#RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa

by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

This book on rights, entitlements and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa shows how the playing field has not been as levelled as presumed by some and how racism and its benefits persist. Through everyday interactions and experiences of university students and professors, it explores the question of race in a context still plagued by remnants of apartheid, inequality and perceptions of inferiority and inadequacy among the majority black population. In education, black voices and concerns go largely unheard, as circles of privilege are continually regenerated and added onto a layered and deep history of cultivation of black pain. These issues are examined against the backdrop of organised student protests sweeping through the country's universities with a renewed clamour for transformation around a rallying cry of 'Black Lives Matter'. The nuanced complexity of this insightful analysis of the Rhodes Must Fall movement elicits compelling questions about the attractions and dangers of exclusionary articulations of belonging. What could a grand imperialist like the stripling Uitlander or foreigner of yesteryear, Sir Cecil John Rhodes, possibly have in common with the present-day nimble-footed makwerekwere from Africa north of the Limpopo? The answer, Nyamnjoh suggests, is to be found in how human mobility relentlessly tests the boundaries of citizenship.

310 pages, Paperback

Published April 18, 2016

About the author

Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Professor of anthropology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a prolific writer.
He won the Eko Prize for Literature, an Anglophone Cameroon prize in 2014 for "his lifetime contributions to creative writing and arts in Cameroon and beyond'.

Reviews

[Patricia Johnson-Castle]

Really interesting book that is a snapshot of a protest movement and some of the important context that surrounded them. One of subtle arguments Nyamnjoh makes is how the internet and social media are the new public sphere.

[Jesse Griesel]

A beautiful reconstruction of what citizenship and belonging means in South Africa. This allows for the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements to discussed in the larger context of what it means to be South African and why it unfolded the way that it did.