Rhodes statue: Symbol of African oppression remains

Cecil Rhodes had money, power and the support of the State, when he entered Africa to plunder its natural resources and cruelly, murder, shackle and suppress African people.

With his ill-gotten gains he was able to patronise one of the world’s top universities –Oxford - to educate a privilege class to, in no small measure maintain that white supremacist hegemony for centuries to come. Of course the cruellest elements of ‘white supremacy’: 450 years of slavery, theft of a nation’s natural resources and colonial control, have now been exposed and dropped. But the power structure that Rhodes inherited and sought to bolster, remains, in no small measure largely intact: An institutional mindset that is powerful, eloquent, and hell bent on crushing any discussion about symbols of, and structures of oppression and discrimination.

In breath-taking hubris, Oxford University’s Vice Chancellor, Chris Patten arrogantly told those students seeking to remove both the statue and the culture of white supremacy: ‘If they could not embrace freedom of thought they may think about being educated elsewhere’.

Rhodes’ freedom of thought was to murder, imprison and torture people he deemed profoundly less equal than himself, and steal their natural resources in the name of the Crown and Christianity. The irony of Patten-freedom of thought,- is completely lost when one considers that here in the UK, foreign Muslim clerics who talk very anti-Western sentiment are not only barred from entering the country, but their freedom of thought is seen as illegal and a million miles away from being celebrated as Oxford does with Cecil Rhodes.

To those young Black and white Oxford students who campaigned for the removal of his statue and discussion about how we bring Oxford and other universities into the 21st Century, you can be extremely proud of your actions. In the face of powerful criticism, including from Trevor Phillips, who should know better, you stayed strong.

Carry on with your campaign and your demands that our top universities dramatically change. One thing I will promise you is that history will prove you both brave and right.

Simon Woolley
OBV