“Understanding the transformation dynamics facing the higher education landscape in South Africa”
TRANSFORMATION LECTUREREPORT
Understanding the transformation dynamics facing the higher education landscape
in South Africa
18 OCTOBER 2021
MODERATOR
Mr Tumiso Mfisa
Centre for Diversity, Inclusivity & Social Change: Office of the Vice-Chancellor
Summary of the opening remarks by Prof Paul Green: Chairperson of Institutional Transformation Forum (ITF)
Response by Mr Siya Sabata: Fundani
INTRODUCTION 1 1
A webinar presenting a “Transformation lecture: Understanding the transformation dynamics facing the higher education landscape in South Africa” was held on 18 October 2021 as part of a Transformation Seminar Series organised by the university.
Mr Tumiso Mfisa
Convened by the Centre for Diversity, Inclusivity and Social Change at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) with the central and local Student Representative Councils (SRCs), the meeting was held as the fourth in a series of virtual meetings which sought to create a space for engagement and critical thinking on the topic of transformation to promote a student-centred environment at the university. A key goal of the webinar was to seek practical solutions to the transformation challenges faced by the institution, which may also be applied more widely in the higher education sector.
Centre for Diversity, Inclusivity & Social Change: Office of the Vice-Chancellor
1 The webinar was introduced and moderated by Tumiso Mfisa, Diversity and Inclusivity Assistant at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).and a former Student Representative Council (SRC) chairperson at the university. This introduction is based on introductory remarks made by Professor Paul
Green, Chair of the Institutional Transformation Forum (ITF), CPUT, and Tumiso Mfisa.
2 SUMMARY OF THE OPENING REMARKS BY PROF PAUL GREEN : CHAIRPERSON OF INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION FORUM (ITF)
The webinar on student-centred transformation, which was attended by student leaders and senior academic and management staff from CPUT, as well as scholars and administrators from other South African universities, was held at a crucial moment, as the country prepared for local government elections and the universities were finalising their Student Representative Council (SRC) elections.
Prof Paul Green
Student representatives are expected to drive the transformation agenda centrally and locally and also to report quarterly to the forum on their respective transformation initiatives. This reporting creates a record which enables continuity and evaluation of the progress being made in relation to these transformation efforts.
Chairperson: Institutional Transformation Forum
SRCs are constitutionally required to be actively involved in the transformation agendas of their universities under the terms for their establishment presented in the Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education of 1997. In this context, CPUT’s Institutional Transformation Forum (ITF) includes the president, the secretary-general, and the deputy president of the central SRC of the university, as well as the chairpersons of the district SRCs and respective campuses. These student representatives are expected to drive the transformation agenda centrally and locally and also to report quarterly to the forum on their respective transformation initiatives. This reporting
creates a record which enables continuity and evaluation of the progress being made in relation to these transformation efforts.
The present online meeting also takes place within the context of the broader imperatives for transformation established by the White Paper 3. Transformation affects all aspects of life, learning and research at universities. It provides a picture of a typical student in an educational environment; a typical staff member in administration, support services or academia; and the safe, inclusive learning and working space to which all universities should aspire.
In this context, the White Paper 3 outlined the following priorities for transformation in the higher education sector:
• Increased and broadened participation to ensure that no one is left behind. The document noted that, to this end, historically determined patterns of fragmentation, inequality and inefficiency needed to be overcome. Under this priority, the goal has been to ensure equal access and success irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, language, religion, culture, geography, and other related identities. Pursuit of this goal has entailed universities generating transformed curricula, pedagogies, and modes of delivery to meet student’s educational needs. In addition, universities have been obliged to address all barriers relating to sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and the various other isms that can impede access and support.
• Responsiveness to societal interests and needs. Under this priority, universities should not be ivory towers divorced from addressing local, regional and global needs. In order to promote the required responsiveness, the document advocated restructuring the system and the institutions to meet the needs of an increasingly technologybased economy; to address South Africa’s triple challenge of inequality, poverty, unemployment; and to deliver transformation-responsive community engagement, pedagogy and research. In this context, CPUT’s Vision 2030 places great emphasis on the university’s role as an anchor institution, producing graduates with the appropriate attributes and knowledge to meet local and national developmental needs and participate in a rapidly changing and competitive global context.
• Cooperation and partnerships in governance. This priority entails universities operating in community spaces and reconceptualising the relationships among higher education, the state and civil society, and among themselves. The establishment of appropriate governance further requires the production of an enabling institutional culture that is sensitive to and affirms diversity; promotes reconciliation; respects human life; protects the dignity of individuals from racial and sexual harassment; and rejects all forms of abuse and gender-based violence.
