WHY FORM A MOVEMENT FOR THE DECOLONIZATION OF UKZN?
On 26 March 2015, the university community at the University of KwaZulu-Natal woke up to the news of the defacing of the statue of the colonial criminal – King George V – which stands in front of the Howard College Building that houses the university’s School of Law at its Howard College Campus. The defacing of the statue sparked much outrage from various quarters at the University, particularly from academics and certain students at the School of Law, who failed to grapple with why the statue had been
defaced, and the message of justified disgust at the
statue communicated by the act.
For the sake of context, King George was a colonial era British Monarch who ruled from 1910 – a year which was a turning point in the course of our history. 1910 is the year of the creation of the then Union of South Afrika - which saw the official alliance between the previously divided Afrikaans and English races in the country, and laid the foundation for them together subjugating the majority of the country under Apartheid.
It was under King George V’s reign that the British, through the governor general of the Union of South Afrika, engineered and implemented the 1913 Natives Land Act, which was a nail in the coffin that officially sanctioned and facilitated the years of dispossession and denigration of black people in the country. We are still living the consequences of these barbaric acts, and while the country’s Constitution (which came out of what is now a widely contested process of negotiation in 1994) commits to undoing the legacies of the Act through land restitution and redistribution, black people continue to be a landless and economically disenfranchised people.
It is not clear why a University that purports to be ‘the Premier University of Afrikan Scholarship’ should continue to pay homage to men like King George, and many others its institutional memory reflects like Louis Botha, Theophilus Shepstone etc – who are responsible for creating the kind of structurally violent and fundamentally unequal society we find ourselves in today.
The University’s response to the defacing of the statue has been appalling at best. In its initial communiqué released on the day the statue was defaced, the University typically condemned the defiant act, and pulled out its usual rhetoric saying that it remained ‘committed to transformation’ and would set up a consultative committee that would deal with the concerns around its colonial symbolism, and other related manifestations of the university’s coloniality – which remains pervasive.
It has now been almost two months since the university made this promise. We have still not heard from the university regarding the formation of the said committee, and the process of wide consultation that it promised to embark on. We fear that the lacklustre approach of the university has largely been caused by a lack of accountability, and the absence of an effective student and staff voice to hold the university to its own word.
We therefore find it necessary to form a permanent movement in the nature of the Rhodes Must Fall movement at UCT, and other student movements that have emerged at Stellenbosch, Wits University and the university currently known as Rhodes University. We do this fully independently and as an authentic UKZN movement. While we have learnt a lot from the movements at the other universities, and will continue to stand in solidarity with them because our struggles are essentially the same, we are not their offshoot or extension. We are a UKZN movement with our own independent mandate.
To us, it has become clear that a movement of this nature is urgently needed, and that simply waiting for the university to act is no longer an option. The process of decolonisation cannot be held ransom to the behest of a lacklustre management. We will soon release a manifesto/list of demands exposing the coloniality of UKZN as an institution and calling for action. The university has long shielded itself from undergoing the necessary process of decolonisation by rehashing its ‘commitment to transformation’, and repeatedly stating that it is ahead of other institutions in terms of transformation.
We reject narrow formulations such as ‘transformation’ in conceptualising the kind of change that needs to happen at the university, in higher education in general, and in the country as a whole. As many have pointed throughout Rhodes must Fall, ‘transformation’ has long been merely concerned with tweaking existing colonial structures and methods – into which alternative/indigenous thoughts and ways of being are fitted. We believe that what is needed is something more radical – which calls for the radical deconstruction of the existing structures, and in which the old gets deconstructed, debated, and where necessary, totally discarded.
It is for these reasons that we are no longer able to accept mere token changes in staff demographics, the sporadic fitting in of new languages into existing structures, and other token changes that do not go to the root of deconstructing the colonial epistemological and pedagogical approaches still in the way the university conducts its business.
It is our view that the university remains, like the rest of the country, in its symbolism, the way in which it relates to its staff and students, and in many other ways, a colonised entity rather than an Afrikan University championing Afrikan Scholarship as it purports to be. We build on this in our manifesto/list of demands which we will release soon.
For now, we call on all students and staff to get behind the movement and take their rightful position as change agents in a space that remains largely unsatisfactory for them. We will be setting up numerous platforms for the university community to engage with all our concerns and make its diverse voices heard. We call for wide participation from staff and students in this regard.
