The student who has most come to embody the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, UCT fourth-year student Chumani Maxwele, has something of a storied history when it comes to causing a bit of kak.

And look, we’re using the word ‘kid’ quite loosely – the guy is 29. To the older generation, he’s a kid!

Maxwele, who was responsible for the initial defacing of the Cecil John Rhodes statue, was also the student responsible for giving Jacob Zuma and his security detail the middle finger back in 2010. This from TimesLive:

Mr Maxwele was arrested and “roughed up”.

A furore followed that incident‚ with former police minister Nathi Mthethwa issuing an apology as the South African Human Rights Commission rued the authorities’ handling of the saga.

Maxwele’s efforts to remove the Rhodes statue from the UCT campus have proved far more successful, with the statue currently residing in a storeroom on the campus. He outlined his reasons as such:

If you are black at UCT‚ you do not exist. It is that simple…

We have been alienated culturally … you have black professors‚ for example‚ from Ghana who are ridiculed by rich‚ white students because they have heavy accents.

This is what many black academics and students go through at UCT.

Whilst he has garnered much media attention he insists the credit for the movement belongs to the collective efforts of all involved:

We should forget about personalities. The #Rhodesmustfall campaign is leaderless … it has a flat structure.

It is the students who should take credit. What they did was powerful: they told white power to sit down.

One has a feeling that we will be hearing more from this young man in the future. Also, he isn’t the only person who has given Zuma the middle finger. Not by a long shot…

[source:timeslive]