Buntu Siwisa
South Africa-at-Large, 2000
DPhil Politics
St. Peter's College
Currently studying at Oxford
My name is Buntu Siwisa. Though born in Pretoria, I grew up in the Eastern Cape and attended primary and high schools in Port Elizabeth, Alice and Bisho.
I enrolled for a B.A. (Economic History and Legal Studies) at the former University of Natal in Durban in 1994. In 1997 I graduated with an honours degree in Economic History. It was in the final year of my Masters degree in Economic History in Durban that I was awarded the South-Africa-At-Large Rhodes Scholarship. I came over to the University of Oxford in 2000 to read for a D. Phil. in Politics.
The principal of All Saints' Senior College, where I matriculated in Bisho, was a Rhodes Scholar. I remember vividly visiting his office once as a member of the Students Representative Council (SRC), and spotting an edition of the official University magazine. I enthusiastically quizzed him about it and Oxford. He gave me a pat on my shoulder and said, ‘Take it. I knew you'd be interested.' The magazine had a picture of a black student graduating, and that sent my imagination jumping around about Oxford. To make the matter more befuddling, this chap wore a mop of dreadlocks ---- and I loved that! I suppose that was when my interest in coming to Oxford germinated.
But it was mainly my supervisor at the University of Natal, Prof. Bill Freund, who encouraged me to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship. I was quite hesitant though to apply for it. The image of an all white and stiff Oxford and Cecil John Rhodes hindered me from applying. But he succeeded in prodding me to get that form, fill it in and send it.
My experience of Oxford has been enlightening and eye-widening. I have been exposed to a very exciting and intellectually stimulating international postgraduate community. The undergraduate community's parochial and Eurocentric view of the world gave me a bitter taste in my first year (as my college is predominantly undergraduate). At the same time, I learnt that the majority of our erstwhile white liberal universities, in Social Sciences and Humanities, are more or less as good as Oxford. That has given me the impetus to work, or be part of a project of resuscitating African universities at the level of producing and reproducing African and Afrocentric knowledge.