 After the #fallNick Shepherd City, 2020, vol. 24, issue 3-4, 565-579 Abstract: On March 9th 2015, Chumane Maxwele, a student at the University of Cape Town, threw a bucket of shit at a statue of Cecil Rhodes, prominently sited at the main pedestrian entrance to the university. A month later, following concerted protest action by the student-led social movement, #RhodesMustFall, the statue was removed. In this paper I situate the Rhodes statue and the events of #RMF into historical relation with the broader memorial and symbolic landscape of the Groote Schuur estate, the landscape of which the University of Cape Town forms a part. I argue that an imperial legacy is deeply inscribed in this landscape in architectural form, the organization of space, forms of the gaze, and embodied habitus. The University of Cape Town upper campus was conceived in terms of two architectural tropes, the idea of the Temple-on-the-hill, and the idea of the site of prospect. These, in turn, derive from Rhodes Memorial, slightly further up the slope. In this context, the Rhodes statue was the most obvious materialization of a more generalized coloniality, which remains a part of the ambiguous legacy of the Groote Schuur estate and the University of Cape Town. Date: 2020 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cityxx:v:24:y:2020:i:3-4:p:565-579 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2020.1784579 Access Statistics for this article City is currently edited by Bob Catterall More articles in City from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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