Must Rhodes Fall? | Jan, 2016 | Oxford Union - Transcription of selected excerpts

Youtube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3aBDBdDIgU

Panelists debate on the issue of whether the statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed.

The panelists (in order of appearance):

Ntokozo Qwabe: Ntokozo is a Rhodes Scholar currently pursuing an MSc in African Studies. He completed a BCL at Oxford in 2014. He is an organising member of RMF Oxford.

Yasmin Kumi: An MBA student at the Said Business School, and the president of the Oxford University Africa Society. Kumi’s research focuses on the development of business in West Africa since the 1960s.

Athinangamso Esther Nkopo: Athi is a Weidenfeld Scholar pursuing an MSc in African Studies. She holds a Masters in International Relations for the University of the Witwatersrand, and is an organising member of RMF Oxford.

Professor Richard Drayton: Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London. Drayton’s inaugural lecture for the role focussed on the necessity of a post- and anti- imperial emancipatory direction to research, and the need to highlight hidden oppressions.

Professor William Beinart: Former Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford African Studies Centre since 1997. Beinart’s research focuses on South Africa and the development of racism, highlighting the difficulty of reconciling antithetical memories. He recently published an A-level text book on South Africa, 1948-94 in the Searching for Rights and Freedoms.

Professor Nigel Biggar: Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church. His research interests include the moral vocation of universities and the ethics of nationalism and empire.

Sophia Cannon: Social justice and political commentator barrister. Audience members ultimately voted that the statue should be removed, with 245 ayes to 212 noes.

Transcription of selected excerpts:

Ntokozo Qwabe: The space that we are required to hold this debate is not neutral.
This space last year declared itself institutionally racist.

(Ed: Probably referring to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11644479/Oxford-Union-admits-it-is-institutionally-racist.html)

We have a broad program that we are advocating for Oxford, and that interrogates how patterns of exclusion function at Oxford.
We don't think that an Oxford University that purports to be inclusive in the 21C can only have 1 full time black professor. We think there is something deplorable about that.
Using the statue as an emblem, under which we are sparking debate.
We find it deplorable that there are only 24 black british students have been accepted for last year into the undergraduate student body simply because Oxford again only selects its students from particular elite private schools and some public schools.

(e.g. selection criteria for History course at Oxford: http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/prospective/undergraduate/applying/the-application-process.html)

Yasmin Kumi:  Its personally clear to me that the necessity to remove the statue is inevitable.
The debate should be about a broader issue which is institutional racism and the decolonisation of education within Oxford.
....a leader who led the ideology of the century long supremacy of the anglo saxon face such as Rhodes does not deserve the glorification of an elevated statue at Oxford university despite the fact thet he has rendered money into scholarships.
We do not have a single statue of Hitler in our country despite the money he invested into infrastructure...

Athinangamso Esther Nkopo: We think that statues function to reflect the way in which institutions, societies imagine themselves, and being that Oxford university has all of these structural problems we put before you, we think that having a statue of Cecil John Rhodes overlook us on High Street at the entrance of Oriel College on a pedestal is very problematic considering that when Oxford broadcasts itself to the world, it says it is open inclusive; it is a leading 21C global institution.
We urge you in this debate to think very carefully about what it is that the university has to lose when it removes that statue and replaces it with someone or something that we can all be proud of.

Professor Richard Drayton: I admire Rhodes. I fully confess it. And when his time comes, I will buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.  So said Mark Twain.
Contrary to what you have heard, the best spirits of his age help Rhodes in a contempt equal to our own.  These words were written out of history by the free of Rhode's money.  Rhodes did not give to Oxford he sought to buy it's soul.  There were enough venal Don's to take his blood diamonds. Oxford with its best liberal intentions remains colour cded white.
And the complacency with which Oxford and Britain face their racial and colonial past is quite central to this. We have a right and a duty to change Oxford.  Every country in Europe, other than Britain, not just Germany, not just Russia but France and Spain and Italy and Portugal have removed statues and renamed streets in order to free the future from symbolic slavery to the past evils. Oriel's Rhodes similarly belongs behind a museums glass rather than the High street.

Professor William Beinart: How can be deal with the legacy of Rhodes in the academic sphere?
I believe the university as a whole should consider the responsibilities that arise from accepting such donations.
I believe that greater priority needs to be given in the university to scholarships for students from Africa and to ensuring that Oxford is a leading centre for the study of Southern Africa and Africa in the world.
....
I believe that the priority nevertheless is not what should fall, it's rather what might rise. The positive and concrete developments that could be furthered by this debate.

