On a Tuesday in July, I found myself stumbling aimlessly through the Arthur archives. Not for any particular reason, to be perfectly honest, I find immense enjoyment in reading snarks about Arthur from the 1980s/1990s (oh, how history repeats itself!). On this particular day, I found an article written in 2010 by Brett Throop called “BIKO* INTRODUCES LEARNING ZONES.” Immediately, it caught my attention. Biko Library!?!? What could Throop possibly be on about? Thus, I fell into a rabbit hole and am thrilled to take you along with me.

Oh boy, did I discover what Throop was on about. The article focuses mainly on the 2010 implementation of new ‘learning zones’ in Bata Library. If you’re interested, check out that article, but we have a more important topic to hyper-focus on. The beginning preamble of this article plainly states that in the 1980s, a campaign was created by Trent students to change the name from Bata Library to Biko Library. Let’s investigate.

First of all, let’s talk apartheid and Steven Biko. To save my word count, I will assume you know what South African apartheid was and why it was terrible. Google it if you don’t. 

How are Bata Shoe Company and Thomas J. Bata connected to this? Well, lemme tell ya! To put it bluntly: Bata Shoe Company operated two factories within the “KwaZulu Black Homeland,” racially segregated zones within South Africa established by apartheid. These zones were an “oasis” of cheap Black labour, as they were exempt from South African minimum wage laws. Thomas J. Bata took advantage of apartheid, European colonialism, and easy access to slave wage labour to build his company and expand his shoe empire. 

The establishment of the Bata Shoe Company in South Africa destroyed local Indigenous footwear producers, as Bata Ltd. increased the imports of plastic and machinery at the expense of local materials like leather produced by Indigenous sellers. The company blocked Black workers from “semiskilled, skilled and executive positions,” and Sonja Bata (wife of Thomas J. Bata) is quoted saying, “We expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.” 

In 1986, Bata Ltd. withdrew from South African operations after 55 years. Bata Ltd. cited the deterioration of the South African economy, as well as “racial violence and pressure to divest from groups opposed to the policy of racial segregation known as apartheid,” as the reasoning behind their pullout. It was clear that Bata’s pull out from South Africa was due to economic reasons, with little consideration or shift in their opinions on apartheid.

It should be noted, however, being apartheid profiteers was not Bata Ltd’s first time choosing to belong on the wrong side of history. Zachary Austin Doleshal’s book ‘In the Kingdom of Shoes: Bata, Zlín, Globalization, 1894–1945’ recounts Bata Ltd’s explicit relationship to patriarchal divisions of labour, racism, and Italian fascism. In 1937, Bata Ltd established a tightly regulated social order within their founding city of Zlín, Czechoslovakia, where ‘personal inspectors’ surveilled those deemed threats to “Europe’s pre-eminent utopian industrial town,” including communists, alcoholics, sex workers, and the unhoused. A database was created of all suspected communists, and Bata Ltd. kept records of their employees’ political affiliations. This resulted in suspected individuals being barred from employment and residence permits by the city. 

Female workers faced the threat of losing their jobs if they became pregnant, with 191 women fired in the last half of 1938 due to pregnancy. For single women in Zlín, losing their jobs meant losing their place of residence, as many lived in shared dormitories, which would evict them if they lost their job. A patriarchal family structure was embedded into the management practices of Bata Ltd., as women were denied recognition as labourers as Bata insisted that women should quit the factory “after a time to become wives and mothers.” Bata Ltd. was an institutionalized haven of inequality and marginalization. 

At the 1937 National Committee of Fascists, Bata Ltd was praised by Radola Gajda, the keynote speaker; “It is truly regrettable that there are so few examples like Bat’a [Bata] in the Czechoslovak Republic. Just think if all the capital and national wealth were in the hands of people like Bat’a instead of the Jews and Germans, who steal our national wealth.” Jan Bata, Thomas J. Bata’s uncle and owner of Bata Shoe Company from 1931 to 1939, was an outspoken supporter of Italian fascism, with Gajda stating, “Jan Bata has seen what fascism can do.” He called Mussolini a “teacher,” and praised his ability to “inculcate individualism” and his imperialistic tactics; “Our children can be a bit more imperialistic. But they and their collective – the nation – will succeed in this world only if they understand that each one of them depends on each other realizing that they are responsible for carrying out the tasks we ask of them for the nation.” 

Thomas J. Bata authorized the providing of army boots to Mussolini under the rationalization that “if he did not provide the army boots, some other company would, and his employees would suffer,” directly assisting Italian fascism. Following the increased number of refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia, Jan Bata argued against their emigration, stating a concern of “overpopulation.” This contradicted his former statements in 1937 calling for a continued increase in population in Czechoslovakia, thus making it clear that he cared less about “overpopulation” and more about the “rising population of Jews” that would come from their emigration. The city council then banned “refugees from foreign areas” from living or working in Zlín. 

Bata ended up moving their company to North America, specifically factories in Southern Ontario and Maryland, due to increasing aggressive foreign policy by Germany focused on destabilizing Czechoslovak society and its businesses. Thomas J. Bata’s explicit support of Allied forces and cooperation with Canadian authorities prevented the takeover of Bata Shoe Company upon arrival, and set the foundation of a strong relationship that would heavily benefit Bata in the future. 

