The statue of Cecil John Rhodes overlooking UCT has been at the heart of heated debates on transformation. In his introduction to Viewpoints, published in November 2013, former Vice-Chancellor and Emeritus Professor Njabulo Ndebele writes of the vexed legacy Rhodes left UCT, written from the perspective of one sitting on the Jammie steps beside his bronzen figure, looking through the lens of time.

A story of time

Introduction to Viewpoints by Emeritus Professor and former Vice-Chancellor Njabulo Ndebele (November 2013)

In 1994 South Africa began a new human calendar. We could call it The Year of Coming Together. That is what it really was. South Africans came together formally to discover and re-discover one another. They stood one behind the other in long lines across the country to vote together for the first time in more than three hundred years of recent history. Affirming and humbling for everyone, it was an extraordinary experience of human equality.

University campuses can be thought of in this way too: affirming and humbling places where, over time, people come together to discover and re-discover one another, equal before the quest for knowledge, experience and community. Bodies, minds, conversations, doubts, certitudes, fashions, wealth, poverty, secrets, disclosures and all kinds of histories: they all intersect there, on campus.

The treasures in this book are a part of that story of interaction. Although many of them predate 1994, the stories of how they came to be, their presence – sometimes felt, sometimes almost forgotten – offers a mode of reflection on what comes and goes in the public mind of a university campus.

And there lie the secrets of discovery. The surprises of re-discovery tell us that what is re-discovered may have just emerged from the half-light of history to reveal its neglected – if hidden – value, and how its invisibility may have been an accretion of its value all along.

The treasure in the voter's lines in 1994 surfaced in the revelation and experience of finding value in the lives of others, up to then seen but really unknown. Life in the new human calendar must be for the most part about the continuous discovery of others. And so it must be for campuses over the decades, sometimes centuries, of their existence.

Since it was founded in 1829 as the South African College, the University of Cape Town, like all universities around the world, has interacted with its city, its country and the world beyond in multiple ways. The story of its interactions is a story of time. It is told partly through its architecture, partly through its students and teachers, partly through its quaint collections of art and scientific objects, partly through spikes of controversy or the lack of it, and partly through academic achievement. Each aspect of the campus is a treasure.

Campus community as treasure

The architectural presence of the campus is its most immediate point of interaction. It captures the eye. With its six white columns and Devil's Peak rising majestically behind it, Jameson Hall easily takes centre stage. A wide-angle view of it locates the Hall at the centre of the pictorial frame. The lower half of it is the work of man; the upper part, the work of nature. From here, this iconic image of the University of Cape Town is viewed as much as it views.

Man-made buildings and a rugby field in the foreground echo the grandeur of the towering peak in the background. Joseph Michael Solomon, the architect, abstracted a piece of nature in his mind and framed it within a symmetry he defined with buildings. Human hands like his may shape the world, carving the place of humans in it. The resulting shapes are potentially infinite. They can be a source of awe, respect and pleasure. Or they can engender ceaseless controversy. Never neutral, they are always a statement conveying some meaning. And around meanings, interactions are generated and many positions taken.

There is a nineteenth-century figure who significantly shaped the southern African sub-continent. His compulsive and daring ambitions for the entire continent of Africa evoke strong emotions. He is either praised or denounced, admired or mocked. Enduring controversy around him has assured him an indelible place in history. Whichever way you turn, you will encounter him, whether on campus, or elsewhere in South Africa; or beyond, in Zimbabwe. His name, Cecil John Rhodes, echoes from Cape to Cairo, the span of continental distance by which he expressed the extent of his vision.

You may not see him clearly in the iconic wide-angle view of UCT. Yet he is decidedly there. Perhaps it is just as well that his visual presence is not more prominent. He is part of campus history, not the whole of it.

Rhodes is memorialised on campus by a bronze statue of him, now weathered green by time. On a closer look you will make him out, the hippo on the surface of UCT's river of time, defying casual embarrassment and willed inclinations to have it submerge, perhaps forever. Its broad back defiantly in view, it is never to be recalled without thoughts and feelings that take away peace of mind.

Indeed, Rhodes, the donor of the land on which the University of Cape Town was built, exerts a presence on campus which often prompts a desire for his absence. But, like Moby Dick the whale, he will blow.

The statue of Cecil John Rhodes, 'sculpted by Marion Walgate and unveiled in 1934', fits perfectly in Solomon's abstracted symmetry. To appreciate the bold magnificence of this symmetry, you have to imagine a centre line which begins some two to three hundred metres down the hill below Solomon's framed foreground, at a spot known as the Japonica Walk. The line cuts upward through the white structure known as Summer House, 'built about 1760 by the Dutch' and 'reconstructed by Herbert Baker in 1894'. A point of architectural serenity amid the din of the M3 highway traffic just above it, the Summer House stands at the upper edge of the Middle Campus.

The line then hops over the highway to the lawn of the rugby fields, the lowest point of the wide-angle picture frame's foreground. Standing at the edge of these green lawns, the

Summer House behind you, you can see clearly the line of symmetry cutting through Rhodes's statue, giving it a place of honour you may never have imagined. Rhodes is placed firmly at the centre of the space between the third and fourth pillars of Jameson Hall. It is a marvel!

The line then ascends to Jameson Hall, to cut perfectly into two halves the pediment, a perfect, flat, isosceles triangle resting on the entablature just above the pillars. It cuts through the pediment's vertex angle, lining its tip with the flagpole at the centre of the Hall's summit. Then, finally, it leaps like a laser beam across the fynbos and the end of Newlands Forest, to head straight for the forehead tip of Devil's Peak.

But from where he sits in a panelled armchair about one hundred metres in front of Jameson Hall, Rhodes has his back to the splendour behind him. It is with a great sense of himself that he seems to feel the presence of everything behind him without having to validate it with his eyes. It is there, on his land.

Leaning on his right hand, his right elbow on his right thigh, Rhodes contemplates the wide vista in front of him, below him, facing east. He takes it all in, in a leisurely if thoughtful pose. His left hand, hanging casually over the left armrest and side panel of his chair, holds a scroll loosely. The manner of his clutch is in his gaze. He seems to have suspended reading momentarily to ponder. He will get back to it, when he needs to.

A concrete balustrade just below Rhodes allows you to stand there, your back to him. You too can assume his pose and everything behind him. Then you can see fully what he himself and Jameson Hall behind him can see. For a while you might even experience the gaze of contentment: there, spread before you, is the world you had a hand in shaping.

You and Rhodes see a great deal from that balustrade. You will watch rugby games just below. Farther down, you will see the Middle Campus, once dominated by the Kramer Law Building, now with two newer structures, the Masingene and the School of Economics buildings. Your eyes will move across to the left, attracted by the twin multi-storied residences, Leo Marquard and Tugwell.

Effortlessly, your eyes will leave campus and take in the power station between Pinelands suburb and KwaLanga township. If you have a longer memory you will remember that once there were two cooling towers over there. Those towers and a railway line separated white Pinelands and black KwaLanga, despite the two suburbs' proximity to each other. How many citizens of these suburbs, you may ask, will have stood together in the voters' lines in April 1994?

With a slight movement of your face to the right, you will see the N2 highway. A further movement of your neck will reveal more of the wide vista of the Cape Flats and a refurbished landmark: the Athlone Stadium. It will remind you of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, when billions around the world knew for sure there was a city called Cape Town, and that where you stand was a part of that city. Farther beyond, you may see aircraft take off and land at Cape Town International Airport, where soccer fans from around the world will have landed. And then well beyond but within the reach of your eyes, you will see another mountain range: the Helderberg. The illusion of its closeness occurs at the expense of a vast False Bay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean, just beyond the airport.

Although you and Rhodes command a view, the vista before you is too far and widespread to show its imperfections. At some time past you may have read about, heard about, or seen smoke rising from rampant fires in the informal settlements of KwaLanga along the highway to and from the airport; and from farther afield, in the townships of Gugulethu and Crossroads. You might have contemplated lives charred and belongings incinerated, families traumatised; and you might recall the clamours of tragedy in the newspapers, on radio and television, of political accusation and counter-accusation, and stories of poverty and wealth deposited on the deliberative tables of commissions of inquiry.

From there at the balustrade, with Rhodes behind you, you contemplate the imperfections of life beyond in the vista, and ponder on the perfect symmetry that immediately surrounds you.

You and Rhodes command a view.

If the treasure of UCT as architecture is telescopic, most of the treasures in this book are in the realm of microscopy. But something else exists midway: another treasure, not easy to think of as such. It is the treasure of human community, probably the most intangible of treasures. It cannot be archived for retrieval. But it can be experienced, or remembered through memory – sometimes recorded, sometimes told through pliable anecdote, passed from one generation of staff and students to the next.

The story is told that black students studying medicine at UCT during racist times were never allowed anywhere near the cadavers of white people. In the same story, both white and black students wrote the same examination, but never graduated together. It was a long time before the awkwardness and discomposure of this historic fact was confronted with courageous dialogue by the Faculty of Health Sciences, in the 1990s.

The national context in which this happened was the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The June 1977 hearings in the Health Sciences Faculty were a part of special sector hearings around the country. They enabled the Faculty to face up to its past through disclosure and acknowledgement, as a path towards reconciliation. Through such intensive interactions, and their painful intimacies of self-reflection, the faculty was able to confront its systematic allegiance to apartheid ideology as part of the role played by higher education institutions in perpetuating discrimination.