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; and number of summits and hearing 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 Educations 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 the progress made to date and the challenges ahead. These produced signed declarations committing the stakeholders to accelerating transformation within the system;
• A 2015 report by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) titled #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 the hearings produced debate and conversation at universities on difficult, “unsayable” topics that needed to be addressed in order to promote transformation in higher education; and
• A 2018/2019 Report on Gender Transformation in Tertiary Institutions produced by the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), and hearings which were 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 background of these efforts, this transformation lecture seeks to deepen the conversation on such issues and chart a way forward, placing the emphasis on producing 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 seek to formulate a functional programme of action which it may seek to implement 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.
3 UNDERSTANDING THE TRANSFORMATION DYNAMICS FACING THE HIGHER EDUCATION LANDSCAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA 2
Prof Rozena Maart UKZN Academic and Transformation expert
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 student-centred 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 address the issue of raising the consciousness of the students, and not just in terms of the transformation documents and the policies that have already been forged, but rather in relation to their actual lives and existential experience.
2 This section is based on a lecture delivered by Professor Rozena Maart, UKZN academic and transformation expert.
In considering the terms of the transformation agenda that has been established in South Africa, it is necessary to look back beyond the Education White Paper 3 to the documents and thinking that preceded it and on which it is based. When former president Nelson Mandela’s office sought to address the issue of transformation, the goal was to actualise the vision offered by the Freedom Charter of 1955, which is viewed by some as a contentious document.
Almost as soon as he took office, Mandela made it clear that discussion should be held, and policies introduced to address transformation in the wake of the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. This is evidenced by the White Paper on Education and Training, Notice 196 of 1995, in which then minister of education, Professor Sibusiso Bengu, began the process of addressing transformation vis-à-vis the Freedom Charter.
In his foreword to the White Paper,3 Prof Bengu noted:
The transformation of the higher education system to reflect the changes that are taking place in our society and to strengthen the values and practices of our new democracy is, as I have stated on many previous occasions, not negotiable. The higher education system must be transformed to redress past inequalities, to serve a new social order, to meet pressing national needs and respond to new realities and opportunities.
The White Paper outlines the framework for change, that is, the higher education system must be planned, governed, and funded as a single national coordinated system. This will enable us to overcome the fragmentation, inequality and inefficiency which are the legacy of the past and create a learning society which releases the creative and intellectual energies of all of our people to meet the goals of reconstruction and development. I have no doubt that the journey is not likely to be easy.
The whole document’s language conveys a Marxist analysis injected with a critique of the materiality of race similar to those produced in the past by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and Steve Biko.
This point is relevant for a number of reasons, including because it is apparent that the African National Congress (ANC) government of the time was concerned to reference historical documents such as the Freedom Charter as the new Constitution was being drafted and in the transformation documents of the period as a way of saying: “We are guided by the Freedom Charter.”
In fact, Sobukwe walked out of the Freedom Charter meetings in part because of the inclusion of settler colonial positions, which has persisted in national policy formulations to this day, and which he considered illogical, inappropriate and incorrect as the basis or foundation for a liberation struggle. In other words, you don’t include your colonisers in your quest for liberation.
There is a clear understanding in Prof Bengu’s statement and an accompanying paper that he put forward at the time that transformation fundamentally concerned the issue of social relations. This issue of social relations and how they should be interpreted and promoted remains particularly important at CPUT, given that the university’s strategic documents repeatedly advocate “social cohesion” with reference to transformation.
3 https://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/FeesHET/docs/1997-WhitePaper-HE-Tranformation.pdf
What can be seen in the early transformation documents – that is those which are produced from 1995 to August 1997 when the White Paper was published, and which continue to be used in South African universities today as some of the guiding principles for steering the transformation process – is that they fail to outline a particular plan of action or step-by-step process guiding how transformation should happen and who was supposed to be being transformed. Rather there is a general discussion in these documents which seeks to bring all South Africans into the arena of transformation, although it is clear that when Prof Bengu says the journey is not going to be easy, he is speaking of the history of settler colonialism, and the history of racism and apartheid in South Africa.
Higher education institutions are in the business of transforming lives, importantly the lives of students. Any transformation programme has the impetus for positive change and growth in a person’s life. The White Paper 3 indicates that the higher education system must be transformed to redress past inequalities …
So, as part of the outcomes being sought by the university, it is important to ask: How is such transformation on the individual and broader societal levels to be enacted? If part of the outcome is to serve a new social order, it is important to address the issue of what that social order will actually be. In addition, how and what part should the institution play in dismantling 342 years of a social order which has taken the population from usurpation and settler colonialism to apartheid, to contemporary South Africa, which is a noted democracy?
In this regard and as part of such a process it is important to acknowledge that the nature of the contemporary and soughtfor social orders needs to be addressed. Social orders serve a purpose – so the questions that need to be asked include: What is that purpose today? Is it to reproduce and maintain inequality? And, if so, how can this aspect of the social order be dismantled and addressed in a way that can keep the focus on producing a democracy that acknowledges not only the historical realities but the fact that they remain the realities for most South Africans. In other words, in the context of the relationship between policy and action, it is important to consider the process required to achieve the desired outcomes.
