Rhodes University

History

Although a proposal to found a university in Grahamstown had been made as early as 1902, financial problems caused by the Frontier Wars in Albany prevented the proposal from being implemented. In 1904 Leander Starr Jameson issued £50 000 preferred stock to the university from the Rhodes Trust. With this funding Rhodes University College was founded by an act of parliament on 31 May 1904.

University education in the Eastern Cape began in the college departments of four schools: St. Andrew's College; Gill College, Somerset East; Graaff-Reinet College; and the Grey Institute in Port Elizabeth. The four St Andrew's College professors, Arthur Matthews, George Cory, Stanley Kidd and G. F. Dingemans became founding professors of Rhodes University College.

At the beginning of 1905, Rhodes moved from cramped quarters at St Andrew's to the Drostdy building, which it bought from the British Government. Rhodes became a constituent college of the new University of South Africa in 1918 and it continued to expand in size. When the future of the University of South Africa came under review in 1947, Rhodes opted to become an independent university.

Rhodes University was inaugurated on 10 March 1951. Sir Basil Schonland, son of Selmar Schonland, became the first chancellor of his alma mater, and Dr. Thomas Alty the first vice-chancellor. In terms of the Rhodes University Private Act, the University College of Fort Hare was affiliated to Rhodes University. This mutually beneficial arrangement continued until the apartheid government decided to disaffiliate Fort Hare from Rhodes. The Rhodes Senate and Council objected strongly to this, and to the Separate University Education Bill, which they condemned as interference with academic freedom. However, the two bills were passed, and Fort Hare's affiliation to Rhodes came to an end in 1959. Nevertheless, in 1962 an honorary doctorate was conferred on the state president, C. R. Swart, who (as Minister of Justice after 1948) had been responsible for the repression of opposition political organisations. The award caused the resignation of the chancellor, Sir Basil Schonland, although his reasons were not made public at the time.

James Hyslop succeeded Alty in 1963. In 1971, Rhodes negotiated to purchase the closed teacher training college run by the sisters of the Community of the Resurrection of our Lord including the buildings and grounds and a number of adjacent buildings, facilitating further expansion.

Campus

During 2008 work began on construction of a new library building at a cost of R85 million, one of the largest infrastructure projects undertaken by the university, and was completed in 2010.

Organisation and administration

Faculties and Schools

Rhodes has six faculties:

Humanities (1952)

Commerce

Law

Science

Education

Pharmacy

The six faculties are further subdivided into 30 academic departments, of which 11 form part of the humanities faculty. As of 2009 the humanities faculty, being the largest in the university, consisted of 40% of the student intake of undergraduate and postgraduate studies, enrolling 2669 students as of 2009.

Law clinic

Rhodes University operates a law clinic, which operates as a firm of attorneys providing training to law students and free legal services for indigent people. The law clinic operates from two offices, one in Makhanda and one in Komani. The law clinic came to national attention in July 2013 when it represented 15 members of Nelson Mandela's family in their litigation against Mandla Mandela (Nelson's grandson) concerning the location of family grave sites.

NALSU

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), named in honour of Neil Aggett, a medical doctor who died at the hands of apartheid-era Security Branch police in 1982. It was established in 2012 (formally launched in 2014) through a partnership between the university and a department of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government. NALSU team members are from three academic departments: Sociology and Industrial Sociology (where the unit is located), History, and Economics and Economic History. NALSU has research partnerships with a number of national and international research and advocacy organisations.

Academics

Rhodes is a small, highly residential university. For most undergraduates, first and second years of study are done while living in campus residences.

Rhodes' academic program operates on a semester calendar, beginning in early-February to early-June, and the second semester beginning in late-July and ending late-November.

Undergraduate tuition for the first year of study in 2011 towards a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degree was R26,590 and R27,720, respectively, and the cost of board was between R35,700 and R37,600.

Student body

Rhodes admitted 1592 students in 2012.

The tables below show the racial and gender composition of the university for that year.

SARChi chairs

Rhodes holds fourteen national research chairs appointed under the South African Research Chairs Initiative. This accounts for approximately 7% of the total awarded nationally in South Africa, a significant proportion given the university's small size.

Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction: Human and Social Dynamics (Catriona Macleod)

Marine Ecosystems (Christopher McQuaid)

Radio Astronomy Techniques and Technologies (Oleg Smirnov)

Medicinal Chemistry and Nanotechnology (Tebello Nyokong)

Mathematics Education (Marc Schafer)

Numeracy (Mellony Graven)

Intellectualisation of African Languages, Multilingualism and Education (Dion Nkomo)

Insects in Sustainable Agricultural Ecosystems (Steve Compton)

Interdisciplinary Science in Land and Natural Resource Use for Sustainable Livelihoods (Charlie Shackleton)

Marine Natural Products Research (Rosemary Dorrington)

Biotechnology Innovation & Engagement (Janice Limson)

Global Change Social Learning Systems Development: Transformative Learning and Green Skills Learning (Heila Lotz-Sisitka)

Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa (Ruth Simbao)

Molecular and Cellular Biology of the Eukaryotic Stress Response (Adrienne Edkins)

Research bodies

Centre for Biological Control

Student life

Halls of residence

Allan Webb Hall

Courtenay-Latimer Hall

Desmond Tutu

Hugh Masekela Hall

Drostdy Hall

Founders Hall

Hobson Hall

Solomon Mahlangu Hall

Miriam Makeba Hall (formerly Kimberley Hall East)

Kimberley Hall West

Lilian Ngoyi Hall

Nelson Mandela Hall

St Mary Hall

Media

Three student newspapers, Activate, The Oppidan Press and Cue, have been published daily during the National Arts Festival held in Makhanda every year for several decades. Activate celebrated its 65th birthday in 2012, while The Oppidan Press was only first published in 2007, and its target readership was mainly Oppidans. The journal Philosophical Papers is edited in the department of philosophy.

Scholarly journals

Rhodes University faculties and departments produce scholarly journals, including:

African Music: Journal for the International Library of African Music

African Journal of Higher Education Community Engagement

English in Africa

Journal of Contemporary African Studies

Rhodes Journalism Review

Ranking

In 2011, the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities ranked Rhodes 5th in South Africa and 700th globally.

Notable alumni and staff

In academia, Old Rhodian Max Theiler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research in virology in 1951.

Notable alumni: general

Matthew Muir – Artist

Beth Diane Armstrong – Sculptor

Diane Awerbuck – Writer

Norman Bailey – Opera singer

Nick Binedell – Founding director of the Gordon Institute of Business Science of the University of Pretoria

Troy Blacklaws – Novelist

Alex Boraine – Politician; academic; co-founder of IDASA (Institute for Democracy in South Africa) and the International Center for Transitional Justice

Sir Rupert Bromley, 10th Bt. – Business executive

Guy Butler – Poet

Efemia Chela – writer

Tafadzwa Chitokwindo – Zimbabwe Sevens rugby player

Nan Cross – Anti-conscription and anti-apartheid activist

Achmat Dangor – Writer

Embeth Davidtz – Actress

Rob Davies – Minister of trade and industry of South Africa

Mick Davis – Businessman, chief executive of Xstrata

Geoffrey de Jager – Philanthropist and industrialist; founder of Rand Merchant Bank

K. Sello Duiker – Novelist and screenwriter

Sir Michael Edwardes – Business executive

Notable alumni: journalists, media celebrities in South Africa

One of the most well-known departments on the Rhodes campus is the university's school of Journalism and Media Studies, through which many of South Africa's most notable media celebrities have passed. There are also an especially high number of radio celebrities who graduated at Rhodes – many of them having spent time with the university's campus radio station Rhodes Music Radio.

Matthew Buckland – Media-owner and entrepreneur

Steve Linde (born 1960) – newspaperman

Anand Naidoo – Anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera English based in Washington DC; previously with CNN

Jeremy Mansfield – Radio host, television presenter, comedian

Karyn Maughan – Legal journalist

Eusebius McKaiser – Social activist, author, radio show host

Haru Mutasa – Correspondent for Al Jazeera International

Zaa Nkweta – Former Carte Blanche presenter

Verashni Pillay – Mail & Guardian editor-in-chief

Toby Shapshak – Journalist and African technology thought leader

Barry Streek – Political journalist and anti-apartheid activist

Rob Vember – 5FM DJ

Notable staff

Thomas Alty – physicist; Principal and Vice Chancellor of the university

Margaret Ballinger – Political activist; taught in the history department

André Brink – Writer

Andrew Buckland – Performer and playwright

Julian Cobbing – Professor of African history; wrote an influential and controversial theory on the nature of the Mfecane

Ward Jones – Professor of philosophy

Don Maclennan – Professor of English and notable poet

Catriona Ida Macleod, head of the psychology department

Obie Oberholzer – Photographer

D. C. S. Oosthuizen – Philosopher, Christian, critic of apartheid

Selmar Schonland – Botanist

J. L. B. Smith – Ichthyologist; first to identify a taxidermied fish as a coelacanth, a fish previously thought to be extinct

H. W. van der Merwe – Founder of the Centre for Intergroup Studies, University of Cape Town

Etienne van Heerden – Writer

Arthur Matthews (mathematician), founding professor at the university

Graham Glover - Author, Associate professor, editor of the South African Law Journal

Name controversy

The university's name references Cecil Rhodes, a British businessman who heavily aided British imperial interests in South Africa, which led to controversy starting in 2015. Protests held that year by Rhodes Must Fall led to the University of Cape Town removing a statue of Rhodes, and similar protests against Rhodes' legacy occurred at Rhodes University. Some students and outlets started referring to it as "The University Currently Known As Rhodes". In 2015 the university council undertook to determine whether or not the institution should change its name, as well as consider several other ways it could deal with the issues.

In 2017, the Rhodes University Council voted 15–9 in favour of keeping the existing name. While the university agreed with critics that "[it] cannot be disputed that Cecil John Rhodes was an arch-imperialist and white supremacist who treated people of this region as sub-human", it also said it had long since distanced itself from the person and had distinguished itself with the name Rhodes University as one of the world's best. The main argument against the change was financial, as such a change would cost a significant amount of money and the university was already having trouble with its budget. Furthermore, changing the university's name could have an adverse effect on its recognition internationally.