The story of the invisibility of black students and a small number of black staff on campus, and of white complicity in it, both poignantly pondered in the Faculty of Health Sciences hearings, revealed the undercurrent of moments in the history of UCT campus life when the overwhelming visibility of white staff and students reduced their capacity for critical self-reflection. This story delivers the message that there can be severe limitations to the reflective capacity of dominant majorities, that such majorities can become insensitive to the negative impact of their dominance, and that these influences on their behaviour can render them complicit with their governments in the passing and enactment of bad laws.

Of course, we cannot miss the irony that the dominant majority on the UCT campus was a part of the dominant minority in the national sphere. Thus, the campus community shared the oppressive impact of the government that ministered to and protected its way of life.

From such messages come lessons of history without which a future value system could not be conceived. We learn that even pain can become an unexpected treasure in the evolution of human sensibility. We learn that treasures are not always pleasant; that they can be painful too, but no less treasured. This is as true of institutions as it can be for nations.

There is a treasure that both staff and students of UCT appreciate daily, or endure often, without being aware of it. This treasure may be to them like water is to fish: a given reality of life. It is that UCT is a contoured campus.

For most of it, you climb or descend. Students may walk from residences along Main Road in Rondebosch, climbing all the way to the Engineering and Science buildings just below Ring Road, the western perimeter road of Upper Campus. Later, they will walk down. In these contoured conditions, lateral movements between north and south may offer horizontal moments of rest. Climbers and descenders might look forward to these moments as subliminal rewards. If rest is the easiest reward to note, there is another more valuable: the experience of community.

Rest may become an occasion or opportunity for congregation. Congregations become moments of encounter. Frequent encounters give birth to community. Freed from the purposeful climb or descent, students unavoidably meet at the Jameson Hall steps. They are then themselves contoured in their groupings, up and down the steps.

'Who are you?' is the question congregants at the Jammie steps might wish to ask, but perhaps seldom do. They first have to sit next to someone for a while before they make the attempt.

'Here you come,' is a thought when friends or lovers rendezvous after having been intolerably separated by a class.

Were these questions ever asked over the years when white students were a dominant majority? Or did they get to be asked with greater intensity when numbers of black students began to increase on campus? Even dominant majorities have internal segregations that deny them an undifferentiated identity.

The easiest congregations may occur between 'birds of a feather'. But in an institution under pressure to 'transform', such congregations are seldom allowed to rest. Who has to make the move and respond to the question 'who are you?' Will the white group, members of the majority campus population, move to joining a black group, members of a minority group, and risk being shunned, or accused of imposing and patronising behaviour? Or will it be the other way round, as black students risk being seen as seeking proximity to their 'superior' colleagues?

Community as treasure takes time to coagulate. The mistakes and misunderstandings of first impressions first have to give way to trust, itself a product of time. But at some point, someone has to take the initiative. The north-south aspect of University Avenue, with the Jameson Hall steps as its centre, offers a vibrant space of human concourse, potentially generative of new relationships. Generations of students have congregated there. It is the only place where they can 'chill' and unwittingly have Cecil John Rhodes's unobstructed view of the world spread out below. From there, after 'chilling', they go north, south, east, west to their classes and laboratories, or to the library and its archives, where they can ponder its various collections.

Life within the architectural symmetry that is the University of Cape Town may seem impossible to reduce to a single principle of coherence. In the day-to-day life of an institution, architectural symmetry cannot be a reliable point of reference. It is too fixed. The dimensions of buildings offer only a protected space.

For that space to give of itself in abundance, the symmetry has to give up the strictures of its dimensions to the multiplicity of talented human beings within its confines, each of whom is a passionate centre of creativity.

So the points of reference of a university may very well be in all those people, each and every one of them, gathered there to pursue a purpose they have found, or one that found them, or one that emerged from within them. Each passionate member of the academy seeks to achieve a detail of perfection that is pursued into existence whenever the individual, seized by the imperfections of the world out there, commits to bridging the gap between an imperfect world and human efforts to discover or create perfection.

Collections

In the symmetrical, contoured space of an academy, collections may represent asymmetrical moments of creative intimacy, focused in their purposefulness. Some items of individual collections hang on walls inside buildings. Or they may stand indoors like the sculpture of Sarah Baartman, whose tortured life is expressed by Willie Bester in bicycle drive-trains, bolts and metal plates.

Or they may be part of congregated installations, such as those found at the Irma Stern Museum. Others require that those who daily climb or descend on campus develop an active awareness of wherever they may be in the symmetrical space of their campus. They will discover that there are surprises as they go up and down, or walk north-south laterally.

Some architectural surprises require the walker to participate in their creation. Walkers are invited to frame portions of a building, abstracting it from the whole to contemplate it: a corner, a play of shadows somewhere; reflections on windows, a detail of design on a chimney above, framed through aloes on the ground; surprising metal designs along corridors. Two buildings coming together with a piece of sculpture between them, such as Rhodes framed in the centre between two pillars. In such ways, the entire campus may come alive for the walker who is aware.

Perhaps the building of human community as a treasure requires a conscious institutional effort to spread community awareness of the wanderings and brief meanderings that need to be undertaken through the campus to encounter and experience it as a spatial environment of ceaseless discovery, puzzlement and wonder. But to bind the community with a spirit of 'transformation' requires more.

A sefika in SeSotho (isivivanein isiZulu) is a kind of travellers' landmark. It is a cairn of stones, created over time by travellers where pathways meet, or at some prominent spot along the way. It is customary that travellers who come across a sefika add their stone to the cairn. Doing so is believed to bring them luck.

Perhaps the most famous sefika appears in the account by French missionary Thomas Arbousset of King Moshoeshoe's expedition from Thaba-Bosio to the sources of the Malibamatso River in the year 1840. UCT, then the South African College, was only eleven years old.

'We left together for Makosane. Along the path a sefika came into view. It was a cairn of stones erected by travellers. Following the custom of the country, each of us added also a small stone to it.'

A sefika is a monument created by travellers unknown to one another, yet connected by something that marks their having once been present at a particular spot in the world.

In journeys of knowledge, that list of travellers is endless. Some leave collections of their work along the way. Some collect the work of others who have gone before them. Archives are wonderful places to find them. Perhaps the archive, the place where knowledge collections are found, is the ultimate sefika. But each individual stone placed in the archive is itself made up of many stones. So we may have stones within stones in a microscopic sequence.

Collections represent focused and persistent compulsions. They bore into their subject at the same time as they expand it. Each accretion of the fact or detail adds to the subject's breadth and depth simultaneously.

A collection represents endurance and steadfast pursuit. It may be the still pursuit of intense mental inquiry, or it may necessitate spatial journeys of the kind that linguist Lucy Lloyd, artist Irma Stern and photographer David Goldblatt undertook. The arduous effort to see, experience and record becomes far more than devotion, or even obligation. It becomes a consecration of self; a giving of oneself beyond measure. Being and quest and revelation coalesce into a life. It fulfils itself.

Such is the endurance of places of learning. They are infinitely discoverable through lives that keep being opened up by collections, and through those who want to enter the lives within them with enquiry. Collections make absent lives present and available through scholarly effort.

The endurance that goes into the creation of a collection translates into the endurance of its worth. It is most probably this quality that draws scholars to it. It embodies the attraction of what can be found and revealed in it, each visit promising the yield of a new experience and the prospect of making it available to the learning public.

How does the past become available? First by being seen. Second by providing a point of reflection through which one can marvel at past ingenuity and endurance. Consider, for example, the quiet and plain – though sometimes complex – ingenuity of musical instruments no longer commonly available. The section of this book on Kirby's Musical Collection contains an enticing note on the ingungu, a musical instrument described as a 'friction drum': 'The ceremonies at which it was originally used have practically disappeared', such as a ceremony that formed part of a wedding.

In the new democracy born in 1994, we can witness, across many African cultures, the return of traditions and rituals suppressed by colonial dictum. Some, such as the Zulu bull-killing, ukweshwama, have elicited public controversy. Colonial past and contemporary modernity collide in a space of centuries of dialogical silence. Eradication took away any opportunities for modification.

Like a recessive gene, memory retains firm contours of ritual. Appropriate conditions will resuscitate the rituals in their remembered state. Initially, the moment of resuscitation will engender a space of noise. Incrementally, it can evolve into a space of shared understanding.

I have heard of the Zulu trumpet, icilongo, but have never seen it. Having seen it in this book in Kirby's collection of musical instruments, described by Kirby as an instrument 'played by young men going courting, as well as en route to weddings', I now want to hear it. What journeys might I need to undertake to do so? The desire to hear it is not only enticing, but also decidedly alluring. Silenced though the icilongo might be, Kirby's collection has retained its presence, one that can be displayed from time to time.

There is also the 'presencing' effect of the Bleek and Lloyd Archive, which evokes even deeper resonances. The historical silencing of Bushman languages and cultures has a commemorative date: 6 April 1652, the day when three ships under the command of Jan van Riebeeck docked at a place that would one day be known as Cape Town. Thus began in the Cape a system of life by which to encounter, gradually replace, then capture, absorb, yoke, silence and eradicate what it encountered.