The White Paper 3 continues by stating that transformation is required “to meet pressing national needs, to respond to realities and opportunities”. The web page for the university’s Transformation, Diversity and Social Cohesion Unit4 notes that transformation’s scope “covers staff administration, student engagement and experiences, teaching and learning, curriculum, transformative research and innovation, and community engagement”, and that the aim is to enhance a “safe and inclusive university environment to ensure access, success, redress [and a] university environment free from all forms of discrimination [and] abuse”.
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
4 https://www.cput.ac.za/services/transformation
for mainstreaming 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.
In unpacking the approach that has been adopted by CPUT, it is important to note that “smartness” is often interpreted by university staff, including the administration and leadership, as a concept which does not include retaliation or resistance to policies and practices that quell and suppress student actions. Smartness is often interpreted as a new post-democracy approach which comprises being wise and mindful of one’s reality and acting in the best interests of one’s history, although this may at times require one to neglect one’s own identity and history for the sake of ensuring that things run smoothly.
This is not to say that the activities of students which are termed “violent” should be supported – although, it should be noted in this context, that South Africa’s history of usurpation and coloniality was never televised or broadcast on social media in the same way that the protesting students’ actions have been. Rather the point being made here is that when students react, when students retaliate, when students say “I am tired and fed up with the situation – and this is the way that I express myself”, or “I have been oppressed through violence, and this is my response”, they are often accused of not being “smart”.
To be smart in this way, however, generally entails repressing and suppressing one’s own personal history and one’s personal agency in the service of what are deemed the best interests of the country – which is tantamount to being complicit in one’s own oppression and the unfortunate racism of one’s own condition.
It is also important to note in this regard, that the term “smart” is deployed strategically to valorise certain forms of behaviour, while devaluing others. So, students are told that they are not being “smart”, when their actions are at odds with the expectations of the university’s leadership, and when they fail to acknowledge the authority of this leadership and seek to move the plan for transformation beyond the parameters envisaged by those in power.
We were all once students and many of us were protesting students. In this context, we should not put ourselves in the position of embracing policies on transformation without the students’ input. We would not be here today if it were not for the revolutionary and intellectual activism and insurgence of students such as Anton Lembede, Sobukwe and Biko. Historically, the country’s student leadership produced the most original critiques of the historical conditions under which the masses were oppressed and exploited. Their analysis also paved the way for recognition of the absences that are evident in present transformation documents, including in answer to the question: Whose truth, whose version of transformation is being promulgated in these pieces of paper?
In this regard, it is important to understand, that in talking about transformation, it is not a question of not accepting or refusing to work with a particular document or set of documents. It is about recognising the provenance of these documents, the expectations that they formulate, and the kinds of agency that are supposed to
be produced in response to them – that is agency in the sense of our bodies, our fleshed, embodied natures which bring forth our lived experiences and how we exist in the world; the body as a vehicle for change.
The key question here is: What do we embrace and what kind of history do we bring to our personal transformation capacity? All forms of transformation require that those involved develop their own personal transformation agendas – but no document can legislate for or determine individual attitudes. Rather these should be forged on the basis of a clear understanding of what precisely the particular document or policy is proposing in terms of transformation.
In this context, it is important to interrogate what the One Smart Vision 2030 Strategy is seeking in terms of its drivers of oneness and smartness, and also in relation to some of the other main components that inform the university’s overall transformation agenda.
The One Smart Vision 2030 Strategy makes reference to coming together:
We continue to make progress on digital transformation, the journey to make sure that there is no social, cultural, or economic divide and that no one is left behind through digital participation. We come together with shared symbols and values as equals to eradicate the divisions and injustices of the past, to foster unity and to promote a consciousness and intentional sense of being proudly South African: Committed to the country and open to the continent and the world.
But being proudly South African can also means that one does not necessarily have to agree with the way in which policies are drafted. What is rather required is agreement on how transformation will be enacted, the purpose of the process and the kind of transformed society that is being sought – with an emphasis on what each member of the institution can bring to the process in terms of their personal participation.
Policies and documents are crucial to produce action, but they also demand the active, personal participation of people if they are to be effective. In this regard, when a student offers a critique, it does not mean that they are not participating. Students cannot be expected to agree and endorse what is said as if they were
unthinking human beings. Indeed, their criticism and critiques should be welcomed if the critique, objective of education is to challenge established ways of thinking and produce new ones, rather than to educate black students towards inferiority and white ones to superiority, as happened under apartheid.
In this regard, the role of the student is not necessarily to agree with the educator but rather to recognise that inequalities and contradictions still exist in education – for example, the contradiction that, as black South Africans, we speak English, the language of the colonisers, as the lingua franca in schools and universities.
