unopened emails.
* * *
Joseph was two months away from taking his A levels when the University of Cape Town erupted. ‘Rhodes Must Fall!’ the students cried, meaning the statue, not the man. Joseph googled. In the Wikipedia photo, the big bronze Cecil Rhodes looked thoughtful in his square throne, turquoise rust turning him geological. Protestors gathered in small crowds to throw shit at it and graffiti it and toyi-toyi around it. A month later, it was craned up and away. Joseph was annoyed and bored by this news. Ennuyeux.
The University of Zambia, the university down the road where Grandpa had been a dean for decades, had a statue, too, by Henry Tayali. The Faceless Graduate was a cartoony concrete thing with a graduation cap and Mickey Mouse shoes, its facelessness meant to symbolise education for all: rich and poor, men and women. To Joseph it just looked unfinished, and obviously male. Had female students ever protested it, crying ‘The Graduate Must Fall!’, smearing it with menstrual blood? Not likely. The Cape Town protests seemed gentrified to him – how nice for you, destroying history to make a point when some of us just want the chance to study it.
By the time Joseph received his A-level results – top marks but not quite high enough for a merit scholarship – the protests had mutated into ‘Fees Must Fall!’ Cape Town students built a shanty town on the library steps to protest the lack of adequate housing. They set cars on fire and lobbed a petrol bomb into an office. They cut the nose off Rhodes’s memorial and spited his nameplate: CECIL JOHN RHODES became RACIST THIEF MURDERER. To the aspiring applicant, these protests all seemed nonsensical. For a man to fall and fees to fall were not the same thing.
‘It’s like they’re protesting because of a pun,’ Joseph complained at supper.
‘You do realise that Cecil Rhodes named two African countries after himself.’ said Gran. ‘And he was not just an imperialist. He was a businessman, too, the head of a company.’
‘The British South African Company!’ Grandpa nodded, gravy oil glossing his lips.
‘Decolonising education is not just about race,’ Gran continued as she gently scooped up some cabbage with her ntoshi. ‘It’s about class, too. The university fees are so high precisely because of Rhodes’s capitalistic ideology. Rhodes and fees must fall.’
‘Wait, they’re saying fees must go?’ Grandpa asked as if abruptly remembering his opinion. ‘These students, they don’t understand that attending university is a privilege. It must be paid for!’
‘Did you not receive a bursary from Sir Stewart?’ Gran asked witheringly.
‘It is not the same!’ Grandpa snatched his ntoshis, smashed them into his relish, tossed them into his mouth. ‘Why throw money at middle-class students when there are mouths to feed! This Marxist idealism of yours is not Zambian,’ he garbled as he gobbled. ‘It is imported.’
‘Important, did you say?’ Gran said icily. ‘I couldn’t hear you through your mouthful.’
Grandpa swallowed. ‘Imported!’ He took a swig of Mazoe. ‘Do not correct my English!’
‘It is a condescension—’
‘Yes, it is! Do not forget I learned the Queen’s English in your bloody country.’
‘I was saying it is a condescension to say that Africa is not ready for free university education—’
‘Oh, it is “Africa” now, is it?’ Grandpa scoffed. ‘The whole country of Africa?’
‘You know what I mean,’ Gran said tremulously.
The lights went out. They all paused, waiting for the generator to clunk and judder to life. Joseph blinked at the darkness. He could have sworn that right before the power cut, he had seen the freckles on Gran’s skin flash open, tiny eyes glinting all over her. The lights stuttered back on and the low-grade electric whine of the household appliances swarmed up around them again.
‘That is what people should be protesting!’ Grandpa expostulated. ‘I’ve told these ZESCO people that load shedding is the wrong idea. These power cuts have become a real noonsense!’
‘Well,’ said Gran calmly, ‘you can’t separate power cuts from political power—’
On it went, their banter about politics beating the protests in South Africa to flat abstraction. To Joseph, it was just a noonsense, as Grandpa would say. Where the hell was he supposed to go to uni?
* * *
Joseph’s first and only term at the University of Zambia was a torture to his ego. It had been easy to get in, with his marks and his Grandpa’s old position, and at least he could live at home – there was no way he was going to stay on campus.