The Bishops Rhodes Scholarship
Cecil Rhodes's will set aside a Rhodes Scholarship for each of four South African schools (the "Named Schools"), Bishops among them. For more than a century, the Bishops Rhodes Scholarship took Bishops alumni to Oxford, and, more recently, alumni of other partner schools too. It is a remarkable inheritance, and it rests on an exclusion: for most of the Scholarship's history, the vast majority of South Africans could never have been considered for it.
In 2023, the Rhodes Trust, on independent legal advice, concluded that School Scholarships reserved for the Named Schools could not lawfully continue in that form. The difficulty lay in who was eligible to apply. Because only those who had attended one of the Named Schools, or one of their partner schools, could put themselves forward, the pool of possible applicants was far smaller, and far less representative of South Africa, than the pool for South Africa- at-Large. Under the UK Equality Act an eligibility condition with that effect is indirect racial discrimination, whatever the merits of the individuals chosen, and the Trust's counsel advised that it was unlawful.
Given the above, the Rhodes Trust asked the Named Schools to work with it on a way forward. Three years of negotiation produced settlements under which each School Scholarship survives, with candidates drawn from a wider pool of schools and universities in its own part of the country. For Bishops, that means schools across Cape Town, not one school alone. All four Named Schools accepted it: three in November 2025, and Bishops in December 2025, after Bishops Council had gone back to the Rhodes Trust and secured further changes to the terms.
We think Bishops Council chose well. Widening the field takes nothing away from the Bishops Rhodes Scholarship. It opens the door to young people from schools across Cape Town, of every background, many of whom could never have been considered before, and it means each Bishops Rhodes Scholar is chosen on merit against the strongest candidates that a wider and more diverse community can offer. It turns an inheritance built on exclusion into an opportunity that reflects the South Africa we all want to build. That is the argument that twenty-six of us who hold Rhodes School Scholarships made in the Daily Maverick in November 2025, and it is the argument we have made, in person and in writing, to those who see it differently.
Many Old Diocesans do see it differently, and where we part company is with the decision to carry the disagreement towards the courts, through a working group of the Old Diocesan Union and with money raised from the Bishops community. The Old Diocesan Union, working with the Paul Roos Old Boys Union, is litigating against a settlement the School has already accepted. We do not think that is the Union's place, and we do not think it serves the best interests of the School.
We would rather spend our energy making the new arrangements work, so that the first Bishops Rhodes Scholar chosen from the wider pool is the first of many.