The Minister of Higher Education Transformation Oversight Committee (TOC) proposes a number of key transformation goals which includes:
The improvement of the quality of teaching and learning; the elimination of weak administrative systems, especially at historically disadvantaged universities; the elimination of discriminatory practices based on gender, race, class and historical imbalances; the provision of adequate infrastructure so that all universities can meet their fundamental mandates of teaching, learning, research, innovation and community engagement in the context of social cohesion; the expansion and improvement of research throughout the system; the expansion of access to university education to many more students”.
In the context of the ethos and dynamics of higher education, a key term that needs to be unpacked here is that of “social cohesion”. What precisely does this mean? And how is it proposed that it should be achieved?
On the question of what it means to be social, Argentinian Marxist feminist Martha Jimenez in her paper, Marxism and Class, Gender, Race: Rethinking the trilogy, notes: “We live our lives at the core of the intersection of a number of unequal social relations based on hierarchically inter-related structures which together define the historical specificity of the capitalist modes of production and reproduction and underlay their observable manifestations.”
In other words, social relations in any given environment, especially in one in which inequality is rife and where there is a history of inequality, is based in hierarchically inter-related structures. This is relevant insofar as some of the dynamics in higher education are shaped by a particular definition of what “social” means. In other words, what is expected in terms of etiquette and performing one’s identity socially, which, in contemporary South Africa, is very much the product of a colonial precedent.
Steve Biko addressed a comparable issue when he met representatives from the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in Grahamstown in 1967. These activists thought they were doing Biko and his peers, who were later to establish the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), a favour by inviting him. They expected him to be social and to be a student on the grounds that they had laid out, and to deploy a particular kind of discourse and have a particular kind of agency – that is, broadly,
to acknowledge their dominance as the leading the student movement at that time.
However, Biko resisted this, noting that if he and his comrades were going to be sitting at the same table as the colonisers, then the colonisers should recognise that they had their own ways of eating.5 Similarly, if students today are to resist the dominant notion of the “smart” student who participates in transformation on the grounds that have already been established under the relevant policy document, then they may need to think and act beyond the forms of socialisation with which they have been presented in the higher education space.
A second idea that should be considered in relation to the kinds of social relations that are being promoted as part of the transformation agenda in higher education, is Jamaicanraised Charles Mills’ conceptualisation of the underpinnings of the Enlightenment-era political concept of the social contract. He argues that racism was at the core of this idea of the social contract, rather than a peripheral phenomenon or an accidental by-product – the misguided, unintended actions of illogical and oft-times well-meaning white people – as it has often been claimed. In other words, racism is intentional and deliberate and an integral characteristic of the social contract as it was conceived at that time and as it still is to this day.
This idea bears on how transformation is conceived given the emphasis that has been placed on social cohesion as part of the process. In the context of South African higher education, this idea of social cohesion entails the maintenance of a particular
5 As well as illustrating the deeper ideas that underpin what it means to be social, this example also references the notion that when people sit and eat together, they may be expected to use the knives and forks introduced by the British to South Africa – the use of which is embedded in class relations.
order, of an unspoken etiquette and of an expected performance on the part of students, who are supposed to be smart and grateful and align themselves with the policies and practices proposed for transformation regardless of whether or not they may be ideologically opposed to them.
However, there shouldn’t be a problem with being ideologically opposed. Rather the real problem is when such opposition is not articulated, or is ignored or is denied a platform, given that 90% of the population in South Africa are expected to follow policies that only serve 10% of the population; and are expected to align themselves with particular ways of thinking and behaving accordingly.
Part of the problem in this regard is not recognising this dissonance. For example, I don’t have a problem being guided by a transformation document even though, as an older staff member in a university, I am fully aware of what that document intends and its provenance. However, I do have a problem with being lied to, with not being able to speak the truth as I see it and with being expected to neglect my own understanding and interpretation of my own history – which, I think, is what happens to students every single day.
Students are generally expected to ignore their histories and put aside their lived experiences and the material conditions under which they live at universities –and these experiences and conditions are not included in the transformation documents, although some reference is made to them.
This is a fundamental contradiction that can only be addressed by recognising that it exists, and will continue to exist while the discussion concerns histories of inequality as it must. In this regard, the notion of “inclusion”, as this is referenced in the context of South African transformation, needs to be placed in an historical context in order to produce a framework for the
kind of change being proposed that reflects contemporary reality.
In this context then, what is the application of the term “inclusion” supposed to entail today? Is the inclusion being sought one in which we are asking to be included in our own country – and in the social, political, intellectual, and education-relations that we are aiming to establish? Or are we saying that the idea of the inclusion being sought is not predicated on us asking to be included, but is rather one that already entails inclusion across languages, cultures and identity histories? Adopting this second view, it becomes clear that, in order to work towards oneness, the many different layers of identity, of which little is generally spoken, must be recognised.
Those who seek to critique the present transformation documents are often cast as awkward or non-participatory – but that is missing the point, which is that greater recognition of where the students are coming from, as well as what is being asked of them, is what is actually required to foster their participation in the transformation process. In this regard, social inclusion should not be about asking black people in South Africa to be South African. Such a request merely indicates a discourse which is contradictory but fails to recognise its contradictions.
