CECIL John Rhodes’s statue is gone, its fate is now in the hands of Western Cape heritage authorities who will decide on its final resting place.The University of Cape Town (UCT) said on Thursday that it had appointed independent heritage practitioner Ashley Lillie to handle the process, which will be open to public comment. However, the issues that prompted a group of mostly black UCT students to declare "Rhodes must fall" remain.Though the "gesture", as insiders term it, has had a good reception, there is a long road ahead for the institution that has battled to shake off its image as a bastion of white privilege. And the statistics tell a tale of a lack of transformation: in more than two decades of democracy, UCT has not had a single black female professor.Out of a possible 200 senior professors at UCT, only five are black.Figures from the Department of Higher Education and Training show that, countrywide, 76% of professors are white, 5% are Indian and 4.5% are coloured.In an ar...
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