"Because Rhodes Fell”: Student protests, decolonial theory & anthropology in South Africa

Professor Heike Becker (Department of Anthropology)

The Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies and the Department of Anthropology and Sociology are pleased to invite you to this seminar.

Registration is required and it is now open on Eventbrite .

About this Event

In South Africa questions about decolonisation were forcefully put on the agenda by massive student movements that shook the country in 2015 and 2016. Students demanded free education, they called for an end to racism and the neo-liberal outsourcing practices of support services at universities.

Decolonisation became a keyword of South African discourse in March 2015 when students at the University of Cape Town embarked upon a forceful campaign, to have the statue of the British colonialist and mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes removed from their campus. #RhodesMustFall soon found the support of the university’s governing bodies. A month later the statue was removed under the thunderous applause of a large crowd who had gathered to watch this significant moment. The student protests that soon spread to other universities opened the space for intense debates of the decolonisation of academic institutions and knowledge production.

I argue that while decolonisation is an indispensible response to colonialism and coloniality, these concepts are imbued with distinctive meaning in different contexts.

During the presentation I will review the student-led movements that called for decolonization and the impact the protests had for the resurgence of decolonial theory in South Africa. I present a perspective on decolonizing anthropology with a focus on questions of ‘How can social/cultural anthropology from the African continent help shape a new perspective on the world in the 21st century?’ This perspective starts from listening to the voices that have emerged out of movements from below, in Southern Africa and around the world, and questions how decolonisation, critique and anthropology fit together. The presentation will conclude with examples of teaching and research projects aimed at decolonizing anthropology in different South African academic contexts.

Heike Becker teaches Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She has conducted long-term research on the politics and aesthetics of memory politics and decolonisation, social movements and popular culture in Namibia and South Africa. Currently she is working on a project on decolonisation memory and anti-racist politics in Germany and the United Kingdom.