Rhodes Must Research Articles

Rhodes Must Fall and the incongruence of academic freedom and decoloniality

ABSTRACT This study explores the rise of decolonial-styled politics within the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford and the natural limitations of this form of politics within the ambit of academic freedom as understood by both universities. Leveraging the Rhodes Must Fall movement as a case study of translocal student activism which emerged at both institutions, the paper underscores the necessity of delineating the pursuit of decoloniality within the university into two constitutive components: decolonial thought and decolonial action. The paper argues that without this delineation, the decolonial projects within universities will remain inept.

SEA and the Painted Shadow

This paper explains the ambitions of Africa’s first independent nonprofit school of architecture—the School of Explorative Architecture—in light of the decoloniality ideas that were galvanized by the Rhodes Must Fall protests at the University of Cape Town in 2015. The paper describes the School’s three modes of teaching and learning architecture, namely the thing (professional competencies of designing a building), the shadow of the thing (theorized and critical thinking around buildings and architecture), and the painted shadow of the thing (creative acts engaging architecture in ideas and critical thinking). The paper explains the nuances of teaching and learning architecture in the South African context and the importance of teaching professional competencies while surfacing ‘other’ conditions through the painted shadow. The paper ends by asking if a radical spatial alterity—the folding of the thing, the shadow, and the painted shadow into each other—is possible.

Must Dias fall? The politics and history of settler heritage in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ Movement and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests, the politics of heritage has been at the centre of new intellectual debates and political demands, especially in relation to the status of problematic historical monuments. This article examines a form of colonial heritage that has remained politically uncontested as well as unexplored in the specialised literature, i.e. monuments memorialising early modern European sea voyages, in particular those pertaining to Bartolomeu Dias, credited as the first European navigator to successfully complete the maritime route to India, through the Western Cape. The article suggests that Dias can be productively seen not only as a symbol of pre-apartheid European colonisation, but more importantly as part of apartheid’s broader settler colonial narrative of Southern African history. Drawing on the example of monuments exchanged between Lisbon and Pretoria in the early 1960s, the article argues that settler heritage making played into white South African narratives of European settler ‘pioneerism’, but also served to cement politico-diplomatic solidarity and friendship between white-ruled states in Southern Africa. By unveiling the politics and history of settler heritage in South Africa, the article hopes to convince its readers that Dias, too, must fall.

Decoloniality and healthcare higher education: Critical conversations.

We explore the theoretical and methodological aspects of decolonising speech and language therapy (SLT) higher education in the United Kingdom. We begin by providing the background of the Rhodes Must Fall decolonisation movement and the engagement of South African SLTs in the decoloniality agenda. We then discuss the evolution of decoloniality in SLT, highlighting its focus on reimagining the relationships between participants, students, patients and the broader world. The primary objective of this discussion is to fill a gap in professional literature regarding decoloniality in SLT education. While there is limited research in professional journals, social media platforms have witnessed discussions on decolonisation in SLT. This discussion aims to critically examine issues such as institutional racism, lack of belonging, inequitable services and limited diversity that currently affect the SLT profession, not just in the United Kingdom but globally. The methods employed in this research involve the engagement of SLT academics in Critical conversations on decolonisation. These conversations draw on reflexivity and reflexive interpretation, allowing for a deeper understanding of the relationship between truth, reality, and the participants in SLT practice and education. The nature of these critical conversations is characterised by their chaotic, unscripted and fluid nature, which encourages the open discussion of sensitive topics related to race, gender, class and sexuality. We present our reflections as academics who participated in the critical conversations. We explore the discomfort experienced by an academic when engaging with decolonisation, acknowledging white privilege, and the need to address fear and an imposter syndrome. The second reflection focuses on the experiences of white academics in grappling with their complicity in a system that perpetuates racism and inequality. It highlights the need for self-reflection, acknowledging white privilege and working collaboratively with colleagues and students toward constructing a decolonised curriculum. Finally, we emphasise that while action is crucial, this should not undermine the potential of dialogue to change attitudes and pave the way for practical implementation. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of combining dialogue with action and the need for a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in decolonising SLT education. Overall, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the background, objectives, methods and key reflections related to the decolonisation of SLT higher education in the United Kingdom. It highlights the challenges, discomfort and responsibilities faced by academics in addressing decoloniality and emphasizes the importance of ongoing critical conversations and collective action in effecting meaningful change. What is already known on this subject Prior to this paper, it was known that the decolonial turn in speech and language therapy (SLT) was a recent focus, building on a history of professional transformation in South Africa. However, there was limited literature on decoloniality in professional journals, with most discussions happening on social media platforms. This paper aims to contribute to the literature and provide a critical conversation on decolonising SLT education, via the United Kingdom. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This paper adds a critical conversation on decolonising SLT higher education. It explores theoretical and methodological aspects of decoloniality in the profession, addressing issues such as institutional racism, lack of sense of belonging, inequitable services and limited diversity. The paper highlights the discomfort experienced by academics in engaging with decolonisation and emphasizes the importance of reflection, collaboration and open dialogue for meaningful change. Notably we foreground deimperialisation (vs. decolonisation) as necessary for academics oriented in/with the Global North so that both processes enable each other. Deimperialisation is work that focuses the undoing of privilege exercised by academics in/with the Global North not only for localising their research and education agenda but checking their rite of passage into the lives of those in the Majority World. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The paper highlights the need for SLT practitioners and educators to critically examine their practices and curricula to ensure they are inclusive, decolonised and responsive to the diverse needs of communities. The discussions emphasise the importance of addressing institutional racism and promoting a sense of belonging for research participants, SLT students and patients. This paper offers insights and recommendations that can inform the development of more equitable and culturally responsive SLT services and education programmes.

