5.2. Remarks by the Guest Speaker: Prof Rozena Maart: UKZN academic

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Over the past 25 years, South Africa’s higher education system has engaged in considerable soul-searching about its core purpose, particularly in relation to its responsibility for transformation. In the past few years since 2015, nationwide student protests have erupted at various campuses across the country with varying levels of intensity. Campaigns have been mounted under the hashtags #RhodesMustFall (#RMF), #FeesMustFall (#FMF), #OutsourcingMustFall and #GBVMustFall. In some instances, there have been violent clashes during the protests. Against this background, the mission statement of many universities includes a focus on preparing students for good citizenship, and these institutions generally see themselves as having a civic responsibility beyond preparing students for the world of work.

Meanwhile, a number of assessment reports have been produced in recent years with a view to improving the higher education sector’s performance in meeting transformation goals and the needs of students. A number of summits and hearings have also been held to this end. These have included: • The Report of the Ministerial Committee on

Transformation, Social Cohesion and the Elimination of

Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions of 2008 (otherwise known as the “Soudien Report” after Crain Soudien who chaired the committee which oversaw the research effort). This provided pointers to the transformation status of the higher education system, and some of the problems it still needed to address. • Stakeholder summits on higher education transformation held in 2010 and 2015 which considered the recommendations of, and responses to, the Soudien

Report and which provided an opportunity for some deeper conversations about progress made to date and challenges ahead. These produced signed declarations committing stakeholders to accelerating transformation within the system. • A 2015 report by the Centre for the Study of Violence and

Reconciliation (CSVR) entitled #Hashtag: An Analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African Universities, which sparked heated debate on the decolonisation of the education system; language, gender and racial inequalities at universities; the prevalence of sexual harassment at higher education institutions; and a mounting funding crisis in the sector. • A 2016 report produced by the South African Human

Rights Commission (SAHRC) on Transformation at Public

Universities in South Africa, and a number of public hearings which were held by the SAHRC in relation to this. The report and hearings sparked debate and conversation at universities on difficult, “unsayable” topics that needed to be addressed to promote transformation in higher education. • A 2018/2019 Report on Gender Transformation in

Tertiary Institutions produced by the Commission for

Gender Equality (CGE) and hearings convened by the

CGE at universities during the process of producing this.

The report and hearings addressed the issue of gender discrimination in recruitment and enrolment in previously male-dominated fields, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects; and pointed to high levels of sexual harassment and GBV which were impeding access at universities.

Against the backdrop of these efforts, this transformation lecture seeks to deepen the conversation on such issues and chart a way forward, emphasising outcomes and timeframes for action – which can then be assessed periodically to evaluate commitment and progress in the context of CPUT’s Vision 2030 Strategy. As part of this drive, the incoming SRC should formulate a functional programme of action in partnership with the various faculties, divisions, units and centres at the university. Transformation is everybody’s responsibility: staff and students need each other to build one smart CPUT that is non-racial, non-sexist and free from all forms of abuse and discrimination.

5.2. Remarks by the Guest Speaker: Prof Rozena Maart: UKZN academic

It is important to recognise that transformation not only requires but demands a particular way of thinking about how we exist in the world and in South Africa, and what the history of this existence means in the present. Establishing a programme of studentcentred transformation entails looking at how students can enter the discussion and the issue of their agency in relation to their participation in transformation efforts. Such a programme should also raise the consciousness of the students, and not just in terms of the transformation documents and policies that have already been forged, but rather in relation to their actual lives and existential experience.

The transformation of the higher education system needs to reflect the changes that are taking place in our society and to strengthen the values and practices of our new democracy. The higher education system must be transformed to redress past inequalities, to serve a new social order, to meet pressing national needs and to respond to new realities and opportunities.

