RhodesMustFall activists Joshua Nott and Mbali Matandela have accepted R670,000 bursaries paid out by the Rhodes Trust to go and study at Oxford.<\/p>\n
According to UK scribe, the Daily Mail<\/a><\/strong>, Nott was a “key publicist” behind the initial movement at the University of Cape Town to have the statue of Cecil John Rhodes removed from the university’s campus.<\/p>\n Nott is now listed among other scholars as a beneficiary of the Rhodes Trust,\u00a0who receive GBP40,000 (over R670,000) to study at Oxford University.<\/p>\n During the student uprisings over the Rhodes statue, Nott was quoted as likening the statue to a Swastika in Jerusalem, and advocated ‘violent protest’ as a means to have the statue removed and student voices heard.<\/p>\n Nott told the Daily Mail that he would ‘never toast Cecil John Rhodes; and was against his statue being at the Oriel College at Oxford, but would not join the Rhodes Must Fall movement at the university.<\/p>\n Nott’s profil<\/a><\/strong>e on the Rhodes Trust’s website makes no mention of his anti-Rhodes campaigning.<\/p>\n Speaking to the Daily Mail about the scholarship, Nott said that “if an underprivileged person could effect as much change \u2026 I would easily renounce it, but I firmly believe in myself as someone who can effect immense macro change.”<\/p>\n He said that he has no regrets about his anti-Rhodes campaigning, while the Rhodes Trust told the paper that it was aware of his “wide range of social change initiatives”.<\/p>\n Another Rhodes scholarship winner is Mbalenhle “Mbali” Matandela<\/a><\/strong>, who was also a vocal and active anti-Rhodes protester. Matandela studied gender and transformation at UCT, and took a strong pro-feminist role in the “fallist” campaigning.<\/p>\n A member of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, Matandela was an advocate for the complete decolonisation of UCT<\/a><\/strong>, and wrote that she was part of a generation that “won’t wait for transformation”, reflecting on the Rhodes statue and the burning of ‘colonial’ paintings at UCT.<\/p>\n