The purposeful history of this system in the southernmost part of Africa began at what was to be known as the Fort of Good Hope. The Bushman people it encountered would be on their way to being 'regarded as living relics of a once universal lifestyle, a mirror on the past' instead of being experienced as living a way of life as 'a common humanity'.

Few scholarly books evoke as much reverence and affection as Pippa Skotnes's Claim to the Country: The Archive of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek. Through the archive depicted in this book we can 'hear' the !Xam Bushmen speak, in their silence. We can see them in pictures. We are affected by the poetry of their reflections.

Without announcement, these reflections begin the book with a story. There follow envelopes, pictures of people, and written ink notes, until you happen onto the table of contents. And then, surprisingly, a dedication in poetry to the Bleek and Lloyd families. And then more poetry, which can only be described as the poetry of living, capturing in age-old tweets the intimate flows of human thought in the very process of living ('I am the man lying, starving, thinking of stealing sheep'). This section ends with a picture of archival boxes on a library or archival trolley. The rest of the book then begins: a treasure of scholarship.

In this book, the journey through the archive leads us into surprising intimacies between art and science, in the botanical 'presencing' of the Harry Bolus plant collection. This ecological treasure provokes constant reminding of the importance of our natural environment and its perpetual tussle with 'progress' and 'modernisation'.

Much of the 'presencing' of the photographic archive on these pages pushes the archive towards the present, and therefore more towards presentation than the deep textures of 'presencing' memory. Unlike the photographs from the Bleek and Lloyd archive, which affect me with a sense of discovery, there is a contemporariness about the photographic archive that evokes a sense of recognition.

If the poetry of the Bushmen conveys and connects deeply felt and thought moments of living a life, the photographic archive evokes scenes of life from the 1950s to as recently as 2013. They convey a kaleidoscope of moments that humanise, through captured emotion, the arid social space of apartheid society.

Fleeting moments of emotion are immortalised in these photographs, emotion which was denied in the larger world. Pictures of intimacy between white 'masters' and black 'boys' and 'girls' were not permitted. David Goldblatt's photograph titled The farmer's son with his nursemaid on the farm Heimverberg near Nietverdiend in the Marico Bushveld, Transvaal, 1964 evokes genuine, mutually protective affection between a white boy and his black nursemaid, an intimacy perhaps to be forever denied in the harsh world beyond them. The genuineness of such feelings, aroused in different settings, becomes a human common denominator in a world that officially denied such a leveller.

And so the archive, and enduring sefika, cut through time with a message of many human stories. Each traveller who has added a stone offers a lifetime of work to the monument of knowledge. The institution that houses it signifies the choices it has made by which it seeks to be identified. By your archive, so shall we know you.

Human society has the gift of expression, captured in moments of insight. 'I am /kaggen, I create the world by dreaming it.' Each moment then becomes potentially and universally understandable, and has the capacity to emancipate.

As you stand at the balustrade, Cecil John Rhodes behind you, consider that in 2013 the university organised a forum to discuss the theme 'Is UCT racist?' This was the third annual forum on matters of race in South Africa, which began in 2010. A part of the discussion in the third forum is captured in an on-line daily publication.

A former black student submits: 'We were made painfully aware that this university was not built for us.' Several examples of black student distress follow. They include aversion to being interpreted as needy: 'If I walk around UCT barefoot, people think I don't own shoes.' This and similar accounts culminate in a rhetorical question which was met with 'loud applause'. 'If UCT is not racist, why is Cecil John Rhodes's statue still there?'

'What do you want me to do?' a white student asks. The question conveys desperation. It may tell of the depths of disorientation among a once historically dominant white majority now reduced to a minority below 50% on campus. More than a call for instruction, it is a plea for intimate engagement and guidance in a space of uncertainty, and even confusion. The question is unlikely to have been asked when black students were invisible on campus in the 1950s. Then the white campus majority had the initiative. Today, any exercise of initiative has to be negotiated.

What has changed decisively are the off-campus sources of validation that dominant on-campus groups could call on for political and cultural authority. But my sense is that the degree of self-confidence of the new numerical black majority has yet to be as high as that of the white majority's at its best times. If that be the case, then both white and black students on campus cannot be entirely confident of their respective political, cultural and academic moorings in the larger society. If the larger society has to find itself in a transitional public space that is in constant flux, so does the campus community face the challenge of finding new treasures within itself. How will the character of the new campus public respond to the outer public that is itself evolving?

More significantly, will the new black campus majority, bound to grow and consolidate, have any lessons to learn from the behaviour of a once-powerful dominant majority with a history of insensitivity towards helpless minorities on campus? How will the new black majority translate its numerical ascendance into cultural and academic value?

'What do you want me to do?' The question can evoke cynicism or superiority from the new majority, or the challenge of leadership. The last promises new treasures.

If we insert a panorama of distance on the campus debate we have just gleaned, we might find something about the narrative of the archive in this book which opens it to a perspective of power that may not have been easy for the debaters to visualise.

First was the power which, since 1652, silenced all others it encountered. This power has been in decline since 1994. It has tons of recorded history to describe and characterise it. Second is the ascendant power, which since 1994 has sought to reverse many of the effects of more than three hundred years of history.

Change is located more in the flux than in a list of things achieved. On the list are steps taken rather than destinations. In the flux it is easy to mistake stops for destinations. Despite the list of things done, the ascendant power still does not display a sense of achievement. It is inclined to point out what has been taken away and reclaimed, rather than what it is poised to create and sustain over decades and centuries, on the base of steps carefully taken.

Cecil John Rhodes, sitting on his weathered chair, is now a factor of history rather than an active determinant of the future. While fall-out from him may not be ignored, the fact is he is unable to threaten any desired future. His removal from his vantage position will not eliminate the fact of the gift of his land, however much that ownership may itself be questioned. Some outcomes of history establish a balance of circumstances with a large measure of common interest among the very contestants in that history. An artificial tempering with that balance might be injurious to all.

Cecil John Rhodes might remain sitting there, devoid of the aura of triumph, lonely and in search of an interlocutor. The thought of placing a statue of Nelson Mandela where JM Solomon's line of symmetry might pass equidistantly between the two large historical figures might be tempting. But this could be an artificial balancing act on one particular environment: a mere campus.

Beyond the campus, statues of Mandela have already mushroomed around the country. Thus his presence on campus need not only be in the form of a physical, spatial adjustment. Rather, it can resonate with new iconographies of new values, built onto and into the campus, in both visible and invisible (yet no less present) ways.

To face up to and go beyond reservations around Rhodes's legacy requires spatial and value-laden infusions that are purposeful, yet restrained by deep self-confidence: something more organic in its freshness, and which could, from time to time, like Solomon's line of symmetry, leap across the fynbos to the forehead of Devil's Peak with a new sense of presence.

Indeed, the UCT archive with all its treasured holdings has inherently worked counter to hegemonic history through a concerted 'presencing' of its silenced parts. Without being fully aware, we may be passing through the relatively early stages of a subversive moment yet to be fully cognisant of itself.

Consider that the increasing trend of a 'black' presence on campus is irreversible. It is an expression of the presence and authority of the changing world beyond the academy. Any threatening aspect of Rhodes's presence on campus is certain to be eroded the more it is seen simply as an artefact to ponder. In time, the majority of students may pass him by without a hostile thought, noting his philanthropy not necessarily with gratitude, but most probably with critical acknowledgement. They, the inheritors of the archive, will be the invisible statute of Nelson Mandela, completely present on a campus that will think of them only as treasured citizens.

This piece was written by former Vice-Chancellor and Emeritus Professor Njabulo Ndebele as an introduction to Viewpoints: The University of Cape Town and its treasures (edited by Paul Weinberg and first published by UCT Press in November 2013).

Transformation goes beyond issues of race. This is the message a group of student organisations wants to bring home with a series of events. The first of these, organised by the Student Representative Council (SRC) and RainbowUCT in collaboration with Ubunye and the Youth Empowerment Project, is a fun day on Saturday 21 March 2015.

Female students recently had moustaches drawn on their faces, while male students sported red lipstick at the promotion of events under the Transform UCT umbrella.

According to Thato Pule, the SRC chair of transformation and social responsiveness, the fun day will be held on the Green Mile and starts at 09h30: "We have invited high school students to participate with us in various indigenous games. The event will serve as an outreach, as UCT students have the opportunity to answer the learners' questions about student life and hopefully start them on the road to being mentored."

A picnic aimed to integrate the UCT student body is planned for the next Saturday 28 March2015. The theme of the picnic is "gender bending" and speaks not only to integration along colour lines, but also gender.

#LetMeDefineMyself, a campaign being run by the SRC transformation and social responsiveness sub-committee, confronts students with questions of identity – whether race, religion, sexuality, culture, gender, sex or disability – and how it's defined and shaped.

On Thursday 19 March 2015, the SRC challenged students to imagine what it is like to exist outside of the gender binary. Have a look at the Gender Benders Facebook album of students who got a makeover on Jammie Plaza.

Story by Abigail Calata. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Please cite Gerda Kruger Executive Director: Communication & Marketing Department at UCT

The University of Cape Town urges all students and staff to respect one another and exercise care in their manner of expression. We condemn any action where people are intimidated and urge all to be sensitive to other people's views.

