For those of us who keep up with the news the name Chumani Maxwele is a pretty recognisable one. After dumping faeces on UCT’s Cecil John Rhodes statue he became the poster boy for the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement, often quoted in various media outlets around the country and appearing in front of the camera to speak his mind.

Maxwele was suspended by UCT last month after an incident with a female lecturer and stated that he believed the suspension was politically motivated. The university had remained rather tight-lipped on the matter but have finally broken their silence, with the account below taken from UCT’s media statement and published on TimesLive:

Maxwele went into the Mathematics building after being informed that “as it was a public holiday, all lecture theatres and classrooms were locked. Once inside the building, and after ascertaining that the said rooms were in fact locked, he is alleged to have:

– raised his voice at the lecturer (who was in the department to mark student papers), stating that she was “a white woman who takes all the rights of the black students”;
– shouted aggressively that “the statue fell; now it’s time for all whites to go”;
– stated that he was not interested in the opinion of whites and that they should be killed;
– continuously shouted and swore at the lecturer and two other witnesses to the incident;
– started banging on the lecturer’s office door (after she had entered the office and locked her door) and when the lecturer opened the door, to have pushed her in his attempt to enter;
– continued to shout and scream at her and bang on her desk; and
– uttered the words: “We must not listen to whites, we do not need their apologies, they have to be removed from UCT and have to be killed.”

It is reported that witnesses who were in the building at the time have backed up the university’s account with none corroborating Maxwele’s version of events. This has angered the ANC Youth League who have rushed to his defence and released this statement:

He is definitely being victimised by UCT and we will support him. As the ANCYL, we want to see transformation, especially at UCT.

We feel this is a conspiracy against Maxwele. We’ve seen the same happening during apartheid when activists were targeted.

There could be interesting times ahead for both UCT and Maxwele. I have no doubt we will be hearing more on this before the week is out.

[source:timeslive]