Professor Nigel Biggar:  ...
If we insist on our heros being pure we aren't going to have any.
Last year the shine on Mahatma Ghandi's halo came off as we learned of his views that Indians were culturally superior to black Africans.  Does that mean we should forget his remarkable achievements.
Claims that Rhodes was south africa's Hitler and carried out genocide lack any historical foundation.
Rhodes was not racist. he did not hold black africans in general contempt. He did not view them as biologically inferior and incapable of cultural development. In 1899, he defended the right of blacks to vote. He stipulated his scholarships should be awarded regardless of race, and the first Rhodes scholarship was awarded to an african american within 5 years of his death.
While often ruthless in his choice of means Rhodes was a prodigious entrepreneur who used his wealth for public purposes.
Unlike some of south africa's current rulers, he didn't use it to feather his own nest. Rather to develop the regions economy and to build a world-wide community of public leaders through his scholarship legacy.
If Rhodes must fall so must Churchill, whose views on Empire and race were much the same.
And so probably must Abraham Lincoln. While Lincoln liberated african american slaves, he doubted they could be integrated into white society and favoured their seperate development, their segregation or apartheid if you will, in an african colony.
In 2010, the ANC government in Natal, South africa, named a new airport after King Shaka.  Shaka was responsible for forging a highly militaristic Zulu empire in the early 1800's; for waging terroristic and genocidal wars, not least in 1826, and for a share of the deaths of between 1 and 2 million black africans.  If Shaka gets to stand in Durban, Rhodes, whose sins pale by comparison, should be left standing in Oxford.

Sophia Cannon:
....
It is very different is it not when you have people peddling currency based upon shame, racism and indeed misery.
The statue outside, I say, wasn't erected like we see in the continent in a cult of personality. We don't do that here. In Britain, our statues are welded to our history. Whether we like it or not.
.....
What is crucial to know, is that the critical nucleus of minds that we have on the right in 50 years time, their statues should be here, and their legacy should be as great, because the problems that the African diaspora face need to be challenged and indeed the only way it can be done today is through the academic mind.  Rhodes must not fall today.


Q from chair: If 54% of Oxford students believe that the statue should not come down, should we respect their views?
Yasmin Kumi: At the end of the day majorities are always relative, and I would probably ask the couter question and say: would you want to keep a statue that 46% of the students within the entire university have a problem with ?

Professor Richard Drayton: ....at the appalling oversimplifications and errors ..... As a professional historian, I am simply appalled to hear Mr Biggar speak to you in precisely these terms on the basis of god knows what reading he happens to have done last night.....
Rhodes had no control over the appointment over Alain Locke who was quite a pale skinned man it has to be said too.
(Probably because Rhodes was dead !!!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_LeRoy_Locke
You have to look very hard for your Rhodes scholars of colour before quite late in the 20th century.
(Sort the list by region and see a very large number of non Caucasians have been http://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/about/rhodes-scholars/rhodes-scholars-complete-list)

Sophia Cannon: If we start removing our statues, where do we stop. .....
Do we go by plebiscite and the majority rule ? Or do we decide what is immoral and what is amoral indeed when morality shifts and changes.....
If you erase your history, you erase both the bright lights and the dark spots.
We need the statue here so that you can point to it, and shout shame at it.

Ntokozo Qwabe: That statue as it stands constitutes an erasure of history because it does not say anything about what Rhodes did.
.... The reason I reject contextualisation is how can you contextualise Rhodes ? Racist genocidal maniac ? I guess that would work.

Athinangamso Esther Nkopo: We say it is an opportunity to study history as though that actually what statues can do, but what we do actually mean is it's an opportunity to demonstrate a single side of history.  That is what limits free speech.

Professor William Beinart: It is extraordinary that rhodes stands above two kings of England with a foot on the head of both of them.....
If I was Simon Schama, or an art historian trying to interpret what I was seeing, I would say that this is the sanctification of money over blood or inheritance both....
Fundamentally, the statue has allowed you to get where you've got and yet you believe that it has no significance...
For me statues do have historical significance and they do have power, and you've shown exactly how in a movement can reinterpret history through images and through symbols and as i say, you probably couldn't have done it through the English syllabus.  So be careful what you take away, because you take away a weapon for yourselves as well.....
Everybody in late Victorian England, despite what Richard said, were implicated in colonialism and imperialism. I mean Rhodes got his charter by an act of the British government, they could easily not have given it.....
Do we then dispense with all statues from that age or do we use them as a medium to think with....
(see https://oxpaf.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/img_4625.jpg)

