Victims, victors, statues and others – just whose past should we reconstruct or study?
By seizing control of the transformation debate, UCT students have shifted the rules of engagement.
The fall of apartheid’s structures has allowed fiction to explore a range of social issues.
Photographer David Goldblatt and Jeremy Kuper discuss old monuments and moves by students to have statues like that of Cecil John Rhodes removed.
The removal of Rhodes’s effigy is only a small victory on the road to real transformation.
Public memorials are part of our heritage, and can be dealt with creatively.
Transformation must take root in university syllabuses if Rhodes’s legacy is to be definitively banished.
The imagining of a friendship between Sol Plaatje and Cecil Rhodes feels particularly relevant right now.
Our president doesn’t deserve even an ugly or poorly made statue, but he does deserve to fall, like the statue of Cecil John Rhodes did.
As the new vice-chancellor, Sizwe Mabizela could lead Rhodes in radical reform – or quell the revolt.
The University of Cape Town’s council ruled that the statue of Cecil John Rhodes, the centre of much debate over the last few weeks, must be removed.
Without black women in the movement, "I felt that my own intelligence and knowledge would either be questioned or dismissed".
Tearing down the contested statue of Cecil John Rhodes is too simple and obvious an answer to a complex problem, argues Verashni Pillay.
The EFF leader also stressed that the battle against white supremacy cannot be won until universities offer free education.
The refusal to listen to the voices of others is a fundamental threat to constitutional democracy.
Don’t belittle the act of defacing symbols of the oppression students say is being upheld at universities, writes Victoria John.
Minister Nathi Mthethwa won’t support any violent removal of Cecil Rhodes’ statue from the UCT campus and urges an amicable resolution to the matter.
Our society is still untransformed, unequal and racially polarised. Symbolic action only delays dealing with an explosive social problem.
The campaign to remove the statue is gaining momentum, placing the ‘Eurocentrism’ of national university curricula under the spotlight.