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Hello and welcome to your radical questions.

This is where I put your questions to one of our magnificent radical guests, erudite, thoughtful, influential,

and often have written very powerful and important books which you should read.

This is your chance to engage very directly with a very smart, very interesting people that we have on this podcast and ask them about their ideas for the future. My guest today, who I'm sure you would have heard and enjoyed on Thursday's episode is Professor. No, are you a doctor professor? What do I call you? Just Simukai. You call me Siwukai. Both titles work, but you're, I'm actually a double doctor. Double doctor? Oh my God. Okay. Right. Full,

I'm married to an academic. I know how this going. My guest today is the double doctor Simukai

Chagoodoo, an associate professor of African politics at Oxford University and a founding

member of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, the movement pushing

to decolonise the university and remove the Statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College. But as we discussed on Thursday's episode, and I implore you to go back and listen to it, it's a little bit more complicated than that. It's not a case of just tearing things down. It's about actually, in a weird sort of way, building things up like our knowledge. Anyway, his new book weaves together, his experience growing up in post-independent

Zimbabwe as part of the born free generation with a wider look at how British influence

still shapes that country. It blends personal and political history to offer a very fresh

perspective on race, class identity and the ongoing legacy of colonialism around the

world. It's called chasing freedom coming of age at the end of empire. And if you want to know

whether or not you found that freedom, you'll have to listen to Thursday's episode. But this is a

good place to start. Right, Simukai, double doctor. Are you feeling ready? I am. Okay, be radical.

Here we go. This is our first question from Mike in Belgium.

Amel reference Cecil Rhodes. The scholarship that's available to students, as I understand it, worldwide has benefited many.

Yes, he has a history. But that history, which can be read and researched online or otherwise should be published

all of it warts and all so people can see exactly who he was and what he did but i don't think that

is a reason for removing the statue, hiding things away.

Better to get things out in the open.

So it's clear and obvious who this man was and what he did and why.

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