Obituary:Harold Wolpe
Colin Bundy
“Everything I have written in these lectures underlines the importance to the intellectual of passionate engagement, risk, exposure, commitment to principles, vulnerability in debating and being involved in worldly causes.” (Edward Said, Representations of the
Late last year, Harold Wolpe flew from Cape Town to deliver some lectures in Sheffield. In order to do so, he somehow extricated himself from the task group which he chaired for the National Commission on Higher Education; staved off the insistent demands of running the Education Policy Unit at the University of the Western Cape (UWC); took leave from several research projects in which he was actively involved; made his apologies to sundry working groups and study programmes; and ducked a few committee meetings.
When he embarked upon this busman’s holiday, Harold was nearing the end of his seventieth year. What I remember so vividly was his relish in the opportunity that those purloined weeks gave him: to test his ideas, to sound a different audience, to engage in the give and take of theoretical disputation.
What made his zest for this scholarly escape remarkable was that it punctuated what was effectively his third career. He first achieved eminence as a lawyer and political activist (until his jail-break and exile in 1963). Next he carved a reputation as a Marxist sociologist at the University of Essex; and since his return to South Africa in 1991 he played an extremely influential role in policy research on higher education in post-apartheid South Africa.
Harold was awarded his BA (Social Studies) at Wits in 1949, and then completed an LLB at the same university. He practised as a barrister and then a solicitor during the 1950s and early 1960s, representing Mandela, Sisulu, Nokwe and many others charged with political offences. A member of the African National Congress and the South Arican Communist Party, he was detained during the 1960 State of Emergency, and in July 1963 was arrested days after the Rivonia raid. In a drama that commanded headlines across the world, Wolpe – — together with Arthur Goldreich, Abdullah Jassat and Mosie Moolah — escaped from Marshall Square police station.
Exile led to Britain. After a Nuffield fellowship, Harold retrained as a sociologist. He taught at Bradford University, the Polytechnic of North London, and from 1973 at the University of Essex. Founder editor of the Marxist journal Economy and Society, Harold was at the crest of the wave of revisionist analysis of South African politics and society. A seminal 1972 article (Capitalism and cheap labour power in South Africa) was widely reprinted and anthologised; his matador sword-thrusts to the sacred cow of Colonialism of a Special Type was more controversial — but arguably even more innovative.
In 1986, Harold set up the project Research on Education in South Africa whose expertise he brought with him when he returned to South Africa in 1991 to head the Education Policy Unit at UWC. Under his direction, the unit established an unrivalled reputation for policy research in higher education. It conducted a range of studies for the ANC, the new government, and other clients; and Harold piloted for it a course in which empirical findings were constantly compassed by theoretical readings.
He should have been a member of Jairam Reddy’s National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) — but perhaps achieved as much as chairperson of its central task group.
In the last year of his life, Harold worked tirelessly for UWC, his unit, and the NCHE. He died with his boots on, completing an overview report on behalf of his task group literally hours before the heart attack which placed the final full-stop on his inquiries.
His death deprives South Africa of one of its keenest critical minds; robs UWC of a challenging colleague; and leaves friends and family grieving an unfailingly humane and humorous man.
His intense involvement with his family — and his capacity for gregarious relaxation — – may surprise some who experienced only his combativeness when issues and ideas were at stake, or crossed swords with him over a committee table. Yet, perhaps this combination of private and public passions is what we will most miss.
Harold Wolpe was one of those rare academics who gives intellectuals a good name. It is difficult, reviewing his scholarly output, to draw any sort of line between his specific ideas or positions and his commitment to finding their purchase towards social change and transformation. It is impossible, recalling those twinkling eyes and decisive gestures, to mistake the integrity and convictions that drove him.
Pride and the alma mater
AS a graduate of Wits University, I bow my head in despair that reputable educationists have allowed the image of the institution to be profaned.
The snide methods used to assemble information regarding the alleged embellishment of the curriculum vitae of Professor William Makgoba and leak it to the media hardly inspire confidence in the motives of the 13 dons. Did they not realise the predictable consequences of their action?
