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I have no ties whatsoever with UCT. Nor do I identify with Rhodes or his deeds in any way. What I have is an astonishingly keen interest in history. I regard myself as widely read. And the statue of Rhodes binds us with the past, it regales us with anecdotes. Well, it used to. It'll be gone soon.
And that is, to me, a great pity. I ask myself... why do we, as a society at large, have to break down what we don't identify with? Why do we have to destroy? What separates us from the ISIS hoodlums who vandalise museum pieces in northern Africa?
Keeping any old artefact does not make what it stood for, retain its effect, long after the original deed has been erased from memory. UCT and the vandals had an opportunity to educate. Properly educate, not that crap they trot out in Ecos 101, and examine you on six months later. About history. About what this man did. Some good, but especially the bad. The imperialism, the suffering, the cruelty, the desperate grab for resources.
UCT could have put up a series of educational plates that detailed it all, with the overriding theme - "never again will we allow this to happen". As it stands, Cecil will be shipped off to a museum, to be replaced by a representation of the Politician of the Month. Learning achieved? Nil. And we will allow a new type of Sino-colonialism, because we will have lost our societal memory.
The irony is that in a few decades time, you will recognise that the destruction served no purpose, and an opportunity to teach was lost. We were all young, dumb and full of it once. But the march of time is inexorable, and you will mellow. I guarantee it.
To UCT and Dr Price. What were you thinking? Since when does a prestigious university kow-tow without question to next year's interns and trainees? Students. Customers. Nothing more. They should have been sent back to class with the message... if you choose UCT, you choose Jameson Hall and Groote Schuur and CJ Rhodes and Bremner and all the other names that bind the place with the past.
And if you don't like it, go to hell, there are ten others happy to take up your place.
For your lack of balls, you ought to be called Miss Price.