University management has taken note of the statement prepared by the SA Union of Jewish Students at UCT with regard to the use of posters of the swastika and Adolf Hitler's face by protesters.

UCT also takes note of the statement issued by Black Monday, which includes an apology for posting pictures of the swastika and Hitler on campus. Black Monday's statement explains the group's reason for using these images and contextualises the pictures and their use in the campaign to remove the Rhodes statue.

Media release issued by Pat Lucas, Manager: UCT Communications and Media Liaison Department. Email: pat.lucas@uct.ac.za

UCT plans to make a day available to hold discussions on campus about the controversial statue of Cecil John Rhodes on upper campus, Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price told protesters on Friday afternoon.

Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price addresses protesters on Friday.

Some 300 students, staff and contract staff gathered to protest in front of Bremner Building, the heart of UCT's administration, to demand the statue be removed and that a date be given for that removal.

The statue has been the focus of over two weeks of student protest on campus during which time the university's transformation plan – and the reported slow pace of progress – has come under fire.

Price said he applauded the students for bringing the issue to the forefront, "so that we all understand that history".

He said broad consultation on the issue was important so that "no-one would be left behind".

SRC president Ramabina Mahapa amid students who occupied sections of the Bremner Building after Friday's protest march.

Addressing the question of why the issue of the Rhodes statue had blown up at this point of UCT's history, Price said it had never been addressed formally at the Council, Senate or other high-level meetings.

"It's happening now because we've achieved a critical mass of people who think the time has come [to deal with this]."

As Price was speaking about the university's broader consultative process of engagement around the statue, the SRC led a group of chanting, singing students moved into the Bremner Building foyer for an overnight sit-in.

Story by Helen Swingler. Images by Michael Hammond.

The Cecil John Rhodes statue has sparked diverse responses from the staff and student body over the last two years. This has reached a climax over the past two weeks. A catalyst of this call for the removal of the statue has been one student who protested on his own, this was followed by student movements which have arisen and have subsequently been supported by student organisations including, but not limited to, the Students' Representative Council (SRC) as well as some progressive staff unions and bodies such as the National Education Health & Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) Western Cape which has released a statement supporting this call as well as the broader issues of transformation which this call is symbolic of.

A lively debate took place during Student Parliament on Thursday 19 March 2015, at Kramer Law Building. (Photo by Michael Hammond.)

In light of this the Student Parliament Management Committee (SPMC) decided to propose that the Student Parliament (SP) decide on an official stance on whether the statue should be removed. It must be noted that the SP is the official structure for debate in Student Governance at UCT and is representative of all student structures at UCT including the SRC, Societies, Faculty Councils, Residences, Day Students, International Students, Sports and Development Agencies. The sitting took place on 19 March at 18:30 in the Kramer Law Building.

After hours of robust discussion, debate and contentious points raised, a motion was proposed 'for the support of the removal of the Cecil John Rhodes statue'. This was then put to a vote. The result was that the House overwhelmingly, 80%, supported the motion. This is in the context of both member and observer, who were staff and students, attendance being the highest it has been in a number of years. It was also decided that the Student Parliament will be having a special sitting on Institutional Racism. The broader university community will be invited to this sitting.

It is important to note that the statue is simply a symbolic physical representation of institutional racism. Issues like the transformation of the curriculum, which is Eurocentric and undermines black voices, as well as staff demographic transformation are at stake. It must also not be forgotten that there are many axes of oppression and that black female workers face a great deal of oppression. These workers are often overlooked by many of us as simply appendages to the institution rather than human beings with stories, struggles and ambition.

It is deeply problematic that when individuals criticize white supremacy they are accused of discriminating against white people and being 'racist'. All systems of oppression where an historical, cultural and structural hierarchy is imposed must be eradicated and it is our collective responsibility, as human beings, to fight for the demise of such systems regardless of whether such systems advantage or disadvantage us.

We will no longer accept the terms of engagement, on issues of transformation specifically, being dictated to us. The management of the University is often guilty of this. The power dynamics of the university are such that it is in a context of a structure which perpetuates racism. It is time for the management of the university to listen. It is time for them to realise that we are not simply bodies that exist to regurgitate information and ways of thinking. They need to realise that we are co-creators of knowledge and that they can often learn a great deal from the individuals which they are supposed to serve.

These individuals are now taking a stand.

Mr Keenan Hendrickse, Speaker: Student Parliament

At a transformation seminar planned for Monday 16 March 2015, focused on symbolism, heritage and signage, SRC President Ramabina Mahapa gave the following address before leading a student walk-out.

Students protesting at the transformation seminar scheduled for Monday 16 March 2015.

Thina sizwe, thina sizwe esinsundu, (We the nation, we the brown nation)
Sikhalela izwe lethu (We cry for our land)
Elathathwa ngabamhlophe (That was taken by the white people)
Mabayeke kumhlaba wethu. (May they leave our land alone)
Abantwana be-Afrika (The children of Africa)
Bakhalela i-Afrika (They cry for Africa)

Greetings to the whites and the non-whites; this were the words of a Ghanaian student who was addressing us while sitting by the Jameson stairs. She saw the frowns on our faces after her utterance and promptly said that that was how she felt when she first arrived to UCT. She felt that UCT did not speak to her and thus she couldn't identify with the institution.

UCT's institutional culture and symbolism is centred on a white, westernised, middle class and heterosexual male experience. Culture, according to Professor Clifford Geertz, is the "historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life".

Instead of true integration, black students are being absorbed into the white hegemonic culture of the institution. Thus denying the contributions of their cultural capital in shaping the university ethos. In the words of Stephen Bantu Biko; "At the heart of true integration is the provision for each man, each to rise and attain the envisioned self. Each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by another." Black people reject the notion of just being mere appendages to a white society.

As the Students' Representative Council of 2015, through true representation, we seek to drive a stronger transformation agenda by influencing and reshaping social consciousness and institutional culture to promote equity, inclusivity, sustainability and academic excellence.

Our vision is "Striving for a sustainable and progressively transformative Afrocentric university."

Whose heritage are we preserving?

What about the Khoi and the San? Who former President Thabo Mbeki described as "desolate souls [who] haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people, perished in the result."

Who created the symbolism, for whom and for what?

For too long the narrative at this university has silenced the voices of black students and black history. This university continues to celebrate, in its institutional symbolism, figures in South African history, who are undisputedly white supremacists.

Who are the keepers of our memories?

"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots." Marcus Garvey

Sons and daughters of Africa, who are the keepers of our memories and the guardians of our souls?

Will our children ever hear of the great black men and women who contributed to UCT's development? Will they know of Archie Mafeje (who was a political activist and professor of anthropology and sociology of development), AC Jordan (who was a novelist, literary historian and intellectual pioneer of African studies in South Africa), Hamilton Naki (a laboratory assistant to Christiaan Barnard), Harold Cressy (who graduated in 1910 with a Bachelor of Arts degree at the South African College, now known as UCT), Richard Rive (who graduated with a BA degree and was an outstanding writer), Professor Mahmood Mamdani and Fikile Charles Bam (who studied law at UCT in the 1960s). All these have done incredibly in their respective fields, yet they and many more have received either no recognition or insignificant [recognition] from UCT.

Transforming the signage and symbolism of the institution will enhance and enlarge the meaning of social change. Our intent is to enhance social cohesion in the transforming of learning and living spaces by employing symbolic markers of change. Signage and symbolism has a powerful impact, they have been employed by nationalists in mobilising and maintaining a national identity. It is not the particular moments but the everyday displaying of the flag that reminds people who they are and that mobilises a people at times when it is needed.

In our continued conciliation and transformation efforts, we should fashion a new song that shall take the formal procession at UCT's graduation ceremonies to their seats, instead of the current practice of singing a Latin song that has no relevance and which no students and staff identify with and find pride in. UCT along with other universities exists within a changing society – this implies that [we] should not remain rigid in [our] traditions.

Institutions are not carved in stone and innovation occurs by instituting new practices and meanings.

In this trying time, I am reminded of the words of former President Thabo Mbeki: "Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times. As we said before, we should never become despondent because the weather is bad nor should we turn triumphalist because the sun shines."

Frantz Fanon said, "When we revolt, it's not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe"

The winds of change are blowing within UCT. All that needs to be done from our side has set sail. Our institution should cease saying, "We have done much for transformation". Undeniably, it is our very own black brothers and sisters who we advocated to occupy these positions of leadership, thinking that they will change the system and raise issues of transformation from within, but I stand before you today in the midst of disappointment.

We have reached an impasse with the university leadership and are fatigued at asking for meaningful transformation. We have begged, growled, and pleaded with management. NO MORE!! This university cannot continue with its business as normal. It in that spirit I cannot participate in this discussion.

Amandla!

Photo by Michael Hammond

A small group of students remained in the Bremner Building on Monday morning, continuing Friday afternoon's peaceful protest and subsequent occupation of the Archie Mafeje Room in the building.

Students protesting in Bremner Building on Friday afternoon.

On Friday some 300 students, staff and contract staff gathered to protest in front of Bremner, to demand the Rhodes statue be removed and that a date be given for its removal.

