A Tribute to Hugh Corder

UCT has been told it must decolonise

Its pedagogy, its curriculum, its physical spaces.

It has been told to vaporise,

Or obliterate, all colonial traces.

 

This raises a question about our dear friend Hugh:

Must he be obliterated, or vaporised, too?

Is not Hugh as colonial as colonial can be?

Should he not therefore be removed from UCT?

 

Hugh, after all, attended Diocesan College,

Or Bishops, as it is called, by those without ‘the knowledge’.

And is there not more of which Hugh should be ashamed,

Such as that scholarship from he-who-shall-not-be-named?

 

Indeed, it requires only a little investigation

To uncover the full horror of Hugh’s Eurocentricization.

Not satisfied with only his Cambridge degree,

Hugh had to move to Oxford, for his PhD.

 

You may be wondering: Could it possibly get any worse?

It does, as I explain in the remainder of this verse.

He is male, and pale, and as for sexual orientation . . .

The size of his brood provides sufficient illumination.

 

Does this mean that we have to box up dear Hugh,

Possibly only after having covered him with poo.

Should Hugh, like the other guy, be hoisted by crane,

And dumped in a museum, never to be seen again,

 

Except, perhaps, once or twice a year,

By a gum-chewing school-group come to peer,

At the colonial relics, collecting dust,

At CJ and Hugh, turning slowly to rust.

 

But wait! Before you rush off one and all,

To go paint those posters saying: ‘HughMustFall’,

There is something more I need to say

About the man we’re celebrating here today.

 

There are things about Hugh which transcend place and time,

And until they’ve been said, I cannot end this rhyme.

They are things not bounded by ideology,

By culture, religion, or any other mythology.

 

They are things the value whereof never changes,

Be you in Africa, Europe, or the Himalayan ranges.

They are things of great value, whoever you are,

Be you as white as snow or as black as tar.

 

To present these things in verse is a trifle too hard

For one such as me, only an occasional bard.

So rather than get myself into a doggerelled twist,

I’ll present them to you in a prose-style list:

 

empathy

compassion

generosity

warmth

loyalty

fairness

decency

kindness

 

These virtues, and others, constitute Hugh Corder’s core.

And he possesses them, not because of obedience to some moral law,

But rather because, by them, his character is defined.

They are locked into his heart, rather than legislated by his mind.

 

So rather than leave Hugh to the unfortunate fate

Of being hoisted into obscurity in a wooden crate,

I would salute him as a wonderful mensch

Whose profoundly humane essence none should seek to quench.