUCT, was an important sounding board for RMF, with some members of the BAC being invited as guest lecturers to the sit-ins.

Through these engagements, RMF sharpened the art of persuasion in mobilising other students, including white students who became key allies of the movement. The art of persuasion as part of theorising black struggle is a key aspect of generative decolonial scholarship. In this regard, RMF can be viewed as much as a decolonial intellectual project as it is a political movement. It is not surprising, therefore, that a key supporter of the Student Representative Council (SRC) motion to senate, sponsored by RMF, to have the CJR statue permanently removed from the UCT campus was the late Professor Bongani Mayosi.

Many of the gains emanating from RMF at UCT advanced scholarship. These include the Curriculum Change Framework; Academic Freedom, Autonomy and Accountability Guiding Principles; re-curating artworks through a fair and just society lens and reframing art as a knowledge-generating process; and the renaming of buildings, including renaming the main hall where graduation ceremonies are hosted as Sarah Baartman Hall. Inspired by RMF, the former vice-chancellor, Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, launched the university’s decolonisation grant for research that advances decoloniality, as well as the RMF Scholarship Fund.

It would be a fallacy, however, to suggest that RMF did not emerge as a culmination of other prior events, some of which were not at UCT. Key to this is the introduction of decolonial summer schools, first inaugurated at the University of South Africa under the stewardship of Prof Rosemary Moletsane and drawing on Latin-American decoloniality scholars such as Prof Ramon Grosfoguel and Prof Nelson Maldonaldo-Torres. In addition, many scholars across the continent and the African diaspora had never declared an end to decolonisation as both an intellectual endeavour and political liberation. RMF activists stand on the shoulders of many such intellectual giants, key among whom are Steve Bantu Biko, Frantz Fanon and Prof Amina Mama.

As we mark the 10-year commemoration of RMF, I look forward to a deepening engagement around ongoing black struggles, cognisant of the contested terrain within which the legacy of RMF will be remembered and celebrated.