Anywhere you go in the world, you are expected to speak the language of the country being visited, recognise its customs, acknowledge its particular forms of social behaviour and participate as if you are a citizen of that community.
But in South Africa, we talk of social diversity, we talk about inclusion as if the problem lies with us as black people, even though we know that this is absolutely not true; the inference being that actually we don’t want discussion, critique and difference of opinions, but are rather seeking uniformity, compliance, complicity and complete acceptance of, and adherence to, the transformation
documents (on the basis that these are informed by the Freedom Charter and the Constitution).
However, there is an alternative: We can instead seek to identify the options for change that are being presented, where we stand in relation to these and what actions we are going to take as a result.
When Prof Bengu said transformation was going to be difficult, he was not only referencing the history of racism in the country, but he was also emphasising that the process, like any form of transformation, was going to require personal transformation. In a similar vein, when Biko coming from Sobukwe and Sobukwe coming from Lembede began to talk about being an African, or in Biko’s case having a black consciousness, there was an awareness of the personal journey involved.
In the collection of his thought, I write what I like, Biko draws on the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, particularly in relation to his conceptualisation of black consciousness. He does so, I think, because Hegel is good on the phenomenology of the mind. Hegel makes it clear that we have consciousness because we have self-consciousness; and Biko uses the concept to explore the personal and autobiographical impulse within consciousness in relation to the experience of black South Africans.
Hegel also makes clear the dynamics of the master/slave relationship, which, whether we like it or not, is pertinent in South Africa, given that the oppressed; the previously enslaved, colonised and disenfranchised; and the landless, who comprise 90% of the population, are being asked to play along with a particular version of transformation even as the dynamics that have historically subjugated them persist.
In itself, the call for universal engagement in transformation is not a bad thing and should not be a complex matter. However, it has become complicated within universities due to a separation between students and staff and between black and white students. A separation which should not have happened, but which has, unfortunately, as a result of the suppression of a number of different student organisations along with the beliefs and ideologies that they promote and represent. The student groupings include Black Lives First (BLF); the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF); the South African Students Congress (SASCO), which is informed by an ANC history, and a number of Pan-Africanist ones, which are informed by the histories of PanAfricanism – although nowhere are those histories included or reflected in transformation documents.
Given this political plurality and in order to have fruitful outcomes in the South African higher education landscape, debate on the relevant documents, including those on transformation, should be continuously encouraged, even once these documents of policies have been officially endorsed. Failure to promote such discussion is tantamount to telling students that the document in question is a dead one. All documents are only as active as the people who engage with them.
Engaging with and encouraging the agency of students is also important because they are the carriers of the future. Their critique is necessary in order to take the country forward, including as a democracy.
In this regard, it is important to note that the establishment of a one-person-one-vote electoral system does not a democracy make. It is but a preliminary stage. In South Africa, democracy also requires that those conflicts which have persisted – in part as a result of a contradictory notion of social cohesion that has been promulgated – should be untangled; which is a task that South Africans should be able to undertake given our ability to
LANGUAGE
critique, our insurgency and our capacity to use our agency.
The question then is: How do we go forward with these transformation documents, which, it appears, have some fundamental shortcomings. The answer is that, notwithstanding their flaws, transformation documents are seen as necessary because we need to be guided.
In this regard, such documents should ideally contain everything we believe, everything we think, and everything we envisage in relation to our vision for the future. But this does not mean that some of the contradictions which have been referenced here will not be part of the process. Indeed, the integrity of the process can only be assured by ensuring that everyone’s voices are heard.
For students, being heard entails a recognition on the part of the listener that their personal histories derive from lived experiences in which the material conditions produced by racism persist. Students who wake up in the morning in different parts of the country without running water and without a flush toilet cannot be expected to exclude the material conditions under which they live from the transformation process – and a transformation agenda that failed to include such histories cannot be considered inclusive.
At the same time, whether we like it or not, a particular approach to transformation has been formulated in documents which are considered to be all-encompassing and which have been embraced in the country and in higher education. So, the question then becomes: How can a student-centred approach engage with the existing transformation documents and produce the kinds of outcome that these policies envisage?
It is proposed that 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.
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 recognised in order to reach the point where the path forward may be identified. In this regard, 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 an understanding and 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, who was the first black South African women 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 is not widely taught.
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 titled “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.
When Tunisian Jewish scholar Albert Memmi wrote the The Colonizer and the Colonized, which was published in 1957, he was met with derision and was told he should not be engaging in such a critique. Recognising his Arab history in north Africa, Memmi considers the impacts of colonialism in the region, including at the hands of Arabs, but also talks more broadly about the nature of coloniser/ colonised relations in any given society in a way that remains relevant today.
