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Citizenship, racism and campus culture
Condemnation by the local and international media of racist initiation practices at the University of the Free State raised very serious and interesting questions about the state of, and the responsibilities of, higher education in South Africa. The media – ranging from local print and television to BBC, CNN and The Economist – with one or two notable exceptions beat a drum of outrage and ‘back to the old South Africa’. Politicians and parliament tried to 'out-outrage' each other or, like the Freedom Front, deny any responsibility. The decision to devote a University Wold News Special Africa edition to the problem of racism in higher education is partially based on the fact that these outpourings shed little light on what was actually going on, and even less on how to move forward. This article deals with three recently reported incidents on campuses: racism at Free State, exploitation of students at Vaal University of Technology, and violence at the University of Limpopo. It concludes by looking forward and recommending an expert group to study the state of citizenship in higher education, with a focus on race issues, and the adoption by more universities of the many ‘best practice’ programmes already in place at individual universities to support students.
Bitter knowledge
How is it possible that young white students, born around the time of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, could hold such firm views about the past, such rigid views about black people and, especially among the boys, such fatalistic views about the future? This was the question that dogged me during my early years as the first black dean of education at the historically white University of Pretoria. It made no sense. These white students had no direct experience of apartheid; they did not live as masters and madams through the worst years of racial oppression; they did not police the townships during states of emergency; and the boys did not have to face the trauma of compulsory military service on and often beyond the borders of South Africa. Despite the fact that these were, technically speaking, post-apartheid children, their beliefs and behaviours mirrored those of their parents – the people who upheld, supported and benefited directly from white domination in the decades before they were born. The more I listened to my almost all-white undergraduate class of more than 2,000 students, the more this question besieged me. After seven years as dean I resigned to complete a book that seeks to answer that question. Knowledge in the blood: How white students remember and enact the past, should appear in late 2008. In many ways it predicts the recent racist behaviour of white male students at the University of the Free State.
Looking for consensus
Race is an issue on every university campus in South Africa. How can it be otherwise when we are less than three student cohorts away from legally enforced segregation, when race and class are coterminous for a large majority of the population and when the demographics of the staff of some universities are the inverse of the demographics of the country as a whole? The issue is not whether or not race is a key signifier of identity, or whether there is unfair discrimination on the basis of race. It is rather the absence of an adequate and appropriate language to identify and argue through the issues – a route to effective interventions that will take us beyond the salience of race. A lasting impression of the University of the Free State video is the inanity of the students involved, the fact that they can only express themselves through urinating in food and forcing humiliation on those who clean for them. If all discourse is metaphor, then the UFS video is emblematic of a failure to find any means of communication beyond the scatological. If this has in turn become a metaphor for the state of our universities – or for the state of the nation – then this is indeed the nadir of the South African dream.
The enduring legacy of apartheid in education
There is now an established radical tradition in educational scholarship which accepts Richard Shaull's assertion: There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women participate in the transformation of their world (Shaull in Freire's 1993 Pedagogy of the Oppressed). However, the promises of radical education in South Africa remain under threat. It could be argued that education policy after apartheid has not addressed the cultural and ideological impressions stamped on the minds of black (and white) South Africans by the Verwoedian curriculum of apartheid. Instead, the shift has been towards placing emphasis on accountability, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
From racism to valuing diversity
What the racism incident at the University of the Free State demonstrated was not only the lack of transformation in tertiary education but also the limited impact of reconciliation among people who were born a few years before the democratic transition. Both situations are cause for serious concern. What is shocking is the blatant and banal nature of the racism captured in the Kovsies (the university’s nickname) video, when we have started to think that these types of incidents are isolated and limited to right-wing thugs, not university students. It therefore begs an analysis of the limited nature of integration at historically Afrikaans universities, but also of the meaning of integration. When is a campus 'integrated’? When students of different race groups sit together in the same classroom or stay together in the same residence, yet do not mingle outside these spheres? Or when they respect each other's differences even when they do not live in the same residence? The complexities of historically Afrikaans universities are tied to what is referred to as the ‘language issue’.
Reflections on the Reitz incident implications
The emergence of the now infamous Reitz residence video at the University of the Free State (UFS), and the worldwide reaction to it, has shocked the higher education community in South Africa. For us as a university – for students, staff and management – it has been traumatic. It has been strongly and publicly condemned by the council and the management of the university. We have also apologised to all those affected and traumatised by the video. As an institution, UFS is dealing with the Reitz matter as quickly and fairly as possible. Council and executive management have already adopted a programme of action to address this specific matter as well as deeper issues raised by the incident. The fact that the video was produced as part of resistance by some white students to our new policy to increase diversity in residences – that is, the racial integration of residences, which is part of our broader transformation agenda – is even more troubling for us. Sadly, protest behaviour by some black students and student leaders in their reaction to the video has also not been free of racist talk and racist threats. Significant polarisation has occurred.
