Justin Pearce asks why democracy has worsened the conflict on our campuses
The annual row over student fees has become as regular an event on the calendars of some universities as the intervarsity rugby match at others. Students invoke their right to education — the university invokes dwindling government subsidies and rising costs. Usually, everything is sorted out by April, and life and lectures go on.
But this year has seen unprecendented tensions between certain students and the authorities at the University of the Western Cape. And at the University of the Witwatersrand, some academics are talking as though the very life of the university is at stake. At the heart of the conflict lies a deep-seated difference of opinion on what university education is for — and who it is for.
The first year of democratic government in South Africa has done nothing to ease the situation. In fact, it has exacerbated it, by leaving universities in an interregnum — they are under pressure to change along with the rest of South African society, yet the government, which has overseen the democratisation of everything else in the country, has still to come up with a policy on tertiary education. And in the absence of policy, words like democratisation and transformation have as many meanings as there are political persuasions on campus.
This is nowhere better illustrated than at Wits, where an administration which expresses commitment to transformation is nevertheless branded as “reactionary” and accused of delaying tactics by students calling for faster and more far-reaching change.
One view, articulated by the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) among others, is that a university is a society in miniature, with a right to democratic governance. Students, academic staff and workers should all have a say in who runs it and how it is run. The more established view, as expressed by Wits senior lecturer Nicholas Smith, is that “senior academics have to run a university, otherwise it is not a university — it is a political compromise”.
As far as many students are concerned, universities are not that different from how they were in the old South Africa — so it’s business as usual for those trying to change the system by whatever means necessary.
“The protests are a legacy of the way students have operated in the past,” says University of the Western Cape SRC president Yolisa Pikie. Pikie, himself not a Sasco member, is sceptical of the widely-held notion that the protests have been stirred up by Sasco or any other body.
“You have to put student demands in the context of the character of the liberation struggle,” says Professor Harold Wolpe, director of the Education Policy Unit at UWC.
“There is a tension that is not generally recognised between meeting equality demands and development demands. If we had ample resources we could cover both – – but we do not.”
Academics and planners from across the political spectrum agree that students are trying to get into universities — and to stay there — for the wrong reasons. “University is seen as a ticket out of a township,” as one put it.
Role models for youth are more likely to be university graduates than skilled fitters and turners. With a Bantu Education matric certificate being worth little more than the paper it is printed on, universities come to be seen as kinds of finishing schools to provide a leg-up in the job market.
And then there is the question of racial equality. A perception that all white youth go to university leads to the feeling that in a non-racial society all black youth must as well.
“The problem can only be solved in the longer term,” Wolpe says. He points to the Commission on Higher Education which is to present a report to Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu later this year, which will provide the basis for the White Paper on tertiary education.
“Do you create a policy that says anyone who wants higher education has an automatic right to it? If so, that can’t be handled immediately. It will need proper planning of the higher education system. Such an approach has been adopted in very few countries.”
The commission is more likely to aim for a broader strategy that will take in technikons, technical high schools and community colleges, as well as universities — and aim at developing those institutions which offer the advanced practical skills that South Africa requires.
The commission is also known to be giving a high priority to the establishment of a national student loan scheme, and a reassessment of the present subsidy formula for educational institutions.
But for this system to work it will require a change in attitude away from the currently prevailing view that a university education is to be prized above all else.
What is more, there are doubts as to what extent the universities — particularly the older ones, which were established as bastions of learnedness — will be prepared to fall in line with government strategy on higher education.
The White Paper might take pressure off these universities by moving the responsibility for practically-oriented education elsewhere.
But considering that South Africa currently has a disproportionately high number of universities as opposed to technikons, it is unlikely that every one of the current universities will be able to indulge solely in ivy league academia.
There may be a consensus that the higher education system as a whole needs to change — but it is the universities themselves that are on the front line of protest.
Ironically, it is the liberal and left-aligned universities that are bearing the brunt of protest: “UWC and Wits are soft targets because they are committed to precisely those things students are fighting for,” says UWC senior lecturer Faried Esack.