Apartheid wealth cannot buy silence on Gaza

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has lost 250 million rand ($15.2m) in donor funding after adopting two resolutions on Israel’s war on Gaza. Vice-Chancellor Mosa Moshabela disclosed the losses to Parliament in June, explaining that the Donald Gordon Foundation had withdrawn the remaining funding under a 200 million rand ($12.1m), 10-year commitment to a neuroscience institute. Other benefactors withheld another 50 million rand ($3m), including 15 million rand ($910,000) annually for bursaries.This blow lands in a country ranked by the World Bank as the world’s most unequal. UCT’s student debt exceeded one billion rand ($60.7m) by December 2025, while approximately 1,400 students still faced registration holds in February 2026.At UCT and across South Africa, poor Black families depend on public assistance and private bursaries because apartheid denied them the land, income, schooling and inherited assets that continue to ease white access to higher learning.As a graduate of UCT, I understand what the institution’s resources and principles mean to students who enter it carrying the weight of these inequalities. But nothing in its progressive resolutions justifies such harsh and call...