Ntokozo Qwabe (born 1991) is a South African Rhodes Scholar who was one of the founders of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at Oxford University. His subsequent comments following the 2015 Paris attacks and behaviour towards a white waitress in South Africa were criticised in news and social media, leading to a petition for his removal from Oxford which was rejected by the university. He has rejected accusations of hypocrisy for receiving money from the Rhodes scholarship scheme, claiming that he is merely recovering wealth stolen from Africans by Rhodes during the colonial period.
Qwabe was born in 1991 to school caretaker [1] Felokwakhe Qwabe and his wife Nomali in Oyaya, Eshowe, a rural area of KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. He is one of 13 children [2] and the first of his family to attend university. He was forced to drop out of the University of KwaZulu-Natal for financial reasons part way through his first degree and work as a cashier at a Checkers store in Rossburgh in order to save for his tuition but returned in 2009 to complete his bachelor of laws degree, graduating summa cum laude in 2013. [3] [4] He subsequently completed a master's degree at the University of Cape Town. [2] He joined the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 2014 where he completed a bachelor of civil law (BCL) degree in 2015 at Keble College. [5] [6] [7]
In March 2015, Qwabe was one of the founders of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign which originated at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and was originally directed at a statue of Cecil Rhodes that was seen by the campaign as a symbol of European colonialism and white supremacy. The campaign subsequently spread to the University of Oxford and internationally. Qwabe has rejected accusations of hypocrisy for receiving money from the Rhodes scholarship scheme, which is funded by a legacy from Cecil Rhodes, claiming that he is merely recovering wealth stolen from Africans by Rhodes during the colonial period. [5]
Two days after the Paris Attacks of November 2015, Qwabe posted a message on Facebook saying he did not stand with France and calling for a ban on the French Tricolour flag at universities, describing it as a symbol of a state "that has for years terrorised – and continues to terrorise – innocent lives in the name of imperialism, colonialism, and other violent barbarities." [8] [9] In a subsequent interview with The Sunday Times, Qwabe compared the French flag to the Nazi swastika. [10]
In May 2016, Qwabe posted comments on Facebook about an incident when he was in a South African restaurant with a friend:
They take a pen & slip in a note where the gratuity/tip amount is supposed to be entered. The note reads in bold: “WE WILL GIVE TIP WHEN YOU RETURN THE LAND”. The waitress comes to us with a card machine for the bill to be sorted out. She sees the note & starts shaking. She leaves us & bursts into typical white tears (like why are you crying when all we’ve done is make a kind request? lol!). Anyways, so this white woman goes to her colleagues who are furious. She exits to cry at the back & a white male colleague of hers reluctantly comes out to address us & to annoy us more with his own white tears telling us that he finds our act "racist".
His actions were widely criticised, [11] [12] including in South Africa where they were described as hypocritical and racist and not supported by an African National Congress spokesman. [13] A petition started by a South African in London to have Qwabe expelled from Oxford University or stripped of his Rhodes scholarship was rejected by the university on the grounds that Qwabe was entitled to free speech. [14] [15] Qwabe has stated that he has no regrets over the comments [16] [17] but that the events were not exactly as he described them on Facebook. [18] A campaign to provide a tip for the waitress raised R150,000.
Qwabe has subsequently[ when? ] been involved in student protests at the University of Cape Town, commenting on Facebook about one incident in which he was accused of violence: [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]
It is NOT true that I 'assaulted' and 'whipped with a stick' a white student during our shutdown of the arrogant UCT Law Faculty yesterday! Although I wish I'd actually not been a good law abiding citizen & whipped the white apartheid settler colonial entitlement out of the bastard - who continued to video record us without our consent - this is not what happened as the media is reporting.
The white student involved later confirmed that he had not been injured but described being racially abused by Qwabe and assaulted by another black student. [24]
Cecil John Rhodes was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896.
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest university in Sub-Saharan Africa in continuous operation.
The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans [and] their country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious scholarships for U.S. citizens, and along with the Fulbright Scholarship, it is the only broadly available scholarship available to Americans to study at any university in the United Kingdom.
The University of the Western Cape is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other universities in Cape Town are the University of Cape Town,, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the Stellenbosch University. The establishing of UWC was a direct effect of the Extension of University Education Act, 1959. This law accomplished the segregation of higher education in South Africa. Coloured students were only allowed at a few non-white universities. In this period, other "ethnical" universities, such as the University of Zululand and the University of the North, were founded as well. Since well before the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, it has been an integrated and multiracial institution.
Bishops Diocesan College is a private, English medium, boarding and day high school for boys situated in the suburb of Rondebosch in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The school was established on 2 October 1849 by the Anglican Bishop of Cape Town.
The South African College Schools is a public English medium primary and high education institution situated in Newlands - part of the Southern Suburbs region of Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Founded in 1829, it is believed by its scholars and old boys to be the oldest school in South Africa, however, there are several other schools that were founded at earlier dates as far back as 1738.
The Rhodes Memorial on Devil's Peak in Cape Town, South Africa, is a memorial to the English-born South African politician Cecil John Rhodes (1853–1902). The memorial was designed by the renowned architect, Sir Herbert Baker.
Max Price is a former vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. He succeeded Njabulo Ndebele and held this position for 10 years from 19 August 2008 until 30 June 2018.
Donald John Markwell is an Australian social scientist, who has been described as a "renowned Australian educational reformer". He was appointed Head of St Mark's College, Adelaide, from November 2019. He was Senior Adviser to the Leader of the Government in the Australian Senate from October 2015 to December 2017, and was previously Senior Adviser on Higher Education to the Australian Minister for Education.
Rhodes House is a building part of the University of Oxford in England. It is located on South Parks Road in central Oxford, and was built in memory of Cecil Rhodes, an alumnus of the university and a major benefactor. It is listed Grade II* on the National Heritage List for England.
Albert van der Sandt Centlivres, was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1950 to 1957.
Schwarzman Scholars, founded by American financier and philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarzman, is a one-year fully-funded master's degree leadership program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The program selects 100 - 200 Scholars per year based on their leadership ability, academic achievement, and commitment to advancing mutual cultural understanding and global progress. Selected scholars pursue a one-year master's degree in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University, residing at Schwarzman College.
Rhodes Must Fall was a protest movement that began on 9 March 2015, originally directed against a statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) that commemorates Cecil Rhodes. The campaign for the statue's removal received global attention and led to a wider movement to "decolonise" education across South Africa. On 9 April 2015, following a UCT Council vote the previous night, the statue was removed.
Chumani Maxwele is a South African political activist best known for his involvement in the Rhodes Must Fall and the #FeesMustFall movements. Maxwele first gained prominence in 2010 after his wrongful arrest and interrogation for allegedly giving an obscene hand gesture to President Jacob Zuma's presidential motorcade convoy in Cape Town city traffic.
#FeesMustFall was a student-led protest movement that began in mid-October 2015 in South Africa. The goals of the movement were to stop increases in student fees as well as to increase government funding of universities. Protests started at the University of Witwatersrand and spread to the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University before rapidly spreading to other universities across the country. Although initially enjoying significant public support the protest movement started to lose public sympathy when the protests started turning violent.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh is a South African author, musician and activist. Mpofu-Walsh was president of the University of Cape Town Students' Representative Council in 2010. He holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. In September 2017, Mpofu-Walsh published his debut book, Democracy and Delusion: 10 Myths in South African Politics. Along with the book, he released his debut rap album, also titled Democracy and Delusion.
Qwabe is a surname of Zulu origin. Notable people with the surname include: