A boy named ‘stand up’ and his battle to take down a statue

Simukai Chigudu was born in 1986, his name means to "stand up", for yourself and for your rights. And it would be a name he lived up to. Simukai grew up in Zimbabwe, in the early days of independence, under Robert Mugabe. He had a colonial-style education which took him to England as a teenager, and eventually to study medicine at Newcastle University. But it was when he went to study for a masters in African Studies at Oxford University that Simukai felt his professional and personal lives collide. A turning point came when he was in a seminar about the use of political imprisonment as a tool for repression and control in Zimbabwe under British rule, the country was then called Rhodesia.

Simukai knew that his grandfather had been killed by the Rhodesian security forces and that his father had fought in the struggle for independence and been imprisoned, but he now started to discover the details of what he’d been through, and they were not easy to hear. Simukai felt deeply uncomfortable about some of the historical artefacts he found at Oxford University, including a statue of Cecil Rhodes whose army had forced Simukai’s ancestors off their land and scarred their lives. He knew it was his turn to “stand up” and he became co-founder of the Oxford Branch of the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement, which campaigned to have the statue at Oxford University removed. He is now Associate Professor of African Politics at Oxford and has written a memoir called Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

Producer: June Christie and Rachel Oakes

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Simukai Chigudu looks straight into the camera, he's wearing large silver framed round glasses and an open-necked pale patterened shirt. Credit: Fisher Studios/D. Fisher)