"We are impressed with the commitment of the members of the Student Representative Council (SRC) and their determination to make a difference," said executive director of the Communication and Marketing Department, Gerda Kruger.

"Our doors remain open and we have urged the SRC to come to the table. They are a most important voice in the next week as the rest of UCT, and all members of the extended UCT community over the years, consider and express their opinions about what should happen to the Rhodes statue."

Kruger said more than 700 people had shared their views on the statue and on the broader issue of transformation. (You can add to this by emailing your views to haveyoursay@uct.ac.za)

The UCT community has been invited to an assembly in Jameson Hall on Wednesday 25 March, to discuss their thoughts and views on the Rhodes statue.

"It is through these discussions that our collective wisdom on the matter is shaped," Kruger added. "These debates will inform our thinking and will further shape our emerging proposal to Council.

"We believe the open discussions and sharing of very opposing and divisive views in a peaceful, albeit sometimes loud and uncomfortable space, is what is unique about UCT and this is what is necessary in making sustainable, meaningful changes."

Photo by Michael Hammond

Russell Ally, executive director of the Department of Alumni and Development and a UCT alumnus, puts the current #RhodesMustFall debate on campus in context: highlighting how critical this robust debate is in shaping students' understanding of their place in the world, how history is currently being written, and a shared future being built.

"Until the lion has its own storyteller, the hunter will always be the hero of the story." A bronze lion stationed at the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town looks out over the city. Photo by Kim Stone, and accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

The Rhodes statue captures in essence many of the underlying challenges of transformation that UCT faces.

It represents the origins of the university in white privilege and black exclusion. Black people would not have erected a statue of Cecil John Rhodes if they had been part of the university from the beginning.

The history of how the statue came to be positioned where it is today is interesting as a historical account, but the meaning is to be found in that old African proverb that says if the lion and not the hunter wrote the history of their encounter, it would be a different history that would be written.

"Until the lion has its own storyteller, the hunter will always be the hero of the story."

We can choose to focus on the excrement that the student threw at the statue to discredit the frustration that has been felt over years about how the story of UCT has being told – in its buildings, its names, its statues, its institutional culture – or we can begin to embrace a different narrative that integrates the lion into the story in a more humanising way.

On the steps where the Rhodes statue still stands, boards have been put up to encourage students to express their views on the future of the statue. Should it stay? Should it be moved? What should be done with it? Where should it go to?

The space has now become a place of debate and reflection. Earnest, robust discussion is taking place. Students across the racial divide agree and disagree with each other on what its fate should be. They quickly see that the significance of this discussion goes beyond the immediate future of the statue. It is about the future of their country. About how they are going to live together long after this particular incident is a distant, fading memory.

And we can berate them for wasting their time when they should be studying and focusing on the reason why they are at university – to get their degrees.

But this will probably be the most important education that they ever receive. For in a few years after they graduate, they will have forgotten most of what they learnt in the lecture rooms. In fact, they would be encouraged to unlearn most of it in any case because knowledge would have changed and moved on.

But this experience will be indelibly etched on their memories and will influence in profound ways how they take their place in the world.

And unlike in Syria, where bombs are falling and young lives are being blown apart. Where the futures of entire generations are being irrevocably destroyed. Unlike in the Middle East where walls are being erected and suicide bombers are walking into places of learning. Unlike in Nigeria where villages are being raided and young girls robbed on any chance of a dignified life.

Under the shadow of the foreboding presence that the Rhodes statue still continues to cast over our history, no blows have been struck. Nothing has been destroyed. No lives have been lost. No walls erected.

Instead we have a contestation of ideas. We have a marketplace of different solutions offered to problems that have bedevilled our university for many years.

We have conscious, engaged students prepared to grapple with what it means to build a different kind of South Africa. To create a more inclusive UCT sensitive to the hurts and pain of the past, but confident of building a shared future.

We can choose what we decide to focus on: the excrement that is actually symbolic of the mess we are making of the democracy we fought so hard to achieve. Or the promise of what kind of country we want to live in by how we tell our stories to the generations that will come after us.

Opinion piece by Russell Ally, executive director of the Department of Alumni and Development and a UCT alumnus.

A major neurosciences initiative has been launched at UCT's Faculty of Health Sciences in partnership with Groote Schuur academic hospital complex. The Neurosciences Initiative will bring together clinicians and researchers from a wide range of specialities, fostering collaboration in the treatment of a number of neurological disorders, including stroke, central nervous system infection and trauma, among others.

J Block at Groote Schuur Hospital, where the Neurosciences Initiative will be headquartered.

An ideal site has been identified at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The facility will be developed to include the academic departments of key neuroscience disciplines, laboratories, a neuroimaging facility, and specialised, multidisciplinary clinics, which will complement and enhance the existing clinical activities at Groote Schuur.

The CEO of Groote Schuur Hospital, Dr Bhavna Patel said: "Groote Schuur Hospital is proud to be a part of this initiative in providing a clinical neuroscience service to its patients. We would like to thank the university for the contribution to this hospital facility, which will be world-renowned in clinical service, teaching and research. Our partnership can only grow in strength going forward."

The initiative will advance care and transform research and teaching in the neurosciences in Africa by drawing together an array of expertise in neurosurgery, neurology, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry and neuroimaging. It will also partner with other disciplines such as engineering, the arts and disability studies, creating a facility where patients can access the highest quality of care and the most cutting-edge treatment options.

Interim dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Prof Gregory Hussey said: "Neurosciences is the new frontier of medical research at UCT. Through this initiative, we aim to make a contribution not only in South Africa, but in Africa and globally. The initiative will address the needs of our continent's people and open new ways for Africa to contribute to the global body of knowledge in this rapidly advancing field."

The vision of the Neurosciences Initiative has been made reality through a R25-million financial donation from UCT alumnus David Barnes and his wife Ursel Barnes, and fundraising efforts will continue in order to finance the development of this state-of-the-art facility.

Head of the Division of Neurosurgery, Prof Graham Fieggen said: "The majority of people suffering from common neurological disorders live in low and middle-income countries. There is a need to understand these disorders within the context of our own continent. We cannot simply import models from the Global North."

UCT Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof Danie Visser said: "UCT is excited that this initiative will integrate the laboratory, clinic and community, so that clinicians and researchers can collaborate to offer rapid translation of contemporary treatment options."

The launch of the Neurosciences Initiative in Cape Town on 23 March was hosted by UCT Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price and attended by the University of Oxford Vice-Chancellor Prof Andrew Hamilton and a delegation of leading researchers from both universities. UCT researchers have been meeting with their University of Oxford counterparts in Cape Town to discuss a range of collaborations that could make valuable inroads in research, from neurosciences and malaria, to land reform and HIV.

With HIV and TB taking the lion's share of South Africa's medical resources, diseases like cervical cancer take a back seat. This is despite the fact that it's the second commonest cancer among women in the developing world and responsible for 85% of cancer cases and deaths. But the new South African Medical Research Council's Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre hopes to change that. The centre's new head, UCT's Professor Lynette Denny, spoke with Abigail Calata.

Prof Lynette Denny, head of the new South African Medical Research Council's Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre.

What is the situation with regards cervical cancer in South Africa?

In South Africa it's estimated that approximately 6 000 women develop cervical cancer every year and over 80% of these women are black. This is very much a disease linked to equity of access to healthcare, and the high incidence of cervical cancer in black South African women is a reflection of the lack of access to screening. Cervical cancer is preventable through Pap smear screening but this has historically not been available to the majority of black or uninsured South African women or those living in low- to middle-income countries.

What is the importance to UCT of this cancer centre?

Cancer as a subject has been very poorly funded and researched in most South African universities, including UCT, largely due to the overwhelming burden of communicable diseases such as TB and HIV, and diseases related to maternal mortality and nutrition. However, as we transition and our population ages, cancer has become an increasingly important public health disease and for UCT to be awarded this grant is a great opportunity to start multidisciplinary, cutting-edge research.

What kind of research will be done at the centre?

The focus will be on gynaecological cancers, but the key is that we want to work from the laboratory to the bedside, in other words we want to work collaboratively with both clinicians and basic scientists.

Which other members of Faculty of Health Sciences will be working at the centre, and in what capacity?

There are 14 key members in the team and each has their own team. These vary in size, but we imagine the centre will provide research opportunities for some 30 people.

How many different disciplines will be represented in the centre?

The main groups will be immunology, virology, pathology, microbiology, gynaecology oncology, radiation oncology, molecular pathology, and biochemistry.

Will the centre be based at Groote Schuur Hospital?

Yes, but we have a collaboration with Walter Sisulu University and Frere and Cecilia Makiwane Hospitals in the Eastern Cape.

What will Groote Schuur's involvement with the centre entail?

The centre will function around the GSH radiation oncology hub and the Faculty of Health Sciences.

What does it mean to you personally to head up this centre?

It's a huge challenge. I am a clinician and working closely with basic scientists is going to require a lot of adjusting and learning.

What is the connection between the different types of cancer that the three SAMRC centres will concentrate on?

The three centres will focus on different cancers. The centre at the University of the Witwatersrand will focus on solid tumours, such as breast cancers, while the unit in Durban – which is not yet a centre but is receiving seed funding – will focus on gastrointestinal tract cancers.

What was the process to select the institutes hosting the centres?

