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UCT student Chumani Maxwele, who threw faeces on the university’s Cecil John Rhodes statue last month, said the decision to remove the monument vindicates former black academics at the institution.

On Wednesday evening, a sitting of the University of Cape Town’s special Council voted unanimously in favour of removing the Rhodes statue from its current location on UCT’s upper campus.

Maxwele told News24 yesterday that he and the students involved in the Rhodes Must Fall campaign were happy with the outcome of a month-long saga, which included many protests and sit-ins.

“We welcome the decision. The dignity of former black academics at the university has been restored,” he said.

Maxwele was referring to former UCT academics AC Jordan and Archie Mafeje, among others, who were alleged victims of discrimination at the university in the 1950s and 60s.

UCT’s SRC President Ramabina Mahapa said that many of these former academics made “substantial contributions” to the university, but weren’t afforded equal recognition at the time.

Mafeje, for one, was asked to leave his post as a lecturer in the university’s social anthropology department in 1968 following pressure from the Apartheid government.

“The fact that he (Mafeje) is only being honoured now was the problem. It’s a big issue, and has taken too long,” Mahapa said yesterday.

Maxwele, though, was quick to add that the Rhodes Must Fall campaign had less to do with the actual monument.

“It’s really a question of transformation though. The decision will now allow us to deal with more urgent issues around transformation at UCT.”

Among these issues are demands to have some of the building names at the university’s campus changed too. These include Jameson Hall and Bremner building, among others.

The university has yet to respond to the students over these demands, Maxwele added.

Meanwhile, the defacement of statues around the country are sheer acts of hooliganism and criminality and should be frowned upon by all sensible and law-abiding South Africans, the ANC chief whip said yesterday.

The statement from the whip, Stone Sizani, comes after Louis Botha’s statue in front of Parliament was the latest to be defaced.

An Economic Freedom Front member confirmed that two of their members had been arrested for this particular incident. The party’s Godrich Gardee said he agreed with what was done to the Botha statue because “you cannot every day be subjected to the mind of the warmonger”.

Botha’s statue had red and blue paint thrown over it in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Sizani’s office said the “malicious damage of statues at certain locations in the cover of darkness signifies nothing but cowardice by those seeking to opportunistically piggyback on the publicity generated by the successful campaign led by the progressive students of the University of Cape Town regarding the statue of Cecil Rhodes”.

“There’s nothing courageous or heroic by peacetime ‘fighters’ or ‘revolutionaries’ who go around kicking doors that are already open and subverting due processes merely for media attention.

“While the UCT campaign was initially blemished by a lawless act of strewing poo on the statue, it was generally peaceful and involved rational discourse and dialogue — which resulted in the university Council taking a decision to remove the statue.” — Sapa