Racism at Free State – anticipating the future
The recent obnoxious and racist video by four white students at the University of the Free State has generated a furious hullabaloo on racism in South Africa. This has, in the main, been characterised by condemnations, threats and, to some extent, the homogenisation of white people as racists – notwithstanding the fact that the dastardly video has been roundly condemned by whites as well. A tourist visiting South Africa at the time the video surfaced would be forgiven for thinking that racism was long since dead and buried in this country, and that the four students were awakening an unwelcome ghost. The tourist may also have been tempted to believe that the video incident was an isolated case. How else would s/he take it, as it has been 14 years since racism as a state doctrine was discarded. Unlike the tourist, I have lived in the 'rainbow nation' for almost four years now, located in both an historically advantaged and in an historically disadvantaged university. I have experienced racism all through these four years, both within and outside the two institutions. In restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, taxis, on the streets, in the neighbourhood where I live, on the beaches – all over.
Living with racism at two universities
The recent obnoxious and racist video by four white students at the University of the Free State has generated a furious hullabaloo on racism in South Africa. This has, in the main, been characterised by condemnations, threats and, to some extent, the homogenisation of white people as racists – notwithstanding the fact that the dastardly video has been roundly condemned by whites as well. A tourist visiting South Africa at the time the video surfaced would be forgiven for thinking that racism was long since dead and buried in this country, and that the four students were awakening an unwelcome ghost. The tourist may also have been tempted to believe that the video incident was an isolated case. How else would s/he take it, as it has been 14 years since racism as a state doctrine was discarded. Unlike the tourist, I have lived in the 'rainbow nation' for almost four years now, located in both an historically advantaged and in an historically disadvantaged university. I have experienced racism all through these four years, both within and outside the two institutions. In restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, taxis, on the streets, in the neighbourhood where I live, on the beaches – all over.
Students protest a range of grievances
South African students reacted sharply to revelations of racism at the University of the Free State, organising marches there and on campuses around the country. The South African Students’ Congress has been at the forefront of protests against racism which, as its president David Maimela has pointed out, is not a new issue for black students. Last week he welcomed news that Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, has decided to appoint a commission of inquiry into racism and other forms of discrimination in universities. However, he said in a statement that “we believe it a rather late response” based on reaction to the embarrassing incident at Free State. Students would only celebrate when they saw the “heads of complacent and incompetent people” roll. Sasco was invited to write an article for this Special Africa Edition of University World News, but instead referred to statements that it has produced on the issue.
Racism – an event or a way of life on campuses?
Another racial eruption on a campus in South Africa. Is it just one event involving the gross mistreatment of some human beings by others who happen to be of a different shade? Media coverage, national and international, has put pressure on a the University of the Free State to attend to one event – but not to get to the root of the problem. So is this a solution to racial tensions that still exist in South Africa? What does it take to get people to scrutinise racism? Must individuals be degraded and human rights sacrificed before we pay attention? An attack on a white citizen by black criminals might draw some attention too, but not as much due to high crime levels: an incident can be written off as just another criminal act. At what point is that act not seen as a racial attack? How do we explain an attack by black criminals on a black person? Is that not a violation of rights just as much as a racially motivated act is? Does racism only exist on campuses, or is there racism in broader society committed by people from both sides of the colour line? Is racism not a violation of the human rights that so many died for, and that Nelson Mandela upheld when he stated that never, never again would one racial group oppress another in South Africa. What about individuals oppressing other individuals? There are more questions than answers. But answering questions about different understandings of racism requires deep reflection and sharing of ideas, so that the different understandings can be brought closer together.
Racism revisited in South Africa
Over the last few weeks, having returned to South Africa after a long absence, I have been struck by the sharp contrast between the racial situation in the country now and that when I first visited in 1992. One of the most striking aspects of the last years of the struggle against apartheid was the successes in responding to racism. Given the repression, violence, and humiliation perpetrated by apartheid, as well as the misinformation and myths it fostered, the aftermath of the elections in 1994 was amazing for the calm that followed, the reconciliation, forgiveness, confidence, eagerness to move forward, and what seemed to me a collective commitment to transform the nation. To be sure, there were some white South Africans who felt they could not live in a system of equality and many of them left the country. And there were some victims of apartheid who demanded retribution and eschewed reconciliation. But that was neither the tone of the country nor the norm.
Ban contacts with University of the Free State
This month a video shot in a student residence on the campus of the University of the Free State made headlines the world over. In the video four strapping young Afrikaner males are seen humiliating, degrading and assaulting black female cleaners and an elderly black male cleaner in a ‘spoof’ aimed at UFS's halls-of-residence racial integration policy. They were members of the ‘Reitz’ residence, named after a former Boer Republic president. The content of the video is too disgusting to recount. Save to say it shamed all South Africans everywhere. The fall-out from the events at Free State has revealed truths about the institution and apartheid's die-hards, for the white students shooting the video did not do so in a vacuum. They did so because they attend an old-style Afrikaans university which at least tacitly, and at times expressly, condones racism and racial segregation. What happened at UFS was not just shocking in its own right – it strikes me as an attack on the most fundamental rights of all South Africans, myself as an academic working in Australia included.