Decolonising history teaching in the United Kingdom: Movements, methods, and curricula

AbstractToppling the statue of the slave merchant Edward Colston in Bristol, removing the monuments of King Leopold II from public places in Belgium, Black Lives Matter protests, and mass demonstrations targeting remembrance of certain chapters of the history of the Global North – these are some of the significant events that drew attention to the ongoing disputes around the legacy of colonialism during the summer of 2020. These developments form an integral part of the long-drawn-out process of decolonisation: decolonising the culture of the former mother countries. From museology through the natural sciences and linguistics to visual arts, vast areas of the academic, scientific, and cultural scene of the Global North are crucially affected by decolonizing tendencies, with the teaching of history arguably among the most disputed ones. This paper reviews the key decolonising aspirations of history teaching in the United Kingdom by studying the goals, messages, methods, and endeavours of three movements: Why Is My Curriculum White?, The Black Curriculum, and Rhodes Must Fall Oxford, address different levels of education and urge the transformation of numerous aspects of history teaching (teacher training, curricula, teaching methodology, etc). Source materials examined include the work, teaching aids, and written, audio, or video content published on various social media platforms by these three organisations, as well as parliamentary papers and reports of public and non-governmental bodies.

Muuseumikogude potentsiaali kaardistamine päritolu-uuringute kaudu

This article focuses on the possibilities created through provenance research in the museum. Setting out current interest in provenance research against the backdrop of antiracist and decolonial movements such as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, the article focuses specifically on the history of research in ethnographic museums shaped by legislative acts such as NAGPRA in the USA, critical thinking about representational practices in anthropology, and collaborative work with originating communities. Using the Siberian collection acquired by Maria Czaplicka in 1914 and held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford as a case study, I argue that broad-ranging and open-ended provenance research akin to anthropological fieldwork allows to uncover different narratives pertaining to museum objects. It enables to understand why and how the objects were brought to the museum, the kinds of epistemic realities they have helped to build but also to attend to different cultural meanings and realities embedded in these objects. A close historical study of the Czaplicka collection has added to our understanding of the nature of ethnographic research in the early 20th century, brought to attention immoral acquisition of grave goods and human remains during the Siberian expedition but also highlighted close relations between ethnographers and their Indigenous hosts. Contemporary fieldwork in Siberia and creative engagement with the collection have further broadened the understanding of the origin of these objects in relation to Evenki worldview and lived experience. Through such nuanced research, a “thick description” emerges that enables a museum interpretation that can speak to the emergence of drifts and fault lines in the society, bring different worldviews into one space, and within that space address topics of global concern.

Decolonisation in Africa: love or litigation? Mandela as moral capital

ABSTRACT The Rhodes Must Fall social movement infused new life into the decolonisation discourse in Africa. However, whereas most scholars agree on the need for decolonisation, there is little consensus or even clarity on what it actually means in our everyday encounter with others and engagement with reality. Indeed, much of the debate on the issue consists of a recycling of the arguments employed by the first generations of anticolonial/postcolonial scholars and political leaders – a pattern of anti-imperialist thinking and litigation of the past which fails to enhance African self-understanding. This article examines the structure of thought that underlies that pattern and much of Africa’s intellectual decolonisation. I argue that Nelson Mandela understood the risks of the decolonisation arguments embodied by the likes of Robert Mugabe and intentionally adopted a different approach, anchored in encounter as an ethical and epistemic imperative. I therefore propose a theoretical approach drawing on Mandela’s thought and actions and argue that his politics of encounter constitutes a hermeneutic condition for a proper constitution of epistemic decolonisation.