Professor Richard Drayton: I think it is very important that we make a distinction between free speech and public space. Free speech is a civic right, and free speech and free opinions - this is something which we all - you may all hold whatever opinions that you wish and I would like to think that a student in Oxford who asks for a statue to come down should have the right to do so without being abused by the chancellor of their university. I think that Mr Pattons contribution to this debate is simply shocking.
(probably referring to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/12094277/Cecil-Rhodes-Oxford-University-students-must-confront-views-they-find-objectionable-says-new-head.html)
There's a distinction between free speech and public space. Public space is shared. Public spaces are not things that are set in aspic - preserved forever. Public spaces in every city in the world is continually being reinvented - repurposed.....
All these comparisons with statues of Churchill, Mahatma are complete red herrings. We are talking about Oxford and a statute that sits at the absolute centre of this university and which symbolises white domination, which symbolises the rights of minorities to rule over majorities without their consent and we are celebrating that. And I am appalled. I am simply astounded that there are people who can choose to defend Cecil Rhodes. It is one thins to defend the right of the statue to remain. But I am simply astonished that in the 21C Oxford there are people who are attempting to actually mount a defence of Cecil Rhodes.

Ntokozo Qwabe: I don't think you can seperate the issue of underrepresentation fromt he issue of how the space itself is designed. We have pointed out a number of times that a lot of these issue about underrepresentation and the issue of black professors actually go to the heart of the fact that some black people do not want to participate in this kind of space that is designed in this way - that still celebrates people like Rhodes who committed crimes on the bodies of their ancestors.

Professor Nigel Biggar: Churchill was flawed. Those that know his life know that.  But he was also great. And the same goes for Lincoln. ....
Athi earlier referred to a quotation - this is used by Rhodes must fall people a lot that he is alleged to have made: "I prefer land to niggers"..... It comes from an 1897 novel. Its fiction.
(probably referring to a novel "Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland" by Olive Schreiner:
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=F4d-CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT40&dq=TROOPER+PETER+HALKET+OF+MASHONALAND&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=prefer%20land&f=false)
Ntokozo referred to Rhodes' genocide.  That relates to another quotation that Rhodes must Fall have been using in which it is alleged that at one point Rhodes said "One should kill as many niggers as possible".  That allegation was first made in abook review in 2006. No biographer records that statement anywhere. It appears the statement was fabricated by the reviewer.

Professor Richard Drayton: .....It doesn't actually matter what Rhodes said. Rhodes equipped the Britsich South African companies troops with the latest machine guns and martini-henry rifles not because he wanted them to hunt for hippos.  He wanted them to terrorise africans.....

Ntokozo Qwabe: ..... We are talking about actions we are not talking about words....  There is this essence about reducing conversations about racism to views and what people say. But we are actually talking about structures. We are talking about actions that people put in place. So if you are gonna deny Rhodes' genocides without taking into account people who have written - historians who have written about for example his genocidal scorched earth campaigns that killed thousands of people in modern day Zimbabwe and Zambia through the British southern African company's police for example, or the war crimes that Rhodes committed during the south african war with the use of concentration camps which now have been conceptualised as something that comes with Nazi germany, but actually, they begin with Rhodes.

Professor Nigel Biggar:  This is the example of the crazy reasoning.  Concentration camps belong to the Boer war.  They were borrowed from American and Spanish practice by Kitchener.  They have nothing to do with Rhodes...
It is crazy to say that Rhodes was responsible for the Boer War and therefore for concentration camps.

Professor William Beinart (to Ntokozo) : ...I do feel that you need to be a bit more cautious about your use of history.

Athinangamso Esther Nkopo: We would like to see Oxford in the future be a space that is and facilitates and attracts the very best, and not the very best based on a prejudice that it holds that those are white european men.
We would like it to be a space where everyone can apply to and be competitive based on what it is that they are able to do, and not necessarily because of where they come from or the colour of their skin.....
... currently the world is plagued by all of these problems because we are ruled by an order of white supremacy.
I think that is the thing that this debate exposes.

Yasmin Kumi:  ... When I think of african students that have been here for a while and maybe started to study for a PhD in their 3rd and their 4th year, something that most of them will say if they go home they are actually stamped as being westernised. They are not able anymore to connect with their families or their friends back home they way they were before, because people think that they have actually been westernised by western education. Isn't there anyway that we could say that someone who has been in Oxford studying in Oxford has been able to get a balanced view of the world and whatever field he of she is studying that enables them to still connect the way to his country before - as he was able to before....