In another foundational African interpretation that up-ended conventional, colonial wisdom, Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney, who worked in Tanzania, wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The book, which was published
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 1972, broke new ground, offering an interpretation of development on the continent that contradicted the dominant preconceptions of the time. Rodney’s interpretation is of great value in challenging the mindsets of young students who continue to harbour the notion that, as a continent, Africa is poor. The colonisers did not come to Africa because it was poor, but because it was rich. Against this background, the idea of poverty in Africa clearly needs to be unpacked, riddled as it is with centuries of plundering, usurpation, robbery and theft. In South Africa, we are poor because of a long-standing, strategic and purposeful extraction of resources.
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 through 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 AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION
Another key criterion for transformation is knowledge and knowledge production. No transformation programme can go forward without knowledge production.
Nevertheless, there are still students who use only European knowledge in their dissertations – which is not to say that European knowledge should be rejected, but rather that a concerted effort must be made to ensure that curriculums are African-centred.
In this regard, students should understand that, over the past 400 years, there has been a comprehensive, concerted effort to withhold the knowledge and history of South Africa from the masses and also to withhold the history and knowledge of thoughts and ideas produced in other parts of Africa.
So, for example, the role of Africans in the development of mathematics and psychoanalysis have been quite overlooked. When we think about mathematics, do we think about North Africa or Egypt or Nigeria?
Similarly, when we think of the history of psychoanalysis, do we think of Egypt, and of Joseph who interpreted the dreams of Pharoah and so helped save the region which fed from the Nile at that time. Every African society has its own word for the unconscious – and the concept is integral to African societies, not as something to be revealed on the analyst’s couch for a fee, but as an expression of the individual’s relationship to the earth, to water, to the sun, to the moon, to their ancestors, and to a calling that comes. However, this is a history of the unconscious and of psychoanalysis that is generally not told.6
Against this background and in an effort to promote student-centred outcomes in support of transformation, research centres, including at universities, should explicitly recognise the history of key contributors to knowledge production, thinking and ideas in South Africa, such as Lembede, Maxeke and Sobukwe, whose biographies and intellectual contributions have been quite neglected.
6 In this regard, it is noteworthy that the pioneer of psychoanalysis in Europe, Sigmund Freud, returned at the end of life to the thinking of Moses, that is, the thinking of Egypt from which he led the Jewish exodus, and came to acknowledge how Egypt and the history of his people had led to his own birth and informed his thought.
STUDENT-CENTREDNESS
In speaking of the role of students in transformation, it is also important to acknowledge the roles that they have previously played in the country’s transformation as leaders in the history of the liberation struggle. The contributions made the student leadership have included those of Mandela, Sobukwe and Biko. SASO was formed in the halls of the former University of Natal’s “non-European section” medical school. Student formations in South Africa have always been key to the thoughts, ideas and analysis that have informed contemporary thinking about liberation, freedom and what it means to be black. In this regard, a key outcome for CPUT’s transformation programme could be: Raising consciousness at the backdrop of the history of the students’ life and their existential experience.
Against this background, a student-centred analysis demands that we ask: Who is a student? What are the expectations of a student? How are students to be educated? And with which knowledge? And what is the expectation for a future South Africa that seeks to move forward in the best interests of our society and also in the understanding that we have been shackled, oppressed, exploited and robbed of centuries of agency?
The process must be self-reflexive. It must be one in which we move forward in the knowledge of all of the ways in which the process may be undertaken – always considering the criteria for moving forward and being critical not only of the process but also of the ways in which we are engaging in it.
As part of such a process we need continually to consider: the terms of our discourse and our use of language (why we speak English, how we speak it); our knowledge or lack of knowledge of history, particularly in relation to South Africa; the factors masking our interpretation of the world in which we live; and the terms of our analysis, our critique and our knowledge production, including the intended purpose and recipients of the knowledge being produced and the conditions set by universities for the production of knowledge.
4 RESPONSE BY MR SIYA SABATA FUNDANI CHED 7
Mr Siya Sabata
Curriculum Transformation: Fundani
In considering the policies underpinning the present approach to transformation, including the Freedom Charter, the Constitution, White Paper 3 of 1997 and CPUT’s Vision 2030, it seems clear that there is a common thread in that they all seek to present an ideal world while, to a greater or lesser extent, neglecting or negating the historical reality of the oppressed. It has been argued that these policies, which are framed according to a racial, liberal philosophical framework, are constraining people from achieving the very freedoms which these documents idealise but which have not been realised by the masses.
The challenge for students then is to understand their role in engaging with these documents and policies, including CPUT’s Vision 2030, in order to achieve that which is envisaged under the transformation agenda – a world beyond the present. In this regard, a number of issues have been raised about the kind of world presented to CPUT’s community by its new strategic plan.
Is it really an enabling tool or a constraining tool? Are the “oneness” and “smartness” that it promotes little more than concepts in the service of an authoritarian agenda which is seeking to “civilise” the so-called “barbarians” with education so that they accept, rather than resist, the structure and systems of oppression in which the students find themselves?