Surely there are more acceptable ways to resolve disputes and address concerns which lessen the potential of tit-for-tat responses. There are going to be no winners in this matter and the university will become an arena for persistent strife.
Attempts by supporters of the status quo to deflect attention from those who created this controversy and convert it to a threat to academic freedom must be questioned.
Institutions of higher learning are national concerns and when their role in society begins to erode the public has a right to intervene. The government has a responsibility to see order is restored. Universities are not ivory towers existing outside the ethic of the people they were established to serve.
Wits was designed to protect the norms and values of its Western, colonial heritage. It is only recently, as a result of the political realities of a new South Africa, that attempts at transformation are being focused.
But, does the present council really reflect the demography and interests of the communities that have qualified at the university and form the present student
It is when we are prepared to seek out the most competent members from all sectors of our nation, willing to enhance the ethos of the broader South African landscape, that we can really address the quest for academic
None of us want standards to fall, but we must query what is meant by the terms standards and excellence. They were planned by and controlled by a particular racial group, to be dispensed for all those admitted to an institution.
When I was a student, I was never made to feel a part of my Alma Mater. Overt discrimination, subtle prejudices and exclusion from the social milieu left me feeling empty, deficient and unfulfilled. I do not want other students at Wits to feel this estrangement. I want all students to feel proud during their time at
I hope sober minds and reconciling hearts will respond to the emotionally bedevilled conflict situation and restore Wits to the kind of institution that can serve as an example in the restructuring of our divided country. — Dr R A M Salojee, MP
Reliability of matric exams needs to be
PHILIPPA GARSON and Vusi Mona’s report (M&G January 5 to 11) on the disappointing matric results addressed a number of fundamental issues. However, the report and most others on the matter, have neglected a number of other concomitant and very important issues.
Pass rates are often used to make educational decisions while little, if any, attention is paid to the actual practices that are used to arrive at these supposedly infallible pass
Both the reliability and the validity of the assessment practices that have produced these pass rates need closer examination. The reliability of the examinations comes into question when there is widespread reporting of examinations being leaked. This, along with the variability of the administration of the examinations (particularly in rural areas) and rumours of corrupt examination practices, raise doubts about the reliability of matriculation examinations.
Questioning the validity of the assessment raises questions about whether the examinations do in fact test aspects and skills of the subject that the syllabus sets out to teach. It is my experience in tertiary education that the matriculation examinations lack validity in this regard. While matriculation examinations encourage and reward rote learning and regurgitation of facts, their results will never be a reliable indicator of success for pupils entering tertiary institutions.
These issues should be addressed in the light of the proposal to have one examination for the whole country. All simplistic
attempts to raise the pass rate fall short of true transformation. It is a total revamp of examination and assessment practices that should be the order of the day. —
Lee Sutherland, Mtunzini
Jo’burg get your act together
YOUR articles on art films and film festivals by Hazel Friedman (M&G January 12 to 18) are rather one-sided and miss a major perspective.
She writes of the “sorry situation of South African film festivals” — this, in fact, should read “Johannesburg so-called film festivals”. As an ex-Durbanite I can recall very successful and stimulating film festivals organised by the Durban Film Society and driven by people such as Professor and Ros Sarkin.
Here in Johannesburg, it appears that any foreign film (sub-titled), no matter how good or bad, promoted by embassies, airlines or other commercial interests is called a “film festival”. Every second Monday such a festival is announced — the concept has been degraded here and made laughable!
The older generation of film-goers (60- somethings) who appreciated the development of the art form through Potemkin, early Marx Bros and European directors is dying out and a new generation has to be educated. Johannesburg should take a leaf from Durban’s book!
Festivals should have proper programmes prepared — newspaper announcements to phone a cinema for details is just a non-starter. Films should be described with short synopses, details of producers, directors and actors, and awards at other festivals (otherwise why show them?).
Durban ran festivals over two to three weeks with four or five showings per day, alternating films and times. Daily, foreign directors were invited to address audiences briefly before some showings. Tickets were available in advance at reduced prices for earlier shows. Such festivals generated enormous interest and introduced many to films as an art form.