Statement from Audience member: I want to ask because as an outsider it seem hypocritical there are a number of Rhodes scholars sitting here after having benefitted from the Rhodes scholarship now denouncing Rhodes' work and his legacy.  Then again, I also want to ask "where do you draw the line".  That gentleman there with his bust in the Oxford union is Lord Curzon, responsible personally for perhaps 6.1 to 9.3 million deaths in India. We are in England. England is an imperialist nation responsible for many deaths worldwide. We are actually being hypocritical just by being here by interacting, by contributing to this nation.  Where do you draw the line ?  I feel that by denouncing Rhodes we are all actually doing a disservice instead of just getting on with it, and trying to contribute positively to the environments we find ourselves in.

Ntokozo Qwabe:  .....I will not be told that I am a hypocrite for taking money that was stolen from my people.....
Rhodes scholars have a proud history of actually interrogating Rhodes' legacy whether or not they are from southern africa and I think that this idea that money can somehow buy our silence is exactly what the problem is..... We are confronting these enclaves of privilege in which we have to compromise and cuts bits of ourself in order to enter.  We are saying that we will not be silenced through entering into these spaces.....

Sophia Cannon:  We sang songs about you in the 70s.  We were waiting for you to be born. This huge critical nucleus of black minds going from South africa all the way through Europe across to the states down to the carribean....
You get to Oxford and you set about not changing the problems of the african diaspora - you set about removing the furniture.
Raise your expectations and change and bring something to this legacy.  Be the Rhodes scholar that he never envisaged you to be and be better.

Ntokozo Qwabe: ... That statues do go to the very way that we imagine ourselves and of course we need to abandon people like Nigel and give them in the past who will defend these statues because in the end they go very much to their identity which they have constructed around this empire which actually has fallen....

Yasmin Kumi:  At the end of the day you can over rationalise things quite quickly.  If we said that Rhodes has to stand because he has a historical legacy from a rational point of view, we would have to apply the same thing in the future, so for instance, I have discussed an argument with a member of the africa society, that what if ISIS is going to take all the money they get from the oil fields that they still have, put it into an educational trust and in 100 years there is a scholarship here in Oxford will we say that there should be a statue for that, because they have put money into it. It would be the rational decision, but no it is not because there is a moral consideration to it....
..and I think the most important thing is that there is a considerable amount of students here that want the statue to be removed and they need to be heard.
At the same time, is Rhodes really history. is something history once the person has passed away ? Is it history only when we have fully been able to process what the legacy of that person is...

Professor Richard Drayton:  Standing there in the High is an idol to money and earthly power and monument to a deformed kind of national identity, a symbol of Britain the bully, Britain the slave driver, rather then Britain the emancipator - the maker of peace and justice; Britain the refuge of scholars and trustee of learning.
The statue of Rhodes is not a monument to British national greatness. It is a monument to a particular victorian and edwardian conjuncture in which a technological arms gap allowed rogues in the name of Britain to take by force what they wanted from the world. It is a monument to mass killing of africans by machine guns; to generations of semi-slavery imposed on the survivors; to war mongering which helped unsettle european affairs a monument to human greed and weakness.
That monument needs to be put in its context in a museum not at the centre of the cross of the town.
You in this room, now mostly in your twenties, women, men of all social and ethnic origins - you are a product of the democratic revolutions of the 20C. A substantial majority of you if you had been alive in 1911 would not have been in this room.
The business of making Britain and the world juster and more inclusive and more compassionate and more neighbourly space - a place where we can all be at home - is still not yet finished. There is work for your generation to do - particularly in Oxford, and the path towards this leads through the removal of Rhodes from the heart of this university.

Professor Nigel Biggar: As to the statue itself, its not the end of the world if it comes down, I just dont think that Rhodes is the demonic figure that people on my right think he is.  I still don't think he was racist.  Would a racist have put money behind a black political newspaper as Rhodes did in 1897 ? Would a racist have defended the black vote in cape parliament in 1899. The continued claims that he was responsible for genocide are nonsense, as nonsense that he was associated with concentration camps. he wasn't a demon. He was also very ruthless. He was reckless. He was involved in a failed coup d'etat. On the plus side he devoted his life to public purposes not only to developing diamond mining, gold mining, banking, agriculture, railways, telegraphs in south africa, as well as funding his famous scholarship scheme from which 8 thousand people have benefitted. He is not a saint. he is not a demon either.

Sophia Cannon: ....The main issue tonight must be the future. Yes I may be persuaded that if the statue falls it may not be the end of the world. But equally, we must know our history to know our place because if we whitewash our history and remove all vestiges of inequity, superiority, we are not going to understand how we have made those mistakes and moreover we are not going to move forward....