Face race head-on
Our problem is not that we talk too much about race – it is that we do not talk about it enough. Recent racial incidents have again prompted some to ask why race is still an issue here. But the only thing surprising about the fact that race is still our major problem is that anyone is surprised. Those who insist that we should have stopped talking about race in 1994 seem to be under the odd impression that to get rid of a system in which one group dominates another is also automatically to end the attitudes it produced. But where has this ever happened? Not in the US, which is debating whether it is ready for a black president almost 150 years after slavery was scrapped and about 40 years after black people in the south gained their civil rights. Not in Australia, where parliament has finally apologised to the country's original inhabitants for the wrongs done to them ages after formal discrimination ended. Nor, indeed, anywhere else. So why are we surprised that the attitudes that sustained apartheid are still with us? asks Steven Friedman in Business Day.
Shared rejection of repulsive video is good news
A series of race-related incidents has had a double effect on South Africans. It reminded us of our worst traits as a people. It also enabled South Africans to confront the scourge of racism together, reminding us how much common ground has been created since 1994. Racism generalises inferiority – and racists love incidents in which others are humiliated. Such incidents reinforce the superiority-inferiority split on which their world view is premised. Yet the repulsive video that emanated from the Reitz men's residence at the University of the Free State elicited overwhelming condemnation by the very groups associated with the 'culture' these students claimed to protect against integration. This should be welcomed. Indeed few were the voices who sought to 'understand' or 'contextualise' their actions. So the Free State incident made terrible news, but our shared rejection of it, good news, writes Fanie du Toit in the Cape Times.
Higher education homogeneity on the rise worldwide
Tertiary systems around the world have become less diverse and differentiated in recent decades, studies have shown. And despite a desire among many states to increase diversity within higher education, a combination of ‘strict and uniform government policies’ and the ability of powerful academic communities to defend their norms and values are largely to blame for growing homogenisation. This is bad news for higher education, said comparative education professor Frans van Vught of the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
Distinctions blur, steering differentiates
Higher education worldwide is transforming in ways that could increase differentiation, contends the University of Oslo’s Professor Peter Maassen. Traditional distinctions – between universities and colleges, academic and professional, rural and urban – are being replaced by sets of indicators and standards used by governments and agencies to steer tertiary systems. Impending higher education reforms in Norway are likely to opt for a model that stresses differentiation within rather than between institutions.
Comprehensives – Straddling the knowledge and binary divides
South Africa’s new ‘comprehensive’ universities are tasked with providing both formative and career-focused higher education, and they face enormous challenges – especially those that were created from mergers between universities and technikons (polytechnics) – said Trish Gibbon of the South Africa-Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme (SANTED).
Institutional diversity, programme differentiation
In South Africa, differentiation in higher education is seen as a way of tackling challenges such as skills shortages and the needs for competitiveness, improved access and equity. The country is aiming for institutional diversity and programme differentiation through state steering, said Dr Nico Cloete, director of the Centre for Higher Education Transformation (CHET). The government will set enrolment, performance and programme targets for the higher education sector based on national goals, and for universities based on their capacity.
Expansion in Africa delivers more of the same
The expansion of higher education in Africa has not been accompanied by differentiation resulting, broadly speaking, in more of the same rather than greater diversity in types of institutions and learning, according to University of Nairobi professor Njuguna Ng’ethe. Countries need to tackle this problem if higher education systems are to improve access and produce the variety of skills that economies need.
Competition drives costs up and diversity down
Increased competition between universities and the reputation race has not led to greater diversity, as many governments hoped. But it is creating hierarchical differentiation based on inequalities in higher education systems, according to Professor Frans van Vught of the Netherlands’ University of Twente.
Further education expansion to improve diversity
Across Africa, growing numbers of young people are finishing school but there has not been a corresponding increase in university students: fewer than 4% of young Africans enter higher education.
Comprehensive university reality fraught and complicated
The South African government’s decision to create comprehensive universities combining formative and career-focused education might have seemed like a good idea at the time. But the reality has been fraught and complicated, said Professor Angina Parekh, a deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Johannesburg. “The problem is that, having done mergers, there now isn’t a very clear idea of what the institutions are and how they should deliver on their mandate. It has been left to universities to decide.”
Hard programme choices for ‘comprehensive’ universities
South Africa’s six ‘new generation’ universities, charged with straddling the binary divide, are battling to find strategic identities and to preserve their purpose. For these ‘comprehensive’ universities, a good place to start thinking about programme differentiation could be at the end – they need to ask: “What kind of knowledgeable, qualified person is each programme trying to produce?” said Professor Joe Muller, director of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School in Humanities.
Indicators for diversity
Performance indicators for South African universities have been developed by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation and they are starting to be used to inform government decisions about the higher education system and individual institutions, said Dr Ian Bunting of the national Department of Education.