South Africa: “Whiteness is Burning”

The enraged Congoids at the University of Cape Town were not satisfied by the removal of the statue of “White racist” Cecil Rhodes, so they began defacing and burning works of art from the University’s museum with no other goal in mind except to, in their own words, “burn Whiteness.”

FIRST they came for the statues. Last year students in Cape Town sparked national protests by calling on the University of Cape Town (UCT) to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian imperialist who, like most Englishmen of his time, held “racist” views. The statue was removed but students were still angry. Many marched on South Africa’s parliament to complain about high college fees, among other things. That prompted a cash-strapped government not to raise fees after all.

Protests about statues of dead “racists” soon spread around the world. Students demanded that Oriel College, Oxford take down its statue of Rhodes. (It refused.) The University of Texas at Austin has moved a bronze of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy’s president, and will put it in a museum.

Another protester proudly posted pictures of the bonfire on Twitter, showing flames licking at the edges of a plaque commemorating Jan Smuts, a British-educated general who was twice South Africa’s prime minister and helped write the preamble to the UN’s founding charter. The tweet accompanying it proclaimed: “Whiteness is burning”. …

Students defaced a statue of Smuts and a bust of Maria Fuller, one of the first four women to attend the university. She enrolled in 1886, when most courses were open only to men. She went on to play a role in opening a women’s hall of residence. She was, however, white. …

Among the protesters’ complaints at UCT was the implausible claim that whites were given preferential access to university accommodation. The protesters erected a corrugated tin shack on UCT’s stately grounds as a symbol of how rough life is in black townships. They added a portable loo and overturned milk crates as chairs.

Some started a shisa nyama, grilling sausages and chops over charcoal. The flames spread. The small band of students refused to remove the shack, which university officials said was blocking traffic, and went on a rampage. They burned a car, a bus and the office of Max Price, the university’s vice-chancellor. “It is utterly regrettable that a movement that began with such promise and purport to be fighting for social justice matters has now deteriorated into a group that engages in criminality,” Mr Price said. …

* * *

Source: Economist