Reading Guillory's Cultural Capital in South Africa

Abstract This article opens with the 2015 Rhodes Must Fall protests at the University of Cape Town, when a student poured feces on a statue of Cecil Rhodes. This moment exemplifies the ambivalent relationship between symbolic politics and demands for institutional transformation in postapartheid South Africa. The essay considers two sites of tension: the appropriation of this antiapartheid, decolonial rhetoric outside of South Africa (as in the Rhodes Must Fall campaigns at the University of Oxford) and the borrowing of US discourses of racial identity in South African universities. In both cases, specific social and political contexts and their attendant challenges tend to disappear. In South African universities, this has the effect of occluding class, class inequality, and class struggle. To address the South African context, the essay suggests that the writing of Antonio Gramsci, whose work spans literature as cultural production and practical political mobilization, might provide a more useful politics of reading and writing.

Appropriating the Founder: Raffles and Modern Singapore

Abstract: Since 2015, many prominent protest movements around the world have called for the removal of memorials commemorating colonisers, including the Rhodes Must Fall campaign which rallied for the removal of statues commemorating the British coloniser Cecil Rhodes who is known for being one of the architects of the apartheid in South Africa. Singapore, instead, held the Singapore Bicentennial in 2019 to commemorate 200 years since the 'founding' of modern Singapore by the British. One figure who was featured prominently in this act of national remembering is Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), commonly known as the 'founder' of modern Singapore. The government commissioned two works around the poly-marble statue of Raffles. This statue is a copy created by the post-independence government in 1972 that is based on the original bronze installed by the British in 1887. These statues have been appropriated by artists over the years as a critique of colonialism and the selective remembering of Singapore's colonial history by the government. Through a comparative analysis of the memorials of Raffles and the counter-memorials created by the artists, I examine how the statues are used by the long-time ruling party, the People's Action Party (PAP), to perpetuate their hegemonic version of Singapore's history and the norms coded within the statues. I also examine how the artists used the same image of Raffles to resist the collective amnesia cultivated by the state by revealing the selective remembering of and myth-making by the government, and foregrounding the subjectivities of individuals who were written out of Singapore's history.

Beyond the coloniser’s model of the world: towards reworlding from the Global South

The reworlding of the world from the Global South directly challenges the resilient coloniser’s model of the world. The coloniser’s model of the world sustains the contemporary hierarchical and asymmetrical modern world system with Europe and North America at its apex of power. Consequently, reworlding from the Global South materialised as a counter-hegemonic initiative driven by struggles of the wretched of the earth for re-existence, liberation and freedom. The epic Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which embraced ‘Black’ as an identity of a sovereign people opposed to racism, enslavement and colonialism, forms an ideal genealogy of reworlding from the Global South. This article reflects on evolving ideological, identitarian, cultural, intellectual and pan-African formations and initiatives of resisting empire and remaking the world after the empire. What is highlighted are freedom dreams, self-definition initiatives, critiques of the asymmetrically structured modern world and struggles and visions of re-membering and re-humanisation of the dismembered and dehumanised. The Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements, among many other initiatives and formations, have carried over the struggles for reworlding the world from the Global South.

‘The unofficial curriculum is where the real teaching takes place’: faculty experiences of decolonising the curriculum in Africa

This paper analyses faculty experiences tackling global knowledge asymmetries by examining the decolonisation of higher education in Africa in the aftermath of the 2015 ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ student uprising. An overview of the literature reveals a rich debate on defining ‘decolonisation’, starting from a critique of Eurocentrism to propositions of alternate epistemologies. These debates are dominated by the Global North and South Africa and their experiences of curriculum reform. Our focus is on the experiences of political scientists in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. These countries share the same Anglophone political science traditions but represent different political trajectories that constitute a significant condition for the discipline. The 26 political scientists we interviewed acted toward increasing local content and perspectives in their teaching, as promoted in the official strategies of the universities. They noted that what was happening in lecture halls was most important. The academic decolonisation debate appeared overambitious or even as patronising to them in their own political context. National politics affected the thematic focus of the discipline both as far as research topics and students’ employment opportunities were concerned. Although university bureaucracies were slow to respond to proposed curricula changes, new programmes were approved if there was a market-based demand for them. International programs tended to be approved fastest. Political economy of higher education plays a role: dependency on foreign funding, limited national resources to conduct research and produce publications vis-à-vis international competition, and national quality assurance standards appeared to be most critical constraints for decolonising the curriculum.