National and international expert reviewers screened the applications. The most important requirements were strong leadership, experience, and a history of publishing in high-impact scientific journals.

Video:

UCT's cancer research centre is one of three in South Africa funded by the SAMRC. Watch this video for more insight into the vision.

Story by Abigail Calata. Photo by Michael Hammond.

UCT alumni excelled at the 50th annual Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards on Sunday evening. Likened to the Tony's in New York, Fleur du Cap celebrates the c crème of Cape Town's arts and theatre community, and no fewer than eight UCT-trained artists walked home with prizes.

Albert Pretorius's Gideon le Roux in Playland was hailed as the best performance by a lead actor in a play. Pretorius graduates with a BA in Theatre and Performance in 2008. Here he is with Mbulelo Grootboom in Playland. (Photo by Jesse Kramer).

Emily Child's Laura in The Pervert Laura won plaudits as the best performance by a lead actress in a play. Child earned a BA in Theatre and Performance, specialising in acting, from UCT in 2007. (Photo by Jesse Kramer)

UCT alumni also scooped the awards for best performances by a supporting actor and actress. Richard September and Lee-Ann van Rooi each played various characters in Rondomskrik, and were acknowledged as the best supporting actor and actress respectively. Van Rooi holds a BA and HDE (PG) Prim from UCT, with the teaching qualification coming in 1998, three years after her degree. September graduated with a BA in Theatre and Performance, focusing on theatre-making, in 2011. (Photo of Richard September and Lee-Ann van Rooi in Rondomskrik)

Sivenkosi Gubangxa won the award for most promising student, no mean feat considering she was up against 56 peers in this category. Here she is in Curl Up and Dye. (Photo by Jesse Kramer).

Leigh Bishop, the head of costume at UCT's Little Theatre, won the prize for best costume design for her work in Slowly, a production by Geoffrey Hyland (who's also head of the drama department at UCT).

The curtain-droppers were globally-acclaimed puppeteers Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, who won the award for best puppetry design award for their sterling work in War Horse. The two both hold degrees in fine arts and architecture from UCT in 1974, and were awarded honorary doctorates in literature from their alma mater in 2012. (Photo by Eva Rinaldi, and accessed via Wikimedia Commons).

Story by Yusuf Omar

TransformUCT, a grouping of black academics from different departments and faculties at UCT, stands in solidarity with students in the #RhodesMustFall campaign and the removal of the statue.

As a group of black academics at the University of Cape Town we stand in solidarity with students in the #RhodesMustFall campaign and the removal of the statue. United under the banner of TransformUCT, we came together through shared experiences to rebuild a UCT that prioritises our knowledge and capabilities and restores our dignity as black scholars. This particular campaign comes out of a long history of engagement by students and staff with the university administration around transformation at the University of Cape Town. Together with the students, we say that #RhodesMustFall is a non-negotiable prelude to tackling issues of institutionalised racism at UCT.

The Rhodes statue on Jammie steps is a key sign of the larger symbolic landscape of the university's failure to transform that include: the artifacts and names allocated to space across our campuses; the underrepresentation and under-valuing of black academic staff at all levels; the offensive discourse around standards and performance; and curricula that largely disregard African knowledges and practice in all their complexity. All of this contributes to an alienating institutional culture for black staff and students across the institution. We see these as key areas on which the university must focus in order to advance real transformation.

In response to the campaign, the university has called for broader stakeholder engagement through dialogues and seminars. However, the proposed mode of engagement and resolution activates the old bifurcation of the emotive and the rational that emerged in the service of conquest and colonisation. From the Cape to Cairo, there is the shadow of Rhodes's "equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambezi".

The discourse around the student-led protests has included language about "unreasonable" and "uncivilised" behaviour and racial epithets have been used in reference to the students. This reason/emotion binary has a long colonial history where protest and anger at injustice are implicitly coded in gendered and racialised ways to dismiss legitimate critique. The statue, other symbols on campus, and the general response to this movement speak to the racist and violent history of Rhodes, his image, and our institution. Anger, protest and resistance are appropriate responses to this racist history. To frame the anger of black students as inappropriate is to dismiss and deflect from the deep structural injustices that continue at this institution, which "reasoned debate" to the extent that it has happened, has not successfully addressed.

Taking down the statue will signify that the era of talk without action is over. So much mistrust has been brought about by endless seminars and debates because not enough has changed since 1994. This moment also provides us with an opportunity to rethink our relationship to this city and all its residents. If as a university community we do not take this statue down and begin earnest conversations and structural changes toward symbolic and material transformation we will not arrest the breakdown of trust that the protest and the ensuing occupation represent. Our legacy will be determined by the actions we take today on this issue.

Statement by TransformUCT

UPDATE: UCT's Physics Department, under the headship of Professor Andy Buffler, will pay tribute next month to Professor Sandy Perez, who passed away on the morning of 8 January this year.

Family, friends, colleagues and ex-students are most welcome to attend the memorial on 1 April in Lecture Theatre B, RW James Building at 16h00. Speakers will include Associate Professor Saalih Allie, Emeritus Professor David Aschman, Dr Donald Ball, Emeritus Associate Professor Craig Comrie and Dr Shaun Wyngaardt.

Perez started at UCT in 1970 and retired in 2005, a career that included two stints as head of department, said Professor Andy Buffler, the current head of physics.

Buffler noted that many of those present at Perez's funeral on 15 January had "some or other" connection with UCT.

"What is that about? UCT somehow generates long-lasting friendships. Colleagues become friends, and their friends become friends. UCT is a lifestyle which Sandy both loved and enjoyed."

Perez was renowned as a theoretical nuclear physicist and he focussed on clustering within nuclei. "He maintained a very productive collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oxford, where he visited each year, and provided theory support to many projects at iThemba Labs," he added.

Perez remained active throughout his retirement and even published a number of papers last year.

"Friends and colleagues will remember his style on the cricket field, his red MG GBT, his love of physics, generous nature, and ruthless tactics at bridge," said Buffler.

"Sandy was one of the great silverbacks of UCT Physics. When a silverback dies, then the entire ecosystem is disrupted. But Sandy knew this, and had quietly and graciously extracted himself from mainstream university affairs in a way that only enhanced his reputation."

Story by staff reporter. Image supplied.

South African author and poet Marlene van Niekerk, author of Agaat and Triomf, is one of four African authors among the ten finalists for the Man Booker International Prize 2015.

Celebration of African writers: Four of the 10 finalists in the Man Booker International Prize 2015 hail from Africa. The finalists were announced at UCT on 24 March. In picture are (from left) Prof Elleke Boehmer, Nadeem Aslam, Dame Marina Warner (chair of the panel), UCT's Prof Sakhela Buhlungu, Prof Wen-chin Ouyang, and Edwin Frank.

The international judging panel announced the finalists this morning at UCT, hosts of the event, which represents a first for Africa. UCT's Department of English Language and Literature in the Faculty of Humanities is the primary host.

The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every second year to a living author of any nationality for their contribution to fiction on the world stage in a body of work published in English, or available in English translation.

The winner will be announced on 19 May in London and carries a prize of £60 000.

Welcoming participants to the campus, Dean of Humanities Professor Sakhela Buhlungu said that to celebrate the partnership with Man Booker, UCT had been hosting a series of associated events.

But that Africa has four finalists is a coup for the continent's writers. Van Niekerk is Professor in Afrikaans and Dutch Literature and Creative Writing at neighbouring Stellenbosch University.

Her other African counterparts are Mia Couto (Mozambique), Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya), and Alain Mabanckou (Republic of Congo).

Though "utterly different", each is a "blazing voice" in their own right, said Dame Marina Warner, chair of the international juding panel.

"The short list looks back at the writer's corpus and recognises its brilliance, but their work also captures something of what fiction is doing now; the exuberant multiplicity of forms it is taking as writers set about shaping experience into stories, images, characters, reimagining and interrogating history, giving voice to memories and figments, listening to the often harsh, discordant voice of the universe."

"[The announcement] is a great celebration of African writers," added Elleke Boehmer, novelist, critic and professor of English at Oxford University. Her fellow judges are novelist Nadeem Aslam; editorial director of the New York Review Classics series Edwin Frank; and professor of Arabic and comparative literature at SOAS, University of London, Wen-chin Ouyang.

Of note is that South Africa is one of six new nationalities included on the list for the first time, joining Libya, Mozambique, Guadeloupe, Hungary, and Congo. The list also represents seven languages, the highest numbers featured since the prize's inception.

That Africa hosted the event for the first time also honours the greats of African literature, said Boehmer.

"This prize is justly proud that Chinua Achebe, a granddaddy of African literature, was an early prize-winner and that this prize got in where the Nobel Prize didn't. So it's fitting to announce the short list from here."

And that fiction continues to play a vital role in society is apparent in the works represented by the finalists, Warner noted.

"Fiction can enlarge the world for us all and stretch our understanding and our sympathy. The novel today is in fine form, we discovered. For the writers it is a field of enquiry, a tribunal of history, a map of the heart, a probe of the psyche, a stimulus to thought, a well of pleasure, and a laboratory of language."

Probed about the recent protests and debate around the Cecil John Rhodes statue on campus, Warner said: "We have been encountering these debates on campus and in South Africa and Cape Town. It's likely we will see these debates being pushed forward in the finalists lists."

