Reject Rhodes, rename university after Sobukwe

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Aubrey Mokoape, an eminent anti-apartheid militant of the Black Consciousness Movement, delivered this speech of support for the Black Student Movement at the South African university currently known as Rhodes.">

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I am extremely pleased to be given this opportunity to, on behalf of the Black Consciousness Party, express our solidarity and support for the students of Rhodes University in their struggle for justice, fairness and equity.

The current upsurge in student activism in this and other universities is encouraging for those of us who have always valued the enormous contribution of students in the struggles of people all over the world.

Students have often been the catalysts and even custodians of great political events. One need only to think of the French Student Movement of the 1960s that led to the overthrowing of the autocratic President Charles De Gaulle, or the American student movement that spearheaded the Anti-Vietnam war campaign and led ultimately to the withdrawal of American troops. In Cuba, Fidel and Raul Castro began their anti-imperialist activism as university students and went on to lead the revolution that overthrew the American lackey, Batista. They also went on to establish the only successful socialist state in the Western Hemisphere.

In our own country, my own organization, the SASO [South African Students Organisation">, blazed the trail in initiating and fighting in the last 25 years of the long war that, from 1969 onwards, led to the dislodging of the White Racist regime. SASO started in the universities engaging in student struggles. We soon realized that our struggles were intertwined with those of our people outside. Our struggles were linked with those of the Black working class, High School students, Churches, unemployed youth and so forth. We formed a formidable phalanx of interlinked BC [Black Consciousness"> organizations that broadcast the message of BC and liberation to every sector of Black society. In no time BC had become a driving revolutionary force throughout the land.

In 1977 the regime tried to obliterate us by banning 17 of our organizations. But that was in vain; our reach had gone too deep and we had multiple layers of leadership. We honed our ideological and analytic skills and produced a body of thought that became BC. We produced cadres of the finest intellect and immense courage, among them people like Biko, Pityana, Strini Moodley and Winnie Kgware, who, unknown to many, was the first President of the Black People's Convention and the first and only President of a political organization, when occupying such a position could mean death or imprisonment.

So I am kith and kin with you, I understand your struggles. I salute you.

When Biko and I entered Medical School our University was named the University of Natal Non-European section and we were affiliated to the White controlled NUSAS, even though there was hardly a single White student on our campus, except, of course, the warden.

We blissfully referred to ourselves as Non-Europeans or Non-Whites as we deliberated about oppression in our student body meetings. We hardly realized how self-demeaning and self- deprecating we were. We were in a state of mental bondage, even while we were railing against oppression. We were labouring under "false consciousness". Steve would later write that "The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed". This reminds me of a statement of the Executive of the South African Native Congress issued in 1903. Our forefathers had this to say:

"The Black races are too conscious of their dependence upon the white missionaries and of their obligations towards the British race, and the benefits to be derived by their presence in the general control and guidance of the civil and religious affairs of the country to harbor foolish notions of political ascendancy. The idea is too palpably absurd to carry weight with well informed minds..."

As we engaged in the dialectical process of struggle the fog lifted from our eyes and we realized that our interests and those of white students differed diametrically. They wanted to reform the system; we wanted to overthrow it and reclaim the conquered land. We realized that, as TS Elliot stated, "There can be no peace between hammer and anvil".

We resolved therefore to form our own organization, SASO. Even then we had merely entered into what Mao calls the first step of cognition, mere perception. In our first Constitution we still said: "We the Non-White students of SA....."

It was only as we matured in the crucible of struggle that we realized how absurd we were to accept the derogatory names given us by our oppressors. From that time on we refused to be called non this or non that. We were not the negatives of whites or Europeans. We were not an afterthought in the order of creation. We and we alone had the right to name ourselves, and we named ourselves Black, a political Black as opposed to a pigmentary Black; a Black that encompassed all the oppressed people of our country- Africans, Euro-Africans and Asio-Africans. We rejected all terms such as Coloured and Indians because they militated against Black Solidarity of the oppressed.

It is in this context that we elevated our identity and said we are Black and Proud. We strengthened our resolve to fight and said, Blackman you are on your own.

We renamed our university the University of Natal Black Section.

I say all this to demonstrate how struggles heighten one’s consciousness and enable people to take control of their circumstances and their lives.

I know full well that many of our people regard Rhodes as a prestigious institution and feel pride in associating with the name. But life cannot mean we should be mere passengers and accept all that is before us, nor can freedom mean we should just be assimilated into white institutions and not refashion them to give expression to a new and higher order. Steve warned against assimilation and said integration did not mean Blacks being accepted by whites on their own terms.