Statues that must stand not fall: The material agency of anarchism in the marble monuments of Carrara, Italy

Drawing upon international literature about breaking coloniality by removing its monuments, as inspired by movements such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’, I address what can be defined as a counter-case. While confirming the reasons for contesting the symbols of oppressive powers, this case exposes an alternative tradition of monuments that were not erected by states, churches or colonial companies but by combative workers. I refer to some of the dozens of anarchist statues and marble plaques that are disseminated in Carrara (Italy) and in the surrounding villages to memorialise facts and figures of local workers movements and antifascist resistance. The Italian capital of marble, Carrara is also a historical stronghold of class-struggle, anarchism and anarcho-syndicalist unions of marble workers. These monuments often correspond to places of popular sociability in specific squares, neighbourhoods or villages, and are still places of memorial contentions. Based on the analysis of documents from Italian anarchist archives and on numerous field visits, this paper also extends literature on the material turn in cultural and historical geography, analysing the symbolic and material relevance of Carrara marble matter for local workers. I finally call for a militant historical geography of monuments, one that can be relevant to political and societal debates by boldly and outspokenly saying which statues must fall and which must stand.

My journey with western theory in the university in Africa

In this paper, I recount my experiences with western media theory. Working on my PhD thesis marked my turn to decolonial theory. I used the creolisation strategy of putting critical western Marxist theories in conversation with African, black and Latin American decolonial theories. I worked on my PhD thesis under conditions informed by the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF), the Fees Must Fall (FMF) and other broader protests in South Africa whose connecting thread was the demand for the decolonisation of both the academy and public life. It is my conviction that, although work has already begun, there is still a lot of work to be done in decolonising the disciplines of journalism, media and cultural studies.

Who governs and why it matters. An analysis of race equality and diversity in the composition of further education college governing bodies across the UK

ABSTRACT Concerns about racism and race equality have been widely reported in the first decades of the 21st century, following the Black Lives Matter protests and campaigns such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’. Yet ‘race’ remains largely absent from policy debate and research concerning further education colleges in the four countries of the UK, particularly in relationship to leadership and governance. The focus of this paper is on who governs and why it matters. Governors and trustees play an increasingly visible and significant role in public, private and charity sector organisations, but diversity on governing bodies of further education across the UK remains patchy and is seen as a major challenge. The paper reports on what is known about the composition of governing bodies and what this tells us about the involvement of governors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds at the present time, drawing on a three-year project which examined the processes and practices of governing in the four countries of the UK. The findings highlight the continuing absence of governors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds on college governing boards and suggest that normative, invisible assumptions of how governing gets done persist, with black and minority ethnic governors often little more than a token gesture of adding diversity to the faces on the board.

“Vergangenheitsbewältigung” revisited: Distinguishing two paradigms of working through the past

Social movements like BLM and Rhodes Must Fall have recently re-emphasized the need for “working through” our collective past. I argue that we must be careful to distinguish two distinct and sometimes conflicting understandings of what it means to work through the past. An “idealist” understanding which sees “working through” as a process of self-enlightenment and moral learning through uncovering and acknowledging past moral failures and incorporating them into our collective self-image. The “materialist paradigm”, in contrast, understands “working through” as a process of uncovering the ways in which the structural causes of past moral catastrophe have endured into the present. It rejects idealist calls for reconciliation with the past and present and aims at the negative goal of preventing future moral catastrophe through changing tainted social structures. I argue, finally, that effective processes of working through the past have to engage in both idealist myth-building and materialist deconstruction.

Against coloniality in the international law curriculum: examining decoloniality

ABSTRACT Prompted by the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement in South Africa, debates concerning the decolonisation of the university curriculum have gained increased traction. In the discipline of international law, a tentative pedagogical project of decolonising the university builds on a rich academic debate on the continuities of colonialism. Our contribution to this emerging pedagogical project is to introduce traditions of thought on decoloniality that may complement already existing reflections on and suggestions for decolonising the curriculum. We highlight some key concepts from Latin American thinkers on decoloniality and consider how far this body of knowledge can be translated into a decolonised international law curriculum. For this purpose, we devise four tactics of decoloniality: the tactic of accepting an “ecology of knowledges”, the tactic of “locus enunciations”, the tactic of “dialogical teaching”, and the tactic of troubling a “pedagogy of absences”.