Boehmer added: "All the writers [finalists] represent decolonising consituencies and voices and ask different, tough questions ... The debates around the statue are obviously crucial and it's very interesting to us that this emerged just at this moment ... The one reflection I'd offer is that to take down or to remove a statue does not dismantle the structure of power, power that vested Rhodes and others of his ilk in the first place."

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Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Dear colleagues and students

I am writing to update you on the process relating to the Rhodes statue and also to urge you again to participate in the upcoming University of Cape Town assembly planned for tomorrow, 25 March 2015, and to engage on other forums (such as haveyoursay@uct.ac.za) where you can make known your views not only on the statue, but also larger transformation matters.

As you know, last week we announced a process of engagement on the matter of the Rhodes statue that would allow for debate and discussion involving all constituents at UCT, and that would culminate in a proposal by the Executive to Council on 15 April 2015.

Before I report on the progress with regards to this, I need to say that it has come to my attention that some of the commentary written on the "Have Your Say" notice boards placed next to the Rhodes statue amounts to racist hate speech. This is totally unacceptable and I condemn this in the strongest possible terms. We recognise how this aggravates the pain and hurt experienced by the targets of such insults and it certainly bedevils genuine debate. If we can identify the writers we will certainly take disciplinary action. Because we cannot monitor the boards at all times, and to avoid the offence caused by such anonymous posts under UCT's auspices, we have now removed the boards. The first four boards were well used, with many interesting and constructive comments. These are on display in the Molly Blackburn Memorial Hall.

More generally, it must be clearly understood that any student or staff member (whether protesting or not) or member of the public who make themselves guilty of intolerance, intimidation of and interference with others are behaving in an unacceptable way and we will take the necessary action.

Returning to the progress in the last week, I can report that we have been in discussions with multiple stakeholders on the matter of the statue. I have met with the Senior Leadership Group (SLG) of UCT, namely the deans, the Executive Directors, the Deputy Vice-Chancellors and the Directors of Institutional Planning and the Transformation Office. I am now in a position to confirm that the proposal I have earlier made in my personal capacity – that the statue of Rhodes be removed from its current location – has been supported by all these constituencies, and that the SLG will make this proposal to the Senate (which meets this Friday, 27 March); the PASS forum of professional and support staff (this Thursday, 26 March); the Institutional Forum (today, 24 March), the University Assembly (Wednesday, 25 March), the Convocation meeting (7 April) and culminating in the special sitting of Council.

UCT is an argumentative university. This is an abiding strength: it shows our engagement with the issues of our times and our interest in ideas that matter. Undoubtedly the students are leading a national debate. We have gone to great lengths to allow a free exchange of ideas on the issue of the statue. I urge us all to participate in this week's programme of discussion and to remain respectful of the views of those with whom we differ. I will update you as we proceed.

Yours sincerely

Dr Max Price
Vice-Chancellor

On Tuesday 23 March 2015, the 2015 Man Booker International finalists were announced at UCT – the first time this announcement has been made in Africa. In celebration, we've curated lists of some of the distinguished South African writers to have studied or taught at UCT. Here are four titans.

André Brink
(29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015)

Brink's novel Kennis van die Aand, published in English as Looking on Darkness (1973), was the first Afrikaans work to be banned by the apartheid government. By the time he became a professor of English at UCT in 1990 André Brink was considered one of South Africa's most distinguished writers. His novels, which include A Dry White Season, An Instant in the Wind, Rumours of Rain and The Other Side of Silence have been translated into over 30 languages, and won Brink numerous literary prizes (including two Booker Award nominations) and global recognition for his courage in confronting, in his own words, his "love-hate relationship with the Afrikaner". Brink was an honorary professor at UCT from 2000 until his death last month.

"Alone. Alone to the very end. I ... every one of us. But to have been granted the grace of meeting and touching so fleetingly: is that not the most awesome and wonderful thing one can hope for in this world?"

Watch Brink speak about his literary influences in this 2009 interview.

Athol Fugard
(11 June 1931 – )

A few months before graduating from UCT in 1953, Harold Athol Fugard dropped out to hitchhike the continent. After travelling to north Africa he found work on a steamer ship bound for east Asia. It was while he was working aboard this ship that he began writing. Many of his most well-known works, such as Boesman and Lena and The Blood Knot, were originally banned locally for their outright rejection of apartheid. Nevertheless, over the course of the next 60 years, Fugard would become one of South Africa's most celebrated playwrights, directors and novelists.

"For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue."

JM Coetzee
(9 February 1940 – )

John Maxwell Coetzee graduated from UCT in 1960 with an honours degree in English; and the following year, with an honours degree in mathematics. In 1972 he returned to UCT as a lecturer, becoming professor of English in 1983 (the same year he won his first Booker prize, for The Life and Times of Michael K). He would remain at UCT until 2000, winning his second Booker in 1999 for his novel Disgrace, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

"All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography."

Watch Coetzee read from his book The Childhood of Jesus at UCT in 2012.

Njabulo Ndebele
(4 July 1948 – )

Njabulo Ndebele is not just an author and literary academic – he's also an emeritus professor at UCT, and its former vice-chancellor (from 2000 to 2008). The son of Makhosazana Regina Tshabangu and Nimrod Njabulo Ndebele, who made history as the playwright of the first Zulu drama in print, UGubudele namaZimuzimu (published in 1941), Ndebele's writing career started early, in his teens. Major works include The Cry of Winnie Mandela, Fools and Other Stories (which won a Noma Award in 1984), as well as an influential collection of essays on South African literature and culture, Rediscovery of the Ordinary.

"The capacity of the country to imagine the future depends on the capacity of that country to nurture imaginative thinking from the beginning of a child's life right up to the end of life."

Watch Ndebele speaking in 2011 about what inspires him to get to work every morning.

 

Story by Ambre Nicolson. Photo by Michael Hammond.

Heritage, signs and symbolism were superceded by the harder issues synonymous with transformation at Wednesday night's University Assembly in a jam-packed Jameson Hall. These were equity, institutional culture and racism, curricula, higher education, and colonialism.

At the University Assembly on 25 March 2015, held so that staff and students might air their views on the #RhodesMustFall debate, Jameson Hall was filled to capacity. Many students came wearing tape over their mouths.

But underneath the vociferous and impassioned calls from students, staff and alumni shared from the podium was a common call: the Rhodes statue must be removed as a precursor to accelerated transformation.

The assembly, which Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price described as the largest gathering in the Jameson Hall that he could remember, was part of the #TransformUCT campaign and intended to extend the debate about the Rhodes statue into all of the university's constituencies.

But that debate got off to a delayed start after an early disruption when Student Parliament secretary Keenan Hendrickse's co-chair, Professor Barney Pityana, the new president of Convocation, agreed to step down after protests from the floor. He was replaced by Kgotsi Chikane, one of the student organisers of the #RhodesMustFall campaign.

After brief addresses by SRC president Ramabina Mahapa and the vice-chancellor, members of the audience were invited to have their say from the podium. Some read their poems, others shared memories of hardship and exclusion, and others a vision of an inclusive and welcoming UCT.

As a result of ongoing protests at UCT in the past two weeks, focused on the #RhodesMustFall campaign, the university has initiated and fast-tracked a process to review the statue. This accelerated programme culminates in final proposal regarding the statue at a special sitting of UCT Council on 8 April.

In a communique to staff and students on 24 March, Price said: "UCT is an argumentative university. This is an abiding strength: it shows our engagement with the issues of our times and our interest in ideas that matter. Undoubtedly the students are leading a national debate. We have gone to great lengths to allow a free exchange of ideas on the issue of the statue."

Story by Helen Swingler. Photo by Je'nine May.

Whether as students, teachers or fellows, some of South Africa's top contemporary novelists, playwrights and satirists have found a home at UCT. Here are just a few.

Ellen Banda-Aaku

In 2004 Zambian writer Ellen Banda-Aaku's first book, a children's book titled Wandi's Little Voice, won the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa; and her first novel, Patchwork, won the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing. She is a graduate of UCT's creative writing programme.

Etienne van Heerden

Etienne van Heerden's books, such as Toornberg and 30 Nagte in Amsterdam, have won numerous literary prizes, and he has to honour of being one of only two writers to win the WA Hofmeyr prize twice. He's also the Hofmeyr Professor in the School of Languages and Literatures at UCT.

Ceridwen Dovey

Dovey is both a writer and a social anthropologist. Her first work of fiction, Blood Kin, was the product of her creative writing MA, which she completed at UCT. Her second book, Only the Animals, is a collection of short stories about the souls of ten animals caught up in human conflict over the course of the last century.

Damon Galgut

Galgut both studied and has taught at UCT. His first book, A Sinless Season, was published when he was 17 and still a student. Subsequent novels have dealt with his experience of childhood cancer (Small Circle of Beings) and the relationship between two very different characters working in a rural hospital setting in the critically lauded The Good Doctor.

Diane Awerbuck

Awerbuck's debut novel, Gardening at Night (2003), is a coming-of-age tale set in Kimberley. It won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers prize. Her second novel, Home Remedies, was published in 2012. She holds an MA in creative writing from UCT.

