Ntokozo Qwabe

Qwabe was born in 1991 to a school caretaker,[1] Mr Felokwakhe Qwabe, and his wife Mrs Nomali in Oyaya, Eshowe, a rural area of KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. His father was in a polygamous marriage, and had 13 children in total.[2] Qwabe was the first of his family to attend university. He grew up at Oyaya, where he attended Sithilo Combined Primary School and Uyaya High School. Qwabe migrated from Oyaya to Durban in Grade 9 to attend Brettonwood High School, where his father worked as caretaker. He stayed with his father at the workers' cabin and completed Grade 12 at Brettonwood at the age of 16.[3]

Qwabe completed his Grade 12 at Brettonwood High School, and obtained his Senior Certificate with Merit at the age of 16. He first registered for his Bachelor of Laws degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2007 at 16. He was forced to drop out of the University of KwaZulu-Natal for financial reasons in the first year of his degree and work as a cashier at a Checkers store in Rossburgh in order to save for his tuition. He returned in 2010 to complete his Bachelor of Laws degree, graduating summa cum laude in 2014.[4][5] Qwabe completed his degree at the top of his class, having achieved 34 distinctions, 20 Certificates of Merit and seven Dean’s Commendations.[6] He also won many awards at the university, including the Phatshoane Henney Group Honour Medal, the Norton Rose Prize, and the Shunmugam N Chetty Memorial Prize for being the top student in Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law and Criminal Procedure. In 2014, Qwabe was named the University of KwaZulu-Natal Distinguished Student, the highest student award at the university.[7]

Qwabe subsequently won the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship and studied a Master of Laws degree in Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Cape Town.[2] He then 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, and studied the Master of Science in African Studies degree at St John's College, Oxford in 2016.[8][9][10]

The statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town being removed in April 2015.

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.[8]

Qwabe is an avid public speaker, and represented the universities he studied in at various Moot Court competitions. He was a Judge at the Oxford Maitland Chambers Intercollegiate (Cuppers) Moot Competition in 2015, a Coach of the winning University of Cape Town team at the Kader Asmal Moot Competition in 2014,[11] and represented the University of KwaZulu-Natal at the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition. In 2016, together with fellow Rhodes Must Fall activists Athinangamso Nkopo and Yasmin Kumi, Qwabe won a debate at the Oxford Union with the motion "Must Rhodes Fall?", which led to the Union voting in favour of the removal of the statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes.[12]

Two days after the Paris Attacks of November 2015, Qwabe posted a message on Facebook saying that he did not stand with France and would not be changing his profile picture to the French Tricolour flag because for many, it was 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". In an interview with The Sunday Times, Qwabe said that he would support a campaign by victims of French atrocities to remove the French flag from their campuses, and said that it was no different to the Nazi swastika to those victims.[13] In May 2016, Qwabe posted comments on Facebook about an incident when he was in a South African restaurant with a Rhodes Must Fall transgender activist, Wandile Dlamini, where Dlamini refused to tip a white waitress until black South Africans had gotten their land back.[14] The incident was globally criticized, [15] including in South Africa by an African National Congress spokesman who said that land reform has taken place in South Africa and maybe had not yet reached Qwabe's community.[16] A petition started by a South African expat in London to have Qwabe expelled from Oxford University or stripped of his Rhodes scholarship was rejected by the university.[17][18] Qwabe has stated that he has no regrets over his Facebook comments[19][20] but that the events were not exactly as described in various media outlets following the incident.[21] A campaign to provide a tip for the waitress raised R150,000.[14]

Qwabe has subsequently been involved in Fees Must Fall student protests at the University of Cape Town, commenting on Facebook about one incident in which he was in an altercation with a white student over that student recording the protests.[22] The white student involved later confirmed that he had not been injured.[23]

• Qwabe talking about his Rhodes Scholarship on YouTube