White students at the University of Pretoria 'defending' their Afrikaans heritage When students burnt paintings at the University of Cape Town last week, many white people voiced horrified outrage at what they saw as a line crossed and an act of violence.The focus on the paintings as the pinnacle of violence eliminates a consideration of the structural violence that precipitated the burnt paintings, the systemic racism, the politics of exclusion, the police brutality, the everyday oppression of a society premised on white supremacy. As #RhodesMustFall has argued, it is a selectivity that privileges paintings over black bodies.This selectivity of outrage was startling in the muted response to the violence at the University of the Free State, in which white students brutally attacked black students who were protesting the plight of outsourced workers.Danielle Bowler, a columnist at Eyewitness News, argues that racist violence is not new, white violence on black bodies is a 400-year-ol...
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