Cecil Rhodes: Racial Segregation in the Cape Colony and Violence in Zimbabwe

This article focuses on two key questions that have been central in debates following the Rhodes Must Fall protests at the University of Oxford in 2015–16: whether Rhodes supported and contributed to racial segregation in the Cape Colony, and how to characterise the violence in the conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s. With respect to the Cape, the evidence shows that Rhodes supported developments that intensified racial segregation in the late 19th century, including restrictions on the franchise, punitive racially based masters and servants legislation and a labour (poll) tax for African people only. He was involved as an employer in the beginning of coercive compounds for black workers and other racially restrictive practices. In respect of Zimbabwe, 1890–97, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company were responsible for extreme violence against African people. Unbridled use was made of the Maxim gun; cattle were looted by the Company and its agents on a large scale; grain stores and crops were appropriated or destroyed over a sustained period as a deliberate strategy; over a period of nine months in 1896–97, African men (including armed men), women and children sheltering in caves were blown up with dynamite. Rhodes was aware of these practices, at times participating or present while they were taking place and involved in strategic discussions. The article is based on published sources, and some of this is established in the historiography, but I do not know of an attempt to assess and quantify deaths in Zimbabwe. The material supports the argument that a celebratory statue of Rhodes at Oriel College is inappropriate and that it should be moved.

Counter-Ceremonial: Contemporary Artists and Queen Victoria Monuments

As the embodiment of empire, Victoria became a symbol of allegiance and resistance, love and loathing. This is nowhere more apparent than in the many monuments memorializing her across the United Kingdom and around the world. At a moment when public sculpture has become increasingly controversial, as witnessed by the removal of Confederate monuments in the American South or the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement, monuments to Victoria are also coming under scrutiny. While many statues have been damaged or defaced from Bristol to Bangkok, and from Montreal to Delhi — important interventions in themselves — more interesting reactions have come from artists. Around the globe, art projects have worked with Victoria monuments in order to find a way of engaging with their troubled history, offering a critical reframing that can break the often unproductive arguments about removal or retention. This article juxtaposes works by Tatsurou Bashi, Sophie Ernst, Hew Locke, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Gary Kirkham, and Hadley+Maxwell, exploring the artists’ engagement with the material form of the monuments and the connections between Victoria’s self-made image and its unmaking in the works discussed.

Contesting and reshaping learning spaces: Students’ activism in South Africa

Universities in South Africa are a microcosm of society and thus offer grounds for criticism. In 2015, the Rhodes Must Fall student movement emerged, which demanded decolonization. This movement became one of the most important social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. While the student movement was formed to protest against the university, students created a space for transformative learning within the frame of the university. This article examines the ambivalence of the university: on the one hand, as a target of criticism and as a space for experimentation and reflection on society and societal change; and, on the other hand, as a space for emerging collective processes of transformative learning which created alternative knowledge, for instance in respect of decolonization and thus also discrimination, racism and marginalization.

Deception and Reception in the Commemorative Landscape of Newcastle, Australia, 1970 to 2020

Contemporary reception of colonial monuments in Australia is informed by global debate on race, memory and representation in public space, typified in the decolonial and anti-racist movements Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter. While art historians and anti-colonial iconoclasts alike easily conceive of statues as objects for critique, non-figurative sculpture is no less effective when deployed as an ideological tool. Given the typically progressive politics of twentieth-century abstractionists, this study asks how comfortable these artists are with the nation-building function often ascribed to their work by political elites. Through a thematic survey of the commemorative landscape of Newcastle, NSW, this article describes a city punctuated by patriotic references to war, colonialism, and Indigenous absence, exemplified in modernist sculptor Margel Hinder’s (1906–1995) *Civic Park Fountain* (1966). Recounting its relaunch in 1970 as a memorial to Captain James Cook and its vandalism in 2020, the article examines changes in public reception of the fountain, from hostility towards abstract art and government spending to outrage at colonial symbols. Archival reconstruction of Hinder’s responses to local government demonstrates her silence on the fountain’s assimilation to colonial celebration. When contrasted with Hinder’s activities as a lobbyist and camouflage designer, this finding reveals a complex political biography. Without ignoring Hinder’s concern for Aboriginal rights, her attitude towards the instrumentalisation of her work is at best ambivalent. Beyond challenging the apolitical readings of Hinder’s work in existing scholarship, this study provides a key example of the ideological malleability of abstract public art. By producing “empty” signifiers to then “fill” with meaning, abstract sculptors and administrators together help to shape the semiotic and racial topography of urban space.