In order to ensure that such an agenda is not adopted, the question then becomes: What kind of education can we provide to radicalise and enable students to imagine a better, different world beyond the present?
In seeking to answer this question, it has been suggested that a new language of description should be developed to unmask and reveal the contradictions underpinning the present curriculum, so that a different approach to education and different ways of thinking may be developed. Key questions that should be asked in this context include: How is the students’ engagement with the curriculum being undertaken – whose voices and whose knowledge are being privileged in this process? and How are the students engaging with the continuing dominance of Eurocentric knowledges within academia and society?
7 This section is based on a response to Prof Rozena Maart’s lecture by Siyabulela Sabata, Lecturer: Curriculum Development, Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development, CPUT.
Such question, which need to be addressed as part of the transformation process, also require answers in order to address the academic tendency to use theories developed in a completely different historical and socio-economic context to solve problems for which they were not designed – that is, the dual problem of alterity and extroversion and alterity identified by South African scholar Archie Mafeje.
Meanwhile, pedagogy at universities is being hampered by an instrumental approach to education, under which the goal is to enable student to pass exams and acquire qualifications as if in a vacuum, away from any engagement in social relations in the context of the communities from which they come. In addition, higher education stands accused of perpetuating master/slave relations and new forms of racialised social structures which mask institutional coloniality in practices and activities.
In this context, the question becomes: How are the students being prepared to engage with the university to critique and dismantle existing authoritarian relations of power; and to enable the emergence of a student voice, so that we can have a university that is based on ubuntu as an African philosophy of Bantuspeaking people.
The issue of knowledge production is a further key issue. Universities are supposed to produce knowledge. But whose knowledge is actually being produced if we don’t privilege the knowledges of those who have been marginalised in society? The issue of the existentiality, the body and the blood, the being of the student has also been raised, with the question being asked: To what extent is the university prepared to actually accept students and allow them to reimagine the world from where they stand, taking pride in who they are and using their own languages?
Consciousness and agency offer two important paths towards a student-centred transformation of the university. Notwithstanding the different political formations to which they belong, students can find common cause in the quest for a just social environment for all at the institution. This quest, which would entail interrogating all social practices, should be based on an understanding of the nature of the struggle require to produce authentic transformation. For example, the struggle should encounter the myth of postcoloniality, that is, the idea that the country has moved beyond the inequalities of the past although we know that various forms and systems of oppression continue to be reproduced.
Similarly, students should understand that there is the possibility of a better world but that this will require them to work towards
dismantling the racial contract – that is, the present social contract insofar as this is the product of racism. In this regard, it has been argued that if we as students and academics are not actively critiquing and engaging with policies such as Vision 2030, if we merely accept them without question as if they were set in stone, we will just be re-signing the racial contract and perpetuating colonial inequalities.
Within Vision 2030 there is a possibility of talking about the agency of students. Rather than merely seeking to train students for work, they may be trained to understand that they need to engage in a relational rather than latent ontological system if they are to contribute towards the knowledges of the world and help solve the world’s problems. In this regard, Vision 2030 promotes the notion that people need to understand how to engage with others who are different from them in a respectful way but while also remaining firm in their own understanding of where they come from as social and political beings.
Vision 2030 also promotes a human-centred discourse of knowing and technological agency. Rather than presenting the idea of knowledge as if there were only one kind of knowledge that can solve the problems of the world, the strategic plan promotes the notion of the pluriversality of knowledge in an open system; and places the emphasis on technology as a source of tools that people may use as appropriate to solve problems in society.
DISCUSSION8
There is a need to address the issue of how students are planning to engage with Vision 2030 on a continuous basis over the next nine years so that it may be effectively and holistically implemented in support of transformation across the institution. To this end, spaces should be created to foster such engagement – for example, among students and their leadership and the office of diversity – at which key issues such as the curriculum or the programme of action in relation to Vision 2030 may be considered and discussed. Such engagement should promote the ethos that everything that the university does must be about the students and should also help to redefine student success in the context of a university seeking to reclaim an African identity.
It is important to embark on such transformation efforts and engage the student leadership in these as a matter of urgency.
Notwithstanding the time frame envisioned by CPUT’s new strategic plan, there is no need to wait until 2030. Transformation should start now, and the students should raise their voices accordingly.
FORGING AFRICAN ACADEMIC SPACES
As part of the process, CPUT may learn lessons from the ways in which other higher education institutions have sought to implement transformation, although the university is, in some ways, ahead of the curve in terms of its efforts to integrate its focus on transformation, gender equality and student-centredness across the institution.
One way of helping to create a student-centred environment is to ensure that it incorporates imagery that asserts the importance of black South Africans as intellectuals and activists, providing a basis for contemporary black leadership and academic achievement.
