Rhodes statue will not fall after donations pulled
The statue of Cecil John Rhodes at Oxford University will not fall, after alumni reportedly threatened to withdraw millions of pounds in donations.
According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, the governing body of Oriel College, which owns the statue, ruled out its removal after £1.5 million (R35 million) worth of donations had been pulled over the matter – with as much as £100 million (R2.3 billion) more at stake.
The publication reported that a leaked document addressed to the College from Oxford alumni had threatened to pull millions more in donations from the university.
Oriel College confirmed the decision to keep the statue. “Following careful consideration, the College’s governing body has decided that the statue should remain in place,” it told the Telegraph.
South African student, Ntokozo Qwabe started a campaign at Oxford to have the statue removed.
Qwabe is the co-founder of Rhodes Must Fall In Oxford – “an organisation determined to decolonise the space, the curriculum, and the institutional memory at, and to fight inter-sectional oppression within, Oxford”.
The campaign was born out of the Rhodes Must Fall – #RhodesMustFall – protest movement originally directed against a statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) commemorating Cecil Rhodes that began in March 2015.
Qwabe, a former law student at KwaZulu-Natal, received the Rhodes Scholarship to further his studies at England’s Oxford University, in 2013.
Earlier in January, the Oxford Union, the world’s most prestigious debating society, voted to remove the statue of Rhodes with 245 voting yes and 212 voting no.
However, Oxford University’s chancellor stated publicly that the statue outside Oriel College should stand, and that students who didn’t like it should go study somewhere else.
More on Rhodes
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South African student takes #RhodesMustFall campaign to Oxford
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