Destruction styles Black aesthetics of rupture and capture Thulile Gamedze Diagram A: rhodes explodes, corrodes, and loses head I think that I and many others involved with the the unwarranted effect of instigating a feeling of ‘uni- RhodesMustFall (RMF) movement at the University of fied resolve’ to the insurgent action that had preceded it. Cape Town – and beyond – might have preferred, on the Cecil John Rhodes’ gentle elevation in the fresh autumn 9th of April 2015, to see: air was a sinister aesthetic reminder that the power of A. cecil’s head explode, blast-site of bronze shards coloniality – evident, in this case, in the South African glistening in the afternoon sun, on the sprawling, clam- neoliberal university’s response to decolonial critique – bering, continually inaccessible grounds of the univer- is an immeasurable capacity to co-opt and reconstruct sity’s main campus, or to watch him that which undermines it. B. corrode; to see him melt into chemical soup, naus- Compare this institutionally paid-for airlift, for a mo- eating smugness fallen to dusty, pungent metallic liquid, ment, to Edward Colston’s recent drowning in Bristol, the or to gather as he was labour of heavy-lifting protestors never more at home C. beheaded, the ugly likeness becoming a circulat- (never less alienated) in their bodies, as they pulled him ing prize, moving ritualistically for display between com- down and released nightmare to the depths. A world rades’ res and digs rooms. away from the weightlessness of air, from secured and But the motherfucker just got airlifted. safe removal, Colston fell heavy, drowned low and down- Until this moment, the texture of RhodesMustFall ward into deep water. had been altogether different, the movement’s ‘decolon- This comparison serves not to detract from the ne- isation’ denoting improvised – if strategic – instances of cessity of Rhodes’ removal, but rather to emphasise the chaotic disruption, directed by radically critical readings fact that the insurgent act need not be defined purely of the South African status quo. But the awkward, unfa- by its outcome (that the statue is gone) but should be miliar ceremonial tone of the removal seemed to have read also with regard to the extent to which it attends RADICAL PHILOSOPHY 2.08 / Autumn 2020 55 Diagram B: rhodes is lifted, colston is drowned aesthetically to the historical or political problem at hand liberal academic discourse. I propose that the depol- (Colston has been drowned!). The physical destruction of, iticisation of the term has its origins in the actual cli- or intervention in, coloniality’s life is always enacted with mactic moment of Rhodes’ removal and, more generally, significantly varying modes of style, tone, embodiment that this institutionally-assisted ‘insurgent’ action can and performance, all formal and political choices that be politically unpacked, through aesthetic reasoning. together can be regarded as an overall ‘aesthetic’. When However, despite the slowing effect of neoliberal ap- read in terms of their aesthetics, modes of destruction propriation and capture of radical vocabularies, this time of colonial images and objects, and symbolic choices re- of abolitionist politics, expressed in the physical destruc- lating to the manner in which resistance is expressed by tion of colonial symbols, is evidence that there exists a decolonisation movements, may take on a variety of polit- shared aesthetic (and political) impulse that transcends ical meanings that are less evident in readings of protest the limited possibility of rhetoric. In an intentionally that centralise tangible outcomes. The act of destruc- aesthetic reading of contemporary Black embodiments tion or insurgency should be seen as an act, visibilising of colonial destruction in the West, through the political through its aesthetic choices the connection between lens of RMF in Cape Town, I reflect on a cross-spatial contemporary experiences of oppression (as patriarchy, and cross-temporal parallel in meaning; a shared desire, racism, classism) and inherited historical traumas of the perhaps, for the end of this world. colonial project, in slavery, land theft, genocide, and so on. Our collaborative efforts then, in annihilations of Decolonisation with RhodesMustFall, white supremacy, are inevitably as aesthetic practition- Cape Town ers, illustrating expressions of resistance (better guerilla- facing than seated at the table) that further enunciate The statue was therefore the natural starting point of or diminish the meaning around which our protests are this movement. Its removal will not mark the end but the beginning of the long overdue process of decolonising based.1 this university. In our belief, the experiences seeking to In this article, I draw from an overlying analysis of be