Few students can say that they see images of Lembede, Sobukwe, Maxeke – the scholars that have helped to shape contemporary perspectives on South African identity and history – on a daily basis in their pedagogic or research environments, although they may have heard these names or come across their work in other settings. Students need to see who they are studying. For example, they need to see what the philosopher Jacques Derrida looks like – that he is Algerian, not French; they need to see and know what Lembede looks like, what Maxeke looks like, what Kenyan environmental and feminist activist Wangari Maathai looks like; and they need to have ready access to the work of those who led the way and whose histories need to be understood. This may be something for CPUT’s Fundani Centre to consider as part of its mission.
The establishment of identifiable African spaces may also be seen as an important element of the larger drive to enable everyone at the university to adopt the position of liberated subjects. For example, we can use English as liberated or oppressed subjects. This is important in pedagogic theory which explains that the perspective adopted by the teachers in teaching can lead to either the liberation or oppression of students. Similarly, in relation to thinking about transformed thinking, it becomes clear that in speaking English we can conform to the conditions of being English and British, which we are not; or, as liberated subjects, we can transcend these conditions and ensure that we assert and insert into any language and discourse that we use our sense of history and our sense of our own identity.
The transformation manual which is being prepared for CPUT will include some of the concepts raised at this meeting, including in relation to the liberated subject, the nature of teaching practices, and practices to promote student-centredness.
8 This section is based on a moderated discussion among participants at the webinar, including remarks made by Nonkosi Tyolwana, Director: Transformation and Social Cohesion, CPUT, as well as notes made by participants in the concurrent online chat stream.
THE PROBLEM OF AGENCY
Agency in pursuit of transformation can be sorely tested in institutions which are oppressive in their approach and which indicate in their practices that they are hostile to change notwithstanding their rhetoric to the contrary. On way to survive in such systems and still achieve an agenda of transformation is to follow the dictum: “If you ask people to be accepted, then you deserve to be rejected.” In other words, the minute you ask someone to accept you for who you are, you are giving them an option not to do so – and why give them that choice? There is no need to ask permission to be yourself.
At the same time, it should be acknowledged in relation to social relations and conformity that there is an expectation at universities that, once one has achieved a certain status, one should somehow neglect or suppress one’s black or coloured or previously enslaved histories. One is expected to perform in a particular white colonial way of speaking including with gestures and accents; and also to know enough to know that one should follow commands and unquestioningly participate in hierarchies. And if an academic refuses to be sufficiently appreciative and even complicit, then there are ways in which they can be punished at university.
So, the issue then becomes whether one is in such need of the approbation of those in power that one will allow them to dominate. Or, alternatively, whether one comes to the table with the preconceived notion that one is going to be blocked and/or treated as irrelevant. To an extent this problem is being perpetuated by black people in positions of leadership who have learnt from their white predecessors and are complicit in entrenching oppression.
One response is to push through the fear barrier and challenge those in power who are perpetuating oppression in the best way that one can while maintaining one’s own sense of being in the world and staying true to one’s own lived experience and history. In other words, by being authentic in yourself and being proud of who you are.
CONTINUOUS, INCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
It is important to embark on such transformation efforts and engage the student leadership in these as a matter of urgency. Notwithstanding the time frame envisioned by CPUT’s new strategic plan, there is no need to wait until 2030. Transformation should start now, and the students should raise their voices accordingly.
During the hearings on transformation in the higher education sector which were held by SAHRC, it was emphasised that discussion of, and engagement in, the process of change should be continuous. For students, such engagement should entail critiquing the curriculum. In addition to addressing material conditions and experiences, transformation is supposed to speak to the mind, to the mind-set, and to the poverty of mind-set that can be produced if students and young scholars are not engaging in critical thinking. This is an aspect of the process that is often neglected, but which is crucial in order to fulfil the educational remit of universities.
In this regard, the Transformation, Diversity and Social Cohesion Unit, the Fundani Centre and other sections including from the business faculties and in the communications function should seek to coordinate to organise transformation lectures, dialogues, debates and even boot camps to engage students in the transformation process on a proactive, continuous basis –and from the moment they enter university.
The politics of transformation and the discussion around the process should not only be the prerogative of SRCs, all students should engage in such debates and be inculcated in a culture of critical thinking as part of their educational and life-skills development.
In an effort to promote such engagement, there has been coordination with those running the first-year experience programme with the goal of integrating a student-centred approach to transformation into the induction training that is currently being provided – as well as into subsequent student support programmes. In addition, the issue of mentoring and training students as leaders has been prioritised as an aspect of personal development that should be promoted from day one.
It should also be noted that the university Vision 2030 and transformation plans are making provision for a number of key issues around gender equality, rights for sexual minority groups and the languages currently being used as the medium for instruction.
For example, consideration is being given to:
The provision of non-gender ablution facilities, which should be open to all;
Residential placement policies and practices that address the needs of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The continuing promotion of feminism as part of an intersectional approach, including through a HeForShe programme established with UN Women on gender equality, which addresses issues around feminism and masculinity; and
The need to set exams in languages other than English and Afrikaans in order to produce equity of performance by supporting those for whom these are not their home languages.
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