Yours in action
The king George Must Fall Movement
On 26 March 2015, the university community at the University of KwaZulu-Natal woke up to the news of the defacing of the statue of the colonial criminal – King George V – which stands in front of the Howard College Building that houses the university’s School of Law at its Howard College Campus. The defacing of the statue sparked much outrage from various quarters at the University, particularly from academics and certain students at the School of Law, who failed to grapple with why the statue had been
For the sake of context, King George was a colonial era British Monarch who ruled from 1910 – a year which was a turning point in the course of our history. 1910 is the year of the creation of the then Union of South Afrika - which saw the official alliance between the previously divided Afrikaans and English races in the country, and laid the foundation for them together subjugating the majority of the country under Apartheid.
It was under King George V’s reign that the British, through the governor general of the Union of South Afrika, engineered and implemented the 1913 Natives Land Act, which was a nail in the coffin that officially sanctioned and facilitated the years of dispossession and denigration of black people in the country. We are still living the consequences of these barbaric acts, and while the country’s Constitution (which came out of what is now a widely contested process of negotiation in 1994) commits to undoing the legacies of the Act through land restitution and redistribution, black people continue to be a landless and economically disenfranchised people.
It is not clear why a University that purports to be ‘the Premier University of Afrikan Scholarship’ should continue to pay homage to men like King George, and many others its institutional memory reflects like Louis Botha, Theophilus Shepstone etc – who are responsible for creating the kind of structurally violent and fundamentally unequal society we find ourselves in today.
The University’s response to the defacing of the statue has been appalling at best. In its initial communiqué released on the day the statue was defaced, the University typically condemned the defiant act, and pulled out its usual rhetoric saying that it remained ‘committed to transformation’ and would set up a consultative committee that would deal with the concerns around its colonial symbolism, and other related manifestations of the university’s coloniality – which remains pervasive.
It has now been almost two months since the university made this promise. We have still not heard from the university regarding the formation of the said committee, and the process of wide consultation that it promised to embark on. We fear that the lacklustre approach of the university has largely been caused by a lack of accountability, and the absence of an effective student and staff voice to hold the university to its own word.
We therefore find it necessary to form a permanent movement in the nature of the Rhodes Must Fall movement at UCT, and other student movements that have emerged at Stellenbosch, Wits University and the university currently known as Rhodes University. We do this fully independently and as an authentic UKZN movement. While we have learnt a lot from the movements at the other universities, and will continue to stand in solidarity with them because our struggles are essentially the same, we are not their offshoot or extension. We are a UKZN movement with our own independent mandate.
To us, it has become clear that a movement of this nature is urgently needed, and that simply waiting for the university to act is no longer an option. The process of decolonisation cannot be held ransom to the behest of a lacklustre management. We will soon release a manifesto/list of demands exposing the coloniality of UKZN as an institution and calling for action. The university has long shielded itself from undergoing the necessary process of decolonisation by rehashing its ‘commitment to transformation’, and repeatedly stating that it is ahead of other institutions in terms of transformation.
We reject narrow formulations such as ‘transformation’ in conceptualising the kind of change that needs to happen at the university, in higher education in general, and in the country as a whole. As many have pointed throughout Rhodes must Fall, ‘transformation’ has long been merely concerned with tweaking existing colonial structures and methods – into which alternative/indigenous thoughts and ways of being are fitted. We believe that what is needed is something more radical – which calls for the radical deconstruction of the existing structures, and in which the old gets deconstructed, debated, and where necessary, totally discarded.
It is for these reasons that we are no longer able to accept mere token changes in staff demographics, the sporadic fitting in of new languages into existing structures, and other token changes that do not go to the root of deconstructing the colonial epistemological and pedagogical approaches still in the way the university conducts its business.
It is our view that the university remains, like the rest of the country, in its symbolism, the way in which it relates to its staff and students, and in many other ways, a colonised entity rather than an Afrikan University championing Afrikan Scholarship as it purports to be. We build on this in our manifesto/list of demands which we will release soon.
For now, we call on all students and staff to get behind the movement and take their rightful position as change agents in a space that remains largely unsatisfactory for them. We will be setting up numerous platforms for the university community to engage with all our concerns and make its diverse voices heard. We call for wide participation from staff and students in this regard.
Yours in action
The king George Must Fall Movement