I need not tell you about the man Rhodes. I believe you know all about him. But it bears repeating that he was a most odious and obnoxious man even for his time. He held Black people in extreme contempt. He was the very epitome of white racism, capitalist greed and imperialist acquisition. He was an ardent advocate and practitioner of Apartheid and the Bantustan system long before Verwoerd.

In his campaign to proletarianize and pauperize Blacks he said things such as:

"We want to get hold of these young (Native) Menander make them to go to work, the only way to do this is to compel them to pay a certain labour tax".

"My idea is that the Natives should be kept in these Native Reserves and not to be mixed with the white man at all"

"Now I say, the Natives are children....."

He was saying this about our forbearers and we, their children, are still bearing fresh scars from his vitriolic legacy. The devastation across the land, the squalid ghettoes and hostels, the barren reserves, the underpaid miners, the browbeaten landless farm workers, all these and more bear his unmistakable handprint. He was Verwoerd's master teacher and Verwoerd leaned well from him.

Sometimes in our narrow historical analysis, and with the dubious help of the Liberals, we heap all blame on the Afrikaners. We forget real jingo villains like Shepstone, Sprigg, Rhodes and others.

I know it is sometimes said Rhodes contributed this or that, but only he did it for English speaking white people and with blood money at that. After all gangsters and drug lords are to this day contributing blood money to schools and pensioners in the Cape Flats. In my book they deserve no honour.

In my opinion every day that we persist in calling this university Rhodes is another slap in the face of the courageous and painful struggles of our people.

But we need to examine Rhodes beyond the walls of this university and examine the capitalist system and the imperialist system that he worked so ardently to establish and from which he benefited so handsomely while condemning millions of Black people to landlessness, slave labour and abject poverty.

As you battle to pay your fees and face exclusion, as your brothers and sisters back home battle unemployment, as your parents eke out a meagre living on slave wages, as hospitals burst at the seams with desperately sick Black people, as prisons overflow with virile young men who should otherwise be gainfully employed, you should ask yourselves what is the true legacy of Rhodes and do you want to associate with it.

You should ask yourselves whether education should be a commodity that is only availed to those that can afford it, or should it be a compulsorily free gift that gives all of society’s progeny the cumulative life skills of society to enable them to prosper and progress all of society to higher modes of economic sociopolitical life?

Ask yourselves how the capitalist neoliberal policies of your government, coupled with systemic corruption, greed, nepotism, patronage (all of which are an integral component of the winner takes all system of capitalism) impact on you, your studies, your family, community and your country.

Can such a system which is based on exclusion of the majority serve the human race? Marx describes it aptly as a system that is: "Dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt". Anyone who has gone down a mine and seen the desperate faces of men literally working themselves to death will attest to this. Fidel Castro describes it as a system that: ".... is the most cruel, predatory, shameful and deadly...in the evolution of human society...."

We who were the students of SASO and the BCM [Black Consciousness Movement"> have and are continuing to travel this path of questioning, being amidst our people and learning from them, learning from books about the experiences of people elsewhere, teaching and conscientising, identifying and exposing the evils of the system and mobilizing and organizing our people for liberation. This is the solemn and historic duty of BC in our country. BC is not a dogma, it is a scientific and contextual guide for understanding, conscientising, organizing in the quest for what Steve called "The quest for a true humanity" which in our view can only find expression in a socialist society.

I urge you to travel this path. It requires that you commit yourself to the struggles of the people – on the mines, on the farms, in the shacks and here at the university. When our people are in struggle it is our duty to join them. It is fulfilling to know that you are making an effort towards the betterment of humanity. Resist the arrogance and elitism that a capitalist education inculcates in the unsuspecting; do not hanker after positions or glory. Rather immerse yourself among the people and be of service. Cultivate in your hearts a love for people and be patient and truthful with them. A revolution without love is no revolution.

Before I close let me again express the sincere support for your struggles from the Black Consciousness Party.

I recommend that you jettison the name of Rhodes University and I recommend that you name your university the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe University.

I will not motivate now suffice to say Sobukwe is one of the undisputed giants and heroes of our land. He was a man of unparalleled integrity and a consummate intellectual who put his considerable intellect to the service of our people. He was a denizen of your province who studied in nearby Fort Hare when it was still aligned with your university. He was actually offered a teaching post here shortly before his arrest. I think such a name will be an everlasting credit to the entire current cohort - the council, staff and students. They will forever be remembered for their courage in taking a forward progressive leap.

Let me leave you with the words of Fidel Castro:

"....no people and no man had the right to exploit others, and that the fruits of the efforts and intelligence of each human being should reach all others; that man really had no need to be a wolf, but could be a brother to man. That is the main essence of the premises of Socialism.”

Long live the struggle of the students!

Amandla!

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