UNIVERSITY COUNCIL DECISION
Student leaders adamant Rhodes name must go
Rhodes University council votes 15 to nine to retain the name, angering student leaders
Student leaders say there is no justification for retaining the name Rhodes University and students will protest against it. They were reacting to a statement from the Rhodes University council that, in a secret ballot at its meeting last week, 15 members voted to retain the name and nine voted against it. Cecil John Rhodes, who was an educational benefactor as well as a mining magnate and white supremacist, symbolises a hated colonial past. In 2015, as a result of the #RhodesMustFall campaign at the University of Cape Town, the Rhodes statue there was removed. Lwando Mangqisi, the South African Students Congress (Sasco) provincial secretary for the Eastern Cape, said the university council’s decision was racist because Sasco had been calling for decolonisation, which included renaming institutions and buildings. Jacob Tau, Sasco’s provincial secretary for Mpumalanga, said the name Rhodes University was antiblack and no longer relevant. It should be renamed Oliver Tambo University.<...
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