Etienne Mureinik, one of the 13 academics who accused Professor William Makgoba, draws some harsh lessons from the controversy of the year
As the year draws to a close, it is perhaps time to step back from the detail of the Makgoba affair, and ask what larger lessons it can teach. Three stand out.
The first is that we inhabit an environment in which the subtler forms of communication may no longer be viable. They who use wit, or irony, or metaphor, now risk being taken at surface value.
Wits education dean David Freer, the much respected doyen of teacher training, and one of the 13 signatories to the letter calling for inquiry into Makgoba, discovered as much last month.
In 1985 he was offered re-appointment as head of Wits’ Department of Education. By a clerical error, the letter of offer slipped away from the headship of education and started talking about the headship of physics instead.
In jest, Freer wrote back accepting the headship of education, but declining the headship of physics on the ground of his poor scientific qualifications.
Freer’s gentle teasing is obvious from a glance at his letter. But a decade later William Makgoba’s attorney, Ismail Ayob, has, by way of counter-charge against the 13 signatories, now rendered this frivolous incident as the “appointment to head of Department of Physics of a person who only had matric physics”.
Buttressing this scrap of silliness-made- serious with an assemblage of equally risible “accusations”, Ayob cites it as evidence of “widespread abuse” at Wits.
Something similar happened when Mail & Guardian biographer Mark Gevisser profiled Charles van Onselen, the historian who initiated the inquiry into Makgoba.
“Perhaps the problem Charles van Onselen has,” Gevisser mused, “is that he looks … like the enemy: bulging eyes beneath a balding pate, ware-ding khaki shorts, blustering physicality, bombast and belligerence … As he talks, I imagine him playing a platteland
Inspired by Gevisser’s “way with words”, by letter to this newspaper UCT historian Ian Phimister drew on Gevisser’s “inimitable style” to make a point about “cheap ethnic stereotyping”.
“Perhaps the problem Mark Gevisser has”, Phimister’s riposte ran, “is that he looks … like an idiot: short-sighted eyes beneath receding curls, belly bulging over stonewashed jeans, cringing posture, praise-singer to the new Bourbons … As he writes, I imagine him playing a schoolboy Malvolio.”
Thus was the satirist satirised. But very few noticed — any number took Phimister’s parody literally and were offended by what they read as a racist sneer.
The first lesson, then, of the Makgoba matter is that it has become hazardous to say anything that would lose its meaning in a universe bereft of jest and irony and satire.
The second lesson is about stigma-labelling. It is now obvious that a white person who dares question a black person’s credentials will automatically be called a “racist”, a label which makes one a moral criminal, and consigns one to the non-world of those who can safely be ignored.
What is less obvious is that much the same applies to the new stigma-label, “liberal”.
Under Verwoerd and Vorster, “liberal” was the stigma-label of choice. It meant “so far left as to be almost communist”. It was a Nationalist psycho-trick, calculated to taint the democrats on their left with the authoritarianism of those much further to the
“Liberal” has once again become a stigma- label. But now it means “so far right as to be almost racist”. It is a new psycho-trick, calculated to taint the democrats on one’s right with the authoritarianism of those much further to the right.
Thus African National Congress MP Blade Nzimande accuses “liberal and conservative academics” of being the “organic intellectuals” of those who cling to past privileges (Mail & Guardian August 25 to 31
This, asserts the chair of the key Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education, is a continuation of their role under apartheid, that of “providing the theoretical justification to capitalist exploitation, national oppression and
Note how he equates liberals with conservatives, forgetting the liberals who, far from justifying national oppression, suffered banning and detention and violence from conservatives in order to resist national
Note also how large a proportion of the academic profession has suddenly become the villains. What do liberal and conservative academics have in common, apart from being academics? This is a simple reversion to
All of which makes it unsurprising that the 13 signatories have so glibly been dismissed as “liberals”. That most of them, if they had to choose a political label, would describe themselves as social democrats, is ignored. As is the variety of their voting preferences.
Actual inquiry into their political convictions would be too inconvenient. It would weaken the effect of the new stigma- label. And it might force the signatories’ opponents to consider their arguments, and respond to them on their merits, rather than dismiss them as unworthy of reply.
The third lesson is that racial solidarity prevails over principle. The partisanship of the black journalists who jumped to Makgoba’s defence without knowing the facts, and who adjudged the signatories racist without the slightest substantiation, is an obvious threat to the future of independent, critical
Equally disturbing is the partisanship shown by the Minister of Education, if he has been correctly reported. His comments plainly endorse controversial claims forming part of Makgoba’s defence.
Far from intervening to protect the public interest, Sibusiso Bengu, exploiting the authority of his office, has publicly prejudged a case still to be adjudicated. He is playing lead counsel for the defence. Until the minister offers a better explanation of his conduct, many will interpret it, too, as inspired by race solidarity.
When the signatories signed their letter, they were fully aware that the defence strategy of Makgoba’s supporters would consist largely of deflection and reflection — deflecting attention sideways on to transformation and ancient personal grievances, and reflecting attention back on to calumnies to be concocted against the signatories.
Although the details could not have been foreseen, the broad outlines were. But the strength of the force underlying the strategy’s success — naked, uncritical race solidarity — has shown itself greater than most would have expected.
It is certainly great enough to undermine the hope of a society in which white leaders can call a black leader to account under criteria binding equally on all. Great enough to destroy all hope of equal accountability.
So the lessons of the Makgoba affair are that we seem to be drifting away from the rich and subtle world in which wit and irony can be taken for granted, and into a crude and impoverished one in which stigma-labelling settles arguments, and race solidarity trumps equal accountability.
Universities exist to foster subtle understanding, rational argument that meets the merits of the opposite case, and even- handed principles. Unless the society they serve has a minimum respect for those ideals, universities cannot survive.
The question now is not the future of the 13 “monkeys” whom Makgoba has promised to “tame”. Their fate, he has suggested, is to face a firing squad.
The question now is whether South Africans want quality universities — universities in which transformation means quality teaching and research for the benefit of all our communities, not crude ethnic cleansing.
That is a question not just for the 13 individuals entrusted with protecting a lynchpin of the education system, but for all South Africans who cherish quality education, for themselves or their children.