Sometimes your actions lead to a political movement that captures the world’s attention, and sometimes your actions get you suspended from university. Just ask Chumani Maxwele, suspended by UCT following an incident earlier this month.
Now you might recognise Maxwele’s name as the man responsible for throwing faeces on the Cecil John Rhodes statue, sparking the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign that eventually led to the statue’s removal. He was also the guy who landed himself in hot water when he showed Jacob Zuma and his security the middle finger back in 2010, so he is no stranger to a bit of controversy.
Maxwele believes his suspension is politically motivated, quoted here on News24:
It’s a matter of politics…
We [are] dealing with a political problem at UCT. We are dealing with transformation… [and] they are intimidating us…
Now the university is keeping rather mum on the issue but did confirm a student was suspended following an incident in an academic department on May 1. They say a student was guilty of intimidating, harassing, threatening and racially abusing a member of staff, but Maxwele has a different recollection of events.
He claims that he was denied entry into the mathematics department by a staff member, who then directed him to go to the library:
It was during my ‘escort’ that I asked her why the building was locked and she replied by telling me historical account of what happened to her in the past and that included her being attacked by a ‘savage black student who turned out not to be a student’ and that ‘a head of department was murdered by a savage and barbaric black student…
I felt that I was being policed and being framed as a suspect of criminality at my own university. I am very aware of framing of black man by the white world that black man is a criminal and dangerous to all other people in his immediate vicinity…
Something tells me this won’t be the last we hear about this one so we’ll keep you posted as the story develops.
[source:news24]
