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Celebrating 60 years of hope
THE PLAN WAS TO GROW a class of black intelligentsia who would collaborate with and support the apartheid project. In 1960, the University College of the Western Cape, a constituent college of the University of South Africa, admitted the first group of 166 so-called coloured students. Its all-white Afrikaner faculty offered limited training for positions in schools and civil service institutions serving coloureds.
The hostile academic staff, drab buildings and poor amenities were uninspiring, and the location surrounded by railway yards, sand and dense vegetation was disparaged as a ‘bush college’ by the students themselves. The student leaders who met in the cafeteria to discuss these problems were not as docile as the authorities had hoped. By the end of the decade, influenced by the South African Students Organisation (SASO), the students
began to rebel, challenging issues as petty as the enforced wearing of ties to the more serious absence of black lecturers and the favouring of Afrikaans. Among them were two brilliant future lecturers and ViceChancellors, Jakes Gerwel (BA 1967) and Brian O’Connell (BA 1969).
By 1970, the University College of the Western Cape had an enrolment of 936 students. Along with the Universities of the North, Zululand, Fort Hare and DurbanWestville, UWC was granted university status and the right to award its own degrees. Despite the university’s attempts to suppress student politics, eight of the 11 SRC members of 1972 were SASO members, and when Turfl oop SRC president Onkgopotse Tiro was expelled for condemning apartheid in a graduation speech,
the UWC campus joined the solidarity strike in his support. From that point on until the demise of apartheid, UWC students were always in the thick of protest action.
The legendary Richard van der Ross was appointed as Rector in 1975 and declared that U-W-C represented the ‘University of the Working Class’. Often criticised by students, especially when unable to prevent police from invading the campus, Van der Ross’s tenure coincided with tremendous institutional growth, the demographic transformation of the academic staff and more vibrant student life.
Many of the changes were quiet revolutions, such as the protected status awarded to the UWC nature reserve in 1978 and the impact of UWC’s inspired group of theology lecturers led by Jaap Durand (also UWC’s first vice-rector).
In 1982, the University Senate rejected race as a criterion for admission and the coloured university project was effectively over with the passing of the University of the Western Cape Act in 1983, giving UWC autonomy on the same terms as white universities.
Every year from 1983 to 1989 saw disruption of the academic programme, confrontations with police and arrests and detention of students. In June 1987, incoming Rector Jakes Gerwel dubbed UWC ‘an intellectual home of the Left’ and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu began his long tenure as Chancellor in the same year (serving until 2011).
With an already strong foundation in the humanities, UWC was developing centres of excellence in the sciences, law, community health, pharmacy and dentistry by the end of the decade. Several UWC law luminaries were drawn into writing the new democratic constitution and then persuaded to enter government itself after 1994, including Dullah Omar, Brigitte Mabandla and Bulelani Ngquka. The Rector became the Director-General in the Presidency.
The five-year term (1995–2000) of Prof Cecil Abrahams as Vice-Chancellor coincided with a period of immense pressure on the higher education landscape. The efforts of the university to improve access to higher education almost worked against it as student debt ballooned and the economy stagnated. Despite losing staff to better-resourced institutions, government and other agencies in the new democracy, UWC managed to improve its research productivity. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of its NRF-rated researchers increased from 6 to 65 and the enrolments of PhD students increased from 131 in 1996 to 321 in 2005.
In 2001, Brian O’Connell, the student leader who swore he would never come back after graduating, was appointed as Vice-Chancellor. UWC nearly lost its individual identity during the restructuring of higher education in 2002 but fought off the merger with the Peninsula Technikon (now CPUT). In the twelve years that Prof O’Connell was at the helm, the campus was physically transformed, with imposing new and refurbished buildings, public art and new residences. Academic progress was consolidated. In 2004, the University of Stellenbosch’s School of Dentistry was incorporated into UWC, and UWC also became the sole provider of a first degree in Nursing in the Western Cape. By the time Prof O’Connell retired in 2014, UWC was ranked as one of the top South African and African universities.
In 2015, university campuses erupted as students protested against the high cost of university tuition. By the end of 2019, the situation had normalised under a new leadership team led by Prof Tyrone Pretorius. Plans for the 60th-anniversary celebration scheduled for March 2020 had just been finalised, when a deadly novel virus surfaced in China.
Respice, Prospice. Looking back, there is much to be proud of. A tiny college founded to further a warped ideology was transformed into a modern multi-campus university respected for its teaching quality and leading research, where half the teaching staff hold doctorates and 20 percent of the students are postgraduates.
Looking forward, all indications are that the achievement of the next 60 years will dwarf the first.
