South African Universities Shutdown II

South African Universities Shut Down: Anger, Impotence, separationsångest, yet Spirit of Hope

Part II

But we should also listen to Professor Jonathan Jansen, who has just left the office as Vice Chancellor at the Free State University and is on his way to take up a position as guest professor at Stanford University, California; in other words, we could listen to a person who is free to speak his mind. And he does not mince his words.

What Jansen gives us is an utterly bleak picture, but a picture that we would have to face. To start with the emphasis on university education, as if that should be the goal of everyone, leaves the crucial, vocational education, that prepares people to work in a trade, a craft, etc., at a disadvantage.

But already in October last year President Zuma gave in and said to the students after their mass meeting in Pretoria that there would be no fee increase for the coming year. And he did, having come under severe pressure, create the impression on students that there is a direct causality on the part of the protesters: “make enough noise, cause sufficient disruption, and resort to violent attacks on public property, and eventually government pays attention and finds the money”.

The bigger picture tells us that similar unrest has been ongoing at universities in other countries in Africa, and where there does not seem to be a political resolution to funding crises on campuses. With this bigger picture in mind Jansen draws three conclusions for the (almost immediate) future: First, there will be “a steady decline in government funding”; second, there is a “creeping state of interference in the business of  universities”. Third, universities go into a “chronic instability”, and as we know, this is the second consecutive year of disruptions.

The result is disastrous and can be seen by all who dare to see: students who can afford to pay, leave, the professors who can afford to leave take jobs outside the country (not least those with high ratings from the National Research Foundation) and “the academic facility begins to collapse”. For example, funding for libraries and general maintenance will immediately be drying up.

The very sad thing is that this account is given by somebody who is on his way out of here. The one who cannot do this may feel that he is now telling truths while saving his own skin. Be that as it may, his final words are not to be ignored. He says:

“Does the militant minority care that they are in the process of destroying the top academic institutions still left on the continent? Frighteningly, no. The logic of the militant minority is that unless everybody can get free education right now, then nobody should, and if that means razing universities to the ground, so be it. What was built up over a century could very well be laid waste in a matter of two to three years.”

Jansen says that with President Zuma remaining silent there is only one way left, to me amounting to wishful thinking, namely the coming about of “a broad, assertive, public action that supports free education for the poor but stands up to the militant minority…”

Two more facts have to be added in order to give a fuller picture. In the same issue of the Financial Mail Professor Nico Cloete, Centre for Higher Education Trust, brings in two seemingly fateful circumstances. Not dealing with those, makes any other attempt futile. He says that “fewer than 5 % of the poor qualify for entry into universities, while for the 5% whose parents earn over R600,000/year, the percentage who qualify to enter university is over 50%”. But this is not enough, because of those who enter university far from all are going to be capped at a graduation ceremony: “barely 50% of the undergraduate students graduate”.

Having said all this, I have to emphasize very strongly that the students have a case, and that has been so since last year and the “Rhodes must fall campaign”. The key point is that violence and force are not going to help. Democracy is about casting your vote, and there lies the power of change. Admittedly, students are many times at a loss when it comes to meaningfully influence things on campus. But there are ways. What should be exposed far more are the condescendence and intransigence shown by academic staff knowingly or unknowingly. Let’s be honest: many academics have just taken for granted that they could carry on as before. The story of Professor Mahmood Mamdani, now Columbia University, USA, then at University of Cape Town, and the debacle regarding an introductory course on African humanities more than ten years ago, is a case in point.

Instead of making “decolonization” another catch phrase students and staff have to embark on the issue of curriculum. It should be noted that all curricula and all sciences have to be involved, though in very different ways.

This is the area where students, the brighter the better, should give their contribution and that must come now, not later.

My heart is going out to the students, all of them, also those who have committed violent acts (crimes). There must be a way back to campus, to a campus of peace, but also of struggle, but an intellectual one at that. Staff are, let me repeat, largely responsible for the fact that very little discussion on curriculum of any substance has taken place. We are standing there with guilt, let us confess.

I said initially in this rather long letter that I am angry, and so I am. I cannot stand the situation as it is, meaning that I cannot at this moment go to campus to do my job. However, my anger could easily become destructive, and that is a state of affairs that I want to avoid. Luckily I am sensing, while writing this piece, that my anger evokes a fighting spirit within me. I want to fight the good fight, even though with peaceful means. After all these years, and I have by now been working with and in South Africa/Africa for almost 41 years, I cannot turn my back on things as they are on campus. Whatever this means in practical terms, I want to make my contribution both to a renewed curriculum as well as to a renewed sense of (peaceful) fighting spirit, not neglecting nor ignoring the poor students (of whom only 5% make it for the university), also not being complacent about the 50% undergraduates who never graduate.

But before anything else, let us get back to our campuses. I am missing the sense of community there at the University of the Western Cape, the talks in the corridor, the serious discussions in class, the (frequent, those who know me) tea break as well as a not so infrequent visit to Val’s restaurant.