The audience apathy Friedman complains about is due to the laughing stock the name “film festival” has become in Johannesburg. It will only become meaningful again if a properly constituted film society, or Ster Kinekor/Nu- Metro, organises a cultural festival, as is done in other cities here and overseas. — D Braunwin, Johannesburg
Prozac debate is frivolous
A DEBATE on the philosophical significance of the large scale use of Prozac by a nation is completely frivolous.
Depression is an illness. It is not, as many people seem to think, commonplace sadness. It is not caused by worrying about the state of the economy or the high crime rate, but by a combination of genetics, personality characteristics and non-functional thought patterns. Anyone who is genetically, and by personality type, predisposed to this form of mental disorder may develop it, if his perception of his environment is negative. It makes no difference whether this perception is
When one is in a major depressive phase one experiences a range of symptoms including an abnormal sleeping pattern, changes in appetite and weight, chronic fatigue and listlessness, and general aches and pains. The central, most characteristic symptom of major depression is the negative feelings sufferers experience: hopelessness, worthlessness, self-disgust and hatred, guilt, shame, profound loneliness and sorrow. Depression sufferers enjoy almost nothing and seldom dream or even think of the future. Life is a constant, endless, hopeless struggle, not for survival (because you do not believe existence is worth the trouble), but just to get through the next day, the next hour, the next moment.
Depression sufferers seemingly secrete too much of a neurotransmitter called serotonin in the brain. Most anti-depressants retard the absorption of neurotransmitters by nervous tissue. Prozac, and the equivalent drug Aropax, specifically inhibit the absorption of serotonin and thus alleviate the physiological source of depression symptoms. They enable depressives to work, in therapy, on the problems which contribute to their susceptibility to this illness. It is important to stress that neither medication alone nor therapy alone is as successful in the treatment of depression as a combination of the two.
Anti-depressants represent a crutch, a way out of the hole in which depressives find themselves. For those of us who are chronic sufferers of this disease, anti-depressants create the opportunity to live an almost normal life.
No drug can be the holy grail, nor can any medication relieve the world’s pain. Prozac is a medication designed to treat a specific illness. If the drug is being abused or incorrectly prescribed, it does not reduce its efficacy in a holistic treatment regimen of depression. — Sarel S Marais, Bloemfontein
Looking for a lingua franca
IT has been calculated that at the end of the next century about 80% to 85% of the 6 000 to 6 500 languages spoken on Earth will have disappeared (Professor Michael Kraus, Head of the Alaska Native Language Centre, Fairbanks,
The 6 000 to 6 500 languages are roughly spread as follows:
Asia, Pacific3 000
Africa1 900
Europe, Middle East 275
Americas 900
Of these, 5 000 languages are concentrated in 22 countries and nine of these countries have more than 200 languages each: Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Cameroon, Australia, Mexico, Zaire, Brazil. Between 160 and 200 languages are spoken in 13 countries: the former USSR, United States, Malaysia, China, the Sudan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Chad, New Hebrides, Central Africa Republic, Burma and Nepal.
Languages disappear because the people speaking them (we are not speaking about dialects) do not have an established written history or literature, the language is not used in higher education or in international communication (electronic, newspapers, business). People educated in a universal language and moving in circles where a universal language is spoken, do not teach the language they learned from their mothers to their children .
Looking at a death-toll of 80% to 85%, only two or three of the 11 or 12 official languages now spoken in South Africa will survive after 2100. Taking this into consideration, we should have a hard look at our education mess and the millions of rand wasted on TV. Let us follow the example of the US and use South African (based on English) as our lingua franca. — G J Vroom, Wynberg,
It’s just not cricket!
We are very glad to be back in world cricket, but how unappealing the TV1 Sport advertising was. Frankly, I think it’s for the birds.
If we were invited to take a team to a country just readmitted to world sport and that host country treated us to more than a daily dose of puerile posturing like this, (that is, we are great big vultures, we will chomp you up), we would certainly not feel very welcome.
In fact, it betokens a kind of insular thinking, perhaps an inferiority complex, and it is just plain bad manners.
The fact we won the one-day series is due to good sportsmen, not nasty sportsmanship in advertising. Let’s say thank you to the English for coming and for giving us, the audiences, such enjoyable cricket, and tell them that there are South Africans who dislike the kