I am sceptical of the idea of leadership, most especially when it is self-proclaimed. Look anywhere in the world, in any institution and you will be hard pressed to find leadership that does not accrue unnecessary
privilege and power to itself.
I am sceptical of the idea of leadership, most especially when it is self-proclaimed. Look anywhere in the world, in any institution and you will be hard pressed to find leadership that does not accrue unnecessary
privilege and power to itself.
In our unequal country, the template for leadership has been fashioned through social structures premised on obscenely unfair advantage, fitting the definitions of those who monopolise access to private and public institutions.
It seems to me then, that what we regularly call ‘leadership’ is entrenched elitism. And those we call ‘leaders’, are simply the well placed.
For the greater part of its history, Rhodes has cherished the myth of its pre-eminence, approximating itself to the Oxbridge tradition by virtue of its Anglo-Settler heritage and association with the Rhodes Trust.
Thus in my O-week I was disappointed to find that instead of the Afropolitan institution that I had expected of an Eastern Cape university, Rhodes was an almost exact replica of my private school milieu. In Smuts we
once postponed a hall ball because it clashed with the Hilton-Michaelhouse!
I discovered too, that the leadership of this university had fought to the last to retain the name Rhodes – honouring a miscreant, considered a duplicitous schemer even by his white contemporaries – over the name Ruth First University, after a woman who eschewed white privilege to struggle for an equal society. The legend of the former forged through self-aggrandisement and plunder; the latter’s through acts of courage
and love.
Unsurprising then that in the mid-2000s, one SRC member proudly stated that the council’s duty was the students – not broader socio-political concerns.
Really now? That was barely a decade after 1994. These and many other observations led me to wonder: who or what exactly are we Rhodes graduates leading, for whose benefit, and frankly, who cares?