Transformation is identified as one of the cross-cutting pillars of the One Smart CPUT Vision 2030 strategy. It is viewed as everybody’s business and is supposed to be integrated into the business of the university, affecting students and staff across the institution’s governance and administration, its policies and procedures, and its curricula, as well as its core functions of teaching, learning, research, innovation and community engagement. The concept as it is presented also references digital transformation as a vehicle for mainstreaming

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a transformed environment within a human rights and social justice perspective. The document anchors transformation in the context of the One Smart CPUT Vision 2030 strategy, which incorporates ‘oneness’ and ‘smartness’ as key dimensions supporting the smart university concept.

So, the question then becomes: How can a student-centred approach engage with the existing transformation documents to produce the kinds of outcome that these policies envisage? A provisional answer to this question may emerge through consideration of six aspects of transformation: language; history; interpretation; agency; knowledge and knowledge production; and student-centredness.

• Language

The deployment of appropriate language is crucial to foster transformation. In this context, the term language is not meant to refer to English, or isiXhosa or isiZulu, or one of the other South African languages, but rather a form of language or discourse that uncovers, that reveals, that unmasks the hidden and the forbidden – all those things which people are not encouraged to say but which must be expressed to foster the agency on which authentic transformation depends.

No society exists without its contradictions; no person lives without their contradictions. These need to be recognised to reach the point where the path forward may be identified. Language is crucial in terms of producing a discourse that can dismantle the history of racism which still stands in the way.

• History

Another element that is crucial to implementing transformation and making it possible in terms of CPUT’s

Vision 2030 is history. When students raise the issue of the lived legacies of apartheid and colonialism, they are often accused of digging up the past. However, without the past there can be no future; and, more than this, students’ understanding of their world may be constrained without a knowledge of South Africa’s history of thought, ideas and social movements – a history which is not being taught properly.

For example, few students have any knowledge of the work of Charlotte Maxeke, the first black South African woman to acquire a PhD in philosophy while studying under the American Pan-Africanist WEB Du Bois in the United States (US). When I ask students: “Tell me, how many African scholars – from a continent of 54 countries – do you know and whose work you use?” the students generally answer: “Very few”. This is the result of remaining committed to a curriculum that it is believed will connect South African universities globally, but which actually neglects the local. Many students know little of the history of their local communities in South Africa. For example, in Cape Town, the history of enslavement, the history of Robben Island, and the history of how the Dutch created an environment for more enslavement and more colonisation by the British and other Europeans are not widely taught.

• Interpretation

There is also the issue of interpretation in relation to transformation in the educational context – and a history of conservative resistance to scholars and thinkers seeking to look at the world through African eyes. In 1998, after his proposed curriculum for African Studies had been rejected as inappropriate by the curriculum planning committee at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Ugandan-born scholar

Mahmood Mamdani penned a scathing indictment entitled

Is African studies to be turned into a new home for Bantu education at UCT?

Whenever I teach theory courses that include a broad range of ideas and approaches, I am often told by my peers that “This is above the students’ level”, that “You have to recognise that the students are going to have to go and work” or that “Students aren’t particularly interested in these kinds of theories”. In my view, these are just different ways of saying: “Don’t expose students to theoretical frameworks that will encourage them to critique and criticise their lecturers and the professors”. However, if we are seeking to enforce a particular interpretation, such as one informed by the discourse of the coloniser, at the expense of others, we are not allowing for transformation. We are saying that a transformed society can only speak one kind of language – that is, a language of complicity and compliance – and that any interpretation beyond that realm should be discouraged.

So, when I talk about interpretation, I am talking about being aware, as teachers, lecturers and professors, of the importance of sound analysis, which must entail encouraging students to critique and challenge us. No society can move forward in terms of transformation if teaching students to be complicit.

• Agency

Without seeking to underestimate the importance of history, interpretation and critique as factors of authentic transformation, the agenda for transformation can only be realised through agency. Agency entails our ability through our embodied subject identities to use our minds and our bodies, and apply our knowledge, ideas, understanding and capacity for interpretation, to move the country forward. This may be achieved by deploying the knowledge that has been shared in transformation documents, but only if we can also find our place in those transformation documents.

• Knowledge

Another key criterion for transformation is knowledge and knowledge production. No transformation programme can go