addressed by this movement are not unique to an elite RMF’s 2015 employment of the word ‘decolonisation’ at institution such as UCT, but rather reflect broader dynam- the University of Cape Town. I imagine the term as a ics of a racist and patriarchal society that has remained located aesthetic set, whose reconfigured meaning in unchanged since the end of formal apartheid.2 this context made possible the temporary rupture of In early 2015, a much sampled, and largely broken, ‘de- space-time at the university, but whose capacity to sig- colonisation’ entered the mix of a group of radical Black nify radical Black disruption has greatly declined, with student organisers at the University of Cape Town, mo- the word continually instrumentalised by a global neo- bilising around the image or phrase ‘RhodesMustFall’. 56 Broken, because we must attend to the fact that decol- ture: systemic reproductions of white supremacy. Based onisation’s re-re-re-re-re-emergence at this time was broadly in the recognition of South Africa as a product (and is) heavily annotated, the results of its historical of coloniality, the movement directed its attention to processes in Africa having yielded much revolutionary the ways in which the university was a culpable agent independence struggle the ultimate outcome of which in deepening the hold of white supremacist power struc- has been nations still structured by underdevelopment tures. and exploitation intended to profit former colonisers. Furthermore, decolonisation’s ‘arrival’ in the move- Regardless of the immense systemic failures of post- ment was conditional, welcome inasmuch as it was ac- independence that the notion of ‘decolonisation’ brings companied by modes, practices and methodologies seek- with it, RMF found its employment necessary in the land- ing to undo the rendition of revolution in terms that too scape of contemporary Cape Town–a city often described closely mimic the colonial status quo. This break with as South Africa’s last colonial outpost. This is easily ob- ‘revolutionary’ business as usual, in other words, wanted servable in Cape Town’s stark geographical apartheid, nothing to do with the image of struggle as one of indi- where racial categories emerging from British colonial- viduals, martyrs or heroes exemplified by able-bodied ism and strengthened through white nationalist Afrik- young Black men. Instead, I believe there was a desire aner administration (‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘european’) con- to, perhaps prefiguratively, embody the actuality of re- tinue to determine where and how people live. Cape volutionary work which, by nature, is collective and in Town’s racial divide largely determines peoples’ access refusing to adhere to modes of identity regulated by in- to resources, basic services, security, and level of expos- stitutional power, is Queer. In this regard, there was no ure to the threat of government eviction and destruction formal leadership and, in media representation, press of homes – a staple of life in the new South Africa.3 As conferences and interviews, concerted effort was made is well documented, the introduction of formal demo- to ensure that different comrades spoke on behalf of RMF. cracy in 1994 was a cosmetic intervention which both The movement treated meetings and negotiations with obfuscated and deepened the material inequalities of the university’s management as open invitations, where South African life through the implementation of deeply any and all members who wished to, could attend and damaging neoliberal policies that arrived with the elec- speak, often overwhelming the staff in numbers. RMF tion of the African National Congress.4 South Africa thus refused ‘representation’, choosing to remain in flux remained South Africa, only now with a heavily indebted and resistant to the efforts of institutions like the univer- Black government whose entrapment in racist economic sity and the predominantly white-owned press to define negotiation meant that socialist measures, such as the and epistemologically resolve its identity and work. Led nationalisation of land and natural resources, free edu- conceptually and politically largely by gender studies, cation and free access to decent public healthcare, were politics and law students, RMF’s ‘decolonisation’ pro- impossible to implement with resources securely tied up ject outlined its ‘three-pronged’ approach as a meeting in the private (white) sector. In Cape Town in particular, point of Black Consciousness (hereafter BC), Black Rad- the failure of Azania’s coming is glaringly obvious, the ical Feminism (particularly Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work contentious UCT statue of Cecil Rhodes being just one of on intersectionality), and Pan Africanism.7 many littering