RHODES UNIVERSITY, Grahamstown.
19th-century colleges / Afrikaanse blasoen
The arms of Rhodes University were granted by the College of Arms on 5 May 1913 and registered by the Bureau of Heraldry on 13 May 1968. The blazon (as recorded on the original deed of grant) reads:
Or on a Pile Sable an Open Book inscribed with the words “Sapientam Exquiret Sapiens” between three Escallops of the first. On a Chief Argent a Lion passant gules between two Thistles slipped and leaved proper. And for the crest a Wreath of the Colours upon a Rock the Figure of a Man mounted on a Horse representing ‘energy’ all Argent.
The excessive use of capital letters and a paucity of punctuation is characteristic of blazons from the College of Arms. It is also characteristic of the College to omit mention of the motto below the shield, which reads: Vis Virtus Veritas.
Arms explained:
Black and gold are the livery colours of the Graham family. The pile (inverted triangle) is characteristic of the arms of Graham of Fintry, while the escallops (shells), an emblem of pilgrimage, appear not only in the arms of Fintry (a cadet branch of the family) but also Graham of Montrose (the clan chief). These Graham symbols signify the university’s presence in Grahamstown.
The lion and two thistles were taken from the coat of arms granted to the descendants of Cecil John Rhodes’s father (although C J Rhodes had applied for this grant, it was not to him personally, and it was made following his death). The references to Cecil Rhodes arise out of his estate’s role in establishing the university.
The open book is a common feature of the arms of a college or university; a famous example is Oxford University.
The crest is a representation of the famous statue by Watts which forms part of the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town. The statue, also known as Physical Energy, was a favourite of Rhodes’s.
An appalling aspect of the artwork produced by the herald painter, or artist attached to the College of Arms in London, is that the crest-wreath is drawn with the appearance of a tea-tray balanced on top of the helmet. The crest-wreath or torse was produced by twisting silk cloth in two or more colours and was placed around the bolts that held the crest to the helmet, so as to conceal them, and so formed the base of the crest.
It must be added that the standard of artwork produced through the College has improved considerably through the 20th century, and is now an exemplary blend of authentic mediæval and appropriate modern styles.
Founding of the university college:
The need for a university in the Eastern Province – the part of the Cape Colony lying between the Fish River and the Tsitsikamma mountain range – became felt in the late 19th century. From about 1870 post-matriculation courses were offered under the auspices of the University of the Cape of Good Hope (UCGH, which in 1918 became the University of South Africa) at five Eastern Province schools – St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown; Victoria Boys’ High School (now Graeme College) in Grahamstown; the Grey Institute in Port Elizabeth; Gill College in Somerset East and Graaff-Reinet College.
However, partly as a result of the South African War, these classes were stopped at all but St Andrew’s College.
The movement culminated in the establishment in Grahamstown on 31 May 1904 of the Rhodes University College, named for Cecil John Rhodes, diamond and gold magnate, imperialist, sometime Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and founder of the British South Africa Company which colonised Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe and Zambia). Donations towards its founding came largely from the trustees of Rhodes’s estate (he had died in 1902) and De Beers Consolidated Mines (which he had founded), as well as several public bodies in the Eastern Province.
The RUC prepared students for UCGH examinations, and in 1918 it became a constituent college of the University of South Africa.
Among its professorial chairs was the first chair of law and jurisprudence created in South Africa, 1905. The oldest faculties are those of Arts (instruction at undergraduate level began in 1904) and Science (1904), followed by Law (1905), Education (1914), Commerce (1922), Social Science (1942), and Divinity (1947, for many years the only academic training centre in South Africa for ministers of the Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregrational churches).
Two research institutions begun at Rhodes are now independent: the Leather Industries Research Institute (1942) and the Wool Textile Research Institute (1953).
Independent university:
On 10 March 1951 Rhodes became an independent university, to which the University of Fort Hare (founded in 1916) was affiliated until 1959.
Since its independence, five further institutions have sprung from the university: the Institute of Social and Economic Research (1954), the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (1964), the Rhodes Institute for Freshwater Studies (1967), the J L B Smith Institute of Ichthyology (1968; the only one of its kind in South Africa) and the Tick Research Institute (1971). The Institute for the Study of English incorporates the Dictionary Unit, which has been responsible for producing the Oxford Dictionary of South African English in its various editions.
Rhodes has been quite enterprising in its efforts to expand, but has twice been stymied.
In the 1960s it established a branch in Port Elizabeth, but central government intervention saw its campus in Bird Street, Central Hill, being taken over by the new University of Port Elizabeth.
Professor Emeritus Guy Butler notes (in the third volume of his autobiograpy, A Local Habitation) that the money raised from selling the Old Museum in Port Elizabeth (some £80 000) paid for the construction of the Rhodes Theatre.
In the 1980s it established a branch in East London which became a flourishing campus, but central government intervention this time resulted in the campus becoming part of Fort Hare in 2003.
Website:
The university’s website can be found here.
Afrikaanse blasoen:
Die wapenbrief van 1968 gee hierdie blasoen:
In goud, op ’n omgekeerde swart punt tussen drie goue skulpe ’n oop boek en daarop die woorde “SAPIENTIAM EXQUIRET SAPIENS” en op ’n skildhoof van silwer ’n rooi gaande leeu tussen twee gestengelde en geblaarde dissels van natuurlike kleur.
Helmteken: Op ’n rots ’n ruiter wat krag voorstel, alles van silwer.
Wrong en dekklede: Goud en swart.
Wapenspreuk: VIS VIRTUS VERITAS.
Die skulpe van die blasoen is mantelskulpe; die standbeeld dra die titel Fisiese Energie.
Source: blazon quoted from deed of grant; historical notes from the Standard Encyclopædia of Southern Africa.
Illustration reproduced in Rhodes University calendar 2000, copied from the deed of grant. Scan courtesy of the Eastern Province Herald.
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Comments, queries: Mike Oettle