Femi Terry

Another graduate of creative writing at UCT, Olufemi Terry (known as Femi Terry) won the 2010 Caine Prize for African Fiction for his short story Stickfighting Boys. Terry hails from Sierra Leone, but now calls Cape Town home.

HJ Golakai

Hawa Jande Golokai is a Liberian-born crime novelist who published her first novel, the thriller The Lazarus Effect, in 2011, for which she won the 2012 Sunday Times Award for fiction. She completed her undergraduate degree in molecular and cell biology in 2005 at UCT.

Henrietta Rose-Innes

Rose-Innes was the 2012 fellow at UCT's Gordon Institute for Creative and Performing Arts (GIPCA). She has published numerous short stories and essays, and three novels: Nineveh (2011), The Rock Alphabet (2011) and Shark's Egg (2000).

Imraan Coovadia

Coovadia has published seven novels, including Green-eyed Thieves (2006), The Institute of Taxi Poetry (2012), and most recently Tales of the Metric System (2013). Coovadia is also a professor of English at UCT.

Lauren Beukes

A UCT creative writing programme graduate, Beukes is the author of the bestsellers The Shining Girls, Broken Monsters, and Zoo City, a sci-fi novel set in an alternative-reality Johannesburg of the future (which went on to win the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award).

Mary Watson

Author of Moss, a collection of interlinking stories, literary thriller The Cutting Room and the 2006 Caine Prize winner for her short story Jungfrau, Watson was recently named in the Hay Festival's Africa39 project as one of 39 writers from sub-Saharan Africa aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Watson first completed her MA in creative writing under André Brink, then went on to teach film studies at UCT while studying toward her PhD, until 2008, when she moved to Galway, Ireland.

Masande Ntshanga

Ntshanga hit the local literary scene when he won the 2013 PEN International New Voices award with his short story, Space. His debut novel The Reactive, which follows an HIV-positive young man reeling from the trauma of his brother's death, formed part of his submission toward an MA in creative writing at UCT in 2013.

Mike Nicol

Nicol is most well-known for his crime writing, and has won international renown for books such as Black Heart and Killer Country. He has also written a number of general fiction books, as well as publishing extensively in non-fiction and as a journalist. He is also a UCT creative writing fellow.

Nadia Davids

Davids is an alumna of the UCT Drama Department. Her plays, At Her Feet (2003) and Cissie(2008), have been performed around the world and earned her the 2003 Rosalie Gucht Prize for new directors and three Fleur du Cap award nominations. Her novel, An Imperfect Blessing, was published in 2014.

Penny Busetto

Busetto won the 2013 EU Literary Award for her debut novel, The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself – a story of a woman living on an island off the coast of Italy, who cannot remember how she got there. A graduate of the MA in creative writing, Busetto is now completing her PhD in English at UCT.

Rayda Jacobs

Jacobs was born in Cape Town but lived in Canada for 30 years, from 1968 until returning to Cape Town in 1995. Also in 1995, her first novel Eyes on the Sky was awarded the Herman Charles Bosman Prize for Fiction. She later graduated from UCT's creative writing programme and published two further novels, which together with Eyes on the Sky form a trilogy. Her next work of fiction, Confessions of a Gambler, was a bestseller, and was later adapted for film.

Tom Eaton

Eaton earned both a bachelor's degree and an MA degree in creative writing from UCT. In addition to his non-fiction and journalistic work, he has published three books: The De Villiers Code, Texas, and The Wading (which Eaton wrote for his creative writing MA under the supervision of JM Coetzee).

Yewande Omotoso

Omotoso was born in Barbados but grew up in Nigeria before moving to South Africa as a teen. She qualified as an architect before dedicating herself to writing. She submitted her first novel, Bomboy, to a publisher at the same time that she completed her MA in creative writing at UCT in 2011.

This list is, of course, in addition to the greats like Njabulo Ndebele, André Brink, JM Coetzee and Athol Fugard. For some of the poets who've called UCT home, tune in to this series on UCT's great minds of literature on Friday 27 March 2015.

 

Story by Ambre Nicolson. Photo by Michael Hammond.

The Universities of Cape Town and Oxford are the oldest universities in their respective countries. However, as a recent visit by the University of Oxford demonstrated, longstanding and recent research collaborations are producing innovative solutions to problems of the present and creating a better future.

Oxford Vice-Chancellor Prof Andrew Hamilton and UCT Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price.

Effective collaboration between universities cannot happen from the top down: it needs to be research-led. This was the message from this week's visit by a high-level delegation from Oxford to UCT. The group included Oxford Vice-Chancellor Prof Andrew Hamilton and senior researchers.

The close relationship between the two universities has given rise to a range of research projects that have the potential for tremendous social impact, said UCT Vice-Chancellor Dr Max Price. They include collaboration in fields such as malaria drug resistance, food security, constitutional and customary law in Africa, as well as the development and testing of new tuberculosis vaccines.

Hamilton is enthusiastic about the great potential of collaboration between the universities' researchers in a wide range of fields. "We need now to encourage collaboration where it does not yet exist," he said. "Collaborations thrive when there is mutual need, and South Africa offers a unique environment to study some of the greatest challenges facing us today."

UCT currently collaborates and publishes with Oxford more than any other university in the United Kingdom, with neurosciences being one of the most fruitful collaborations.

"We are particularly pleased, therefore, that the launch of UCT's Neurosciences Initiative coincides with this week's visit by the University of Oxford," said Price.

The Neurosciences Initiative brings together clinicians and researchers from a wide range of specialities, fostering collaboration in the treatment of a number of neurological disorders.

Prof Graham Fieggen, UCT's head of neurosurgery and project leader of the Neurosciences Initiative, believes that the launch of this multidisciplinary initiative will only strengthen future collaborations.

Professor of neuroscience at Oxford and co-director of the Oxford Centre for Neuromuscular Science, Matthew Wood concurs.

"Neurosciences are much broader than simply understanding the brain or understanding neurological disease. Essentially it goes to the heart of who we are as human beings, and to many of the challenges that exist in society," said Wood, a UCT alumnus who is also an honorary professor at UCT.

Managing chronic diseases over the phone

One of the many collaborative projects showcased during the Oxford visit was the development of mobile phone technology for the self-management of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure. Named the SMS-text Adherence Support (*StAR) trial, it is part of m-Health (Mobile Health) development in Africa, and is a collaborative project between Oxford's Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Primary Care Health Sciences and UCT's Chronic Diseases Initiative for Africa (CDIA).

Widely used across Africa, mobile phones are a highly effective way to reach patients. In a recent trial of an intervention to improve blood pressure control, over 95% of patients receiving educational and supportive SMSes remained in contact with the project over one year.

The collaboration involved Oxford's Andrew Farmer (professor of general practice), Lionel Tarassenko (professor of electrical engineering) and David Springer (IBME). UCT researchers included Prof Bongani Mayosi (head of medicine), Prof Naomi Levitt (head of the diabetic medicine and endocrinology and director of CDIA) and Dr Kirsty Bobrow (CDIA).

Largest community based study among HIV-positive teenagers

Another project – looking for insights into the behaviour of South Africa's 1.2-million HIV-positive teenagers – seeks to understand the reasons for low rates of adherence to anti-retroviral treatment and inconsistent levels of contraceptive use.

Mzantsi Wakho, which looks at promoting antiretroviral adherence and sexual and reproductive health service access among HIV-positive adolescents, is the largest community based study among HIV-positive teenagers ever conducted. Preliminary results reveal the powerful role that stigma still plays in preventing teenagers from disclosing their HIV status to their partners.

Mzantsi Wakho is led by UCT's Dr Rebecca Hodes (director, AIDS and Society Research Unit, Centre for Social Science Research, and an honorary research fellow at UCT's Department of Historical Studies) and Lucie Cluver (associate professor of evidence-based social intervention at Oxford and honorary lecturer in UCT's Division of Neuropsychiatry). The Departments of Health, Social Development, Basic Education and Women, Children and People with Disabilities were consulted on the project's research design.

UCT Ombud Zetu Makamandela-Mguqulwa speaks of the transformative opportunity that the #RhodesMustFall campaign presents.

One of my responsibilities as UCT Ombud is to help identify unfairness in the system and highlight 'hot-spots' for the university to intervene. Transformation has been one of the key areas of recommendations that kept coming up over the years. UCT's thinking on transformation has been evident in areas such as the creation of the Ombud's office in 2011. This was a response to the 2007 survey on the various aspects of the work experience and climate at UCT. There have been other measures and specific interventions to address racism and racial harassment. Many of these have been on concept papers and dialogue platforms. I recall a question on "Who does UCT belong to?" which translated into the MyUCT concept.

Transformation is a pervasive issue at UCT. Given the highlighted need for more transformation, Cecil is not a name in history but his legacy is experienced by some of my visitors in the present, thus making the university reminiscent of the past. I doubt if statues, art and images at UCT would be a primary bother if the university life was different to what Rhodes conceptualised.

What now? One can appreciate that the students are simply asking for a date of the removal of the statue. UCT will have to look into substantial issues of transformation.

Martin Luther King Jr once said:

The current climate gives UCT an opportunity to re-focus its transformation agenda, to develop and revive its communal spirit, and to be a true African university where all its members feel that they belong and are proud members of the association.