Last
year during the Rhodes Must Fall protest over the Rhodes statue on UCT campus, I wrote a long
letter to UCT's council and vice-chancellor Max Price. I said that as a
citizen of Cape Town and alumnus I was appalled and ashamed of the
university for grovelling and appeasing and capitulating to the Rhodes
Must Fall mob's intransigent demands for instant gratification.
I was particularly disappointed with Price's flip-flopping and thought he displayed poor leadership under pressure.
In separate correspondence, I criticised Western Cape's heritage agency for hastily and secretly approving the removal of the statue without due process.
I compared the mob's modus operandi of threatening staff and council, defacing artwork and monuments and attempting to rewrite history to suit their own version to fascists and fundamentalists everywhere.
What I wrote is prophetic. UCT is literally burning - artworks burnt in a bonfire, Price's office petrol bombed and hate speech on Facebook and clothing. Unchallenged at the time, UCT gave the thugs the oxygen they needed once exams and holidays were behind them.
What did UCT and Price expect?
I was particularly disappointed with Price's flip-flopping and thought he displayed poor leadership under pressure.
In separate correspondence, I criticised Western Cape's heritage agency for hastily and secretly approving the removal of the statue without due process.
I compared the mob's modus operandi of threatening staff and council, defacing artwork and monuments and attempting to rewrite history to suit their own version to fascists and fundamentalists everywhere.
What I wrote is prophetic. UCT is literally burning - artworks burnt in a bonfire, Price's office petrol bombed and hate speech on Facebook and clothing. Unchallenged at the time, UCT gave the thugs the oxygen they needed once exams and holidays were behind them.
What did UCT and Price expect?
By comparison, UWC is taking a firm stand against protests on its
campus, employing private security to ensure the safety of staff
and students. I'm afraid the bleeding heart liberals who run UCT learnt
nothing from last year. Again they belatedly reacted to events after
they got out of hand.
The protestors have shown their true colours - thugs and fascists, only this time they are not wearing brown shirts but white shirts with hate speech emblazoned on it. It's not as if they are the genuinely desperate like the country's poor and unemployed, but are a privileged and entitled minority. Hiding behind genuine grievances of shortage of accommodation, which is an age-old problem at all universities in South Africa, they are proving to be intent on nothing more than destruction and anarchy.
Despite my distaste at what is happening at UCT, I cannot feel sorry for management and Price. They deserve nothing less for letting the genie out the bottle last year.
The protestors have shown their true colours - thugs and fascists, only this time they are not wearing brown shirts but white shirts with hate speech emblazoned on it. It's not as if they are the genuinely desperate like the country's poor and unemployed, but are a privileged and entitled minority. Hiding behind genuine grievances of shortage of accommodation, which is an age-old problem at all universities in South Africa, they are proving to be intent on nothing more than destruction and anarchy.
Despite my distaste at what is happening at UCT, I cannot feel sorry for management and Price. They deserve nothing less for letting the genie out the bottle last year.
I distance myself from the prevalent nihilistic ethos at UCT.
Comments
Post a Comment