Post by cjm on Apr 26, 2015 17:03:37 GMT
He writes about the Rhodes of stone but finds in that topic sufficient relevance for some (more) Afrikaner bashing.
Interesting now is that the dirt removal crowd has discovered that the Rhodes statue is but a symbol of the South African malaise - apparently it is not really about the statue as such as it is clearly impossible (and inconvenient) to remove all physical colonial traces.
As I was taking out the rubbish earlier this week, I glanced over the bookshelf at the back door of my flat and noticed a book I had not thought of for more than 30 years. The book is a gushing biography of Apartheid prime minister John Vorster, with a picture of Vorster (his red alcoholic nose in full bloom) on the front page. The inscription on the title page states that the book was given to me as the Allied Building Society Prize for best progress in the matric year at Pietersburg Hoërskool in 1981.
I can’t recall that I ever read the book, but I do recall that receiving the prize meant a lot to the timid, insecure, boy trying to survive in the macho, all-white, aggressively racist and actively anti-intellectual environment of Pietersburg Hoërskool of 1981.
I can’t recall that I ever read the book, but I do recall that receiving the prize meant a lot to the timid, insecure, boy trying to survive in the macho, all-white, aggressively racist and actively anti-intellectual environment of Pietersburg Hoërskool of 1981.
Interesting now is that the dirt removal crowd has discovered that the Rhodes statue is but a symbol of the South African malaise - apparently it is not really about the statue as such as it is clearly impossible (and inconvenient) to remove all physical colonial traces.
For me the value of the campaign of the UCT students – beyond the immediate impact it may have on the pace of transformation at the University – lies in its potential to help us recognise and remember how strange and aberrant daily life in South Africa often is; to help us be more critical about the world we live in; to make us more consistently aware of the history and origins of hegemonic ideas and practices that serve to persuade some of us that the social, intellectual and economic dominance of our former colonisers are natural and self-evidently deserved.
Ultimately, it seems to me the protesters are calling on us to recognise the uncomfortable strangeness of our country, a country hovering halfway between a past from which it cannot escape and a future its citizens are too scared, filled with self-doubt or complacent to re-imagine and recreate in their own image.
The students are reminding us that if we are prepared to recognise the strangeness of our (not so) post-colonial country, if we are prepared to recognise how aberrant and (at the very least) ethically dubious it is that the former oppressors and the previously oppressed live side by side in a country in which many statues that glorify the exploits of the oppressors still have pride of place, we may begin to imagine and build a different society not held hostage by its past.
Ultimately, it seems to me the protesters are calling on us to recognise the uncomfortable strangeness of our country, a country hovering halfway between a past from which it cannot escape and a future its citizens are too scared, filled with self-doubt or complacent to re-imagine and recreate in their own image.
The students are reminding us that if we are prepared to recognise the strangeness of our (not so) post-colonial country, if we are prepared to recognise how aberrant and (at the very least) ethically dubious it is that the former oppressors and the previously oppressed live side by side in a country in which many statues that glorify the exploits of the oppressors still have pride of place, we may begin to imagine and build a different society not held hostage by its past.
