Justin Pearce
AS the University of the Western Cape battled against boycotting students this week, Professor Cecil Abrahams was still pondering whether or not to take up the post of rector which he was offered last Thursday.
After consulting students, workers and academics on campus, the UWC council voted unanimously to give the job to Abrahams, a specialist in South African literature currently working in Canada. There was only one other contender in the final race for the rectorship, psychologist Professor Mapule Ramashala.
The student boycott has also delayed the appointment of vice-rectors. UWC spokesman Michael Doman said the boycott had made it impossible for students to participate in the democratic process which has been decided upon for the election of a completely new team to lead the university.
UWC has been leaderless since Professor Jakes Gerwel left the university to become director general of President Nelson Mandela’s office.
Johannesburg-born Abrahams has been in exile in the United States and Canada since the 1960s, and is currently vice-rector of Acadia [sic] University in Nova Scotia.
Coincidentally, the afternoon that Abrahams was offered the post also saw the start of a week of chaos on campus, as students protested over their exclusion from the university on financial and academic grounds. The problem is a perennial one, but this year the protests became particularly ugly with seven top university officials being held hostage for 11 hours. Encouraged by Mandela’s call to university principals to clamp down on unruly protest, the university also took a tougher line than ever before, calling the police onto campus and obtaining a supreme court interdict restraining the SRC from disrupting academic
A call for a class boycott split the SRC, but boycotting students disrupted lectures early this week, leading to the university’s decision on Wednesday to suspend classes.
Abrahams was already on his way home to Canada before his appointment was announced. In a telephonic interview, he promised to do his best to overcome a repetition of this week’s incidents by keeping in touch with the needs and wishes of students. “I intend to spend time meeting with student leaders and the wider student body, to try and win their confidence.”
Abrahams has expressed a commitment to working with UWC and the private sector to secure bursary funding. He acknowledged, though, that since UWC is a relatively young insitution serving a generally poor community, the donor potential of its alumni was limited.
Abrahams has stressed both the importance of promoting the tradition of a liberal university education, and the commitment of UWC to social transformation.
While these two aims have sometimes been seen as being in tension in the South African context, Abrahams stressed that a university’s traditional role of nurturing “articulate, creative people” was an essential part of building a new society.
Abrahams’ appointment has raised eyebrows in academic circles. While his resume includes an extensive list of published articles, African literature specialists who spoke to the Weekly Mail & Guardian cast doubts on the rector designate’s reputation as an academic: “He has never written anything on South African literature that could be described as pathbreaking,” said one source.
Other academics have accused him of taking a vehemently anti-white stance, politically and in his academic priorities. Abrahams denies this, saying: “I believe in a society that is democratic, non-racial and non- sexist. My involvement in the academic boycott against South Africa was largely political — it was directed towards a political system I was opposed to.”