What Does It Mean to Be of Makhanda? Tracing Rhodes University’s Evolving Relationship with Its Neighbouring Communities and Landscapes

Building on Vice Chancellor Sizwe Mabizela’s claim that Rhodes University (RU) is not merely in but of and for Makhanda, this article asks what it means for the higher education institution to be of the place in which it is located. Drawing on oral histories, archival material, and secondary literature, it traces the changing relationship between RU and Makhanda (previously Grahamstown) from the colonial frontier to the post-apartheid present. This analysis depicts not a university historically separate from its surrounding town and only recently seeking connection with it but one historically embedded in the town – although through unequal and contested relationships shaped by colonial conquest, settler identity, racialised labour relations, segregation, and apartheid. To make sense of more recent attempts at university transformation, the article examines RU’s contemporary entanglements with two contrasting landscapes of memory: Egazini Memorial Park and the 1820 Settlers Monument. Their divergent trajectories demonstrate that institutional access, symbolic resignification, and material landscape shifts do not necessarily proceed together. This analysis reveals that attempts at the transformation of higher education require attention to change not only within campus boundaries but also in the wider historical and spatial landscapes and social relations through which these institutions are constituted.