In North American factories, Jan Bata continued to come under fire. In 1940, he was reported by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service for choosing only to hire individuals under the age of twenty-five, “keeping workers under subjugation by paying them small wages and requiring them to purchase all the necessities of life from company stores and saving their money in a company-controlled bank.” His factories were found to have violated U.S. child labour laws, and Bata pleaded guilty to a wage and hour violation charge which forced the company to pay “restitution of $10,000 to its employees.” 

Jan Bata and over 100 Czechoslovakian workers who immigrated with Bata were then expelled from the United States. Bata was found guilty in American courts of collaborating with the Nazis, as his failure to sell off the stock of shoes sent to Norway prior to the war ended up in the hands of the Nazis and contributed to their success. 

Thanks to Thomas J. Bata’s friendly relationship with Canadian authorities and production of shoes for the Canadian army, he was seen by American and Canadian officials as a reliable replacement for Jan Bata. Only when Bata Ltd. was legally disassociated with Jan Bata was federal surveillance of the company ended. 

So, how and why was the Trent Library even named after a colonialist shoe company that profited from apartheid, and one that politically and financially supported facism? Large donations by the aforementioned Mr. Thomas J. Bata, of course! Bata donated a “confidential” amount of money towards the building of Trent University and is considered one of the universities “greatest supporters.” As stated in the official Trent obituary for Bata in 2008, “Mr. Bata served as a member of the Board of Governors from 1963 to 1971 and then as Vice-Chairman of the Board from 1971-1973, before becoming an honorary member of the University’s Board.” Specifically, Bata served as Vice-Chairperson of Trent’s Board of Governors. Bata Library opened in 1969 in honour of Bata and his monetary donations to the Institution. 

In Arthur Vol. 20 Iss. 5 of October 1985, Besty Trumpener details a demonstration held by Trent Students which resulted in a petition that successfully gathered the names of 700 students. (Trent student population at that time was around 5000). 

The demonstration was spearheaded by South African Action Committee members, who picketed the library for five hours. The consciousness-raising session was done alongside growing protests across Canada against companies who participated in the apartheid system. 

Trent’s administration refused the name change, but the lasting impact of this campaign can be traced through Arthur’s articles and various archived web blogs of former Trent students who still refer to the library as ‘Biko Library.’ Trumpener quotes 1985’s Trent’s Director of Communications Sue Wheeler, who states, “He’s hosted events in his home for the Fund for Excellence, and he has approached other corporations for donations.” Essentially, Bata donated a ton of money and convinced others to do as well.

Steven Biko, the library’s alternate proposed namesake, was a South African anti-apartheid activist who was gruesomely murdered by the South African government. He was heavily inspired by Marxist and post-colonial philosophers such as Frantz Fanon. He created the South African Students’ Organization, which morphed into a leg of the Black Consciousness Movement. 

Biko’s murder by the apartheid government turned him into a martyr, with twenty thousand people attending his funeral as a form of mass political protest. His life and work are immense and profound and were fundamental in the abolition of South African apartheid. I heavily encourage all to look further into his philosophy and legacy. Clearly, a far better person to honour than Thomas J. Bata and Bata Ltd. 

So, does Bata’s history of donating money override his reputation of promoting slave-like conditions in his South African factories, contributing to the funding and upholding of apartheid as well as bolstering fascism? 

I hope readers would disagree. Naming buildings after colonizers is not new for Trent, yet it seems the attention from Bata has been shifted effectively by Trent Administration towards more “pressing issues,” such as the eternal question of how many large pine cones you can install before the campus looks like a forest for giants.

What then are the next steps? I believe that Bata Library should be renamed, and ‘Biko Library’ would be convenient—it would directly address the historical evils that led to Biko’s murder, which were supported and funded by the Bata Shoe Company. It would also be the result of decades of activism by Trent Students. As well, I call on Trent groups to end the use of ‘Bata’ in pun-like statements - we can certainly be more creative in our calls to administration to avoid affiliation with fascists. 

We have seen time and time again that calls for changing the names of buildings or removing statues that honour colonizers and the horrors they helped perpetuate is seen as a waste of time by those with the institutional power to make those changes. Yet, if Trent is determined to keep the name of Bata Library, even amongst valid and immense criticism, isn’t that proof enough that the names of buildings hold importance and represent an institution’s values? Spaces and the names of those spaces matter, and Trent students in the 1980s knew it just as much as current students know it. We would be fools to pretend we don’t. 

We have a responsibility to continually demand better from the institutions we fund, especially one that continues to uphold and honour the legacy of an individual who profited off of South African apartheid, Italian fascism, institutionalized systems of patriarchy, the imprisonment of labour union organizers, dangerous working conditions, low labour costs, and the destruction of local markets for Indigenous businesses. 

With Leo Groake’s presidency ending next year, this would be the perfect last-ditch effort for student approval. Or perhaps, Leo will follow the established 40-year legacy of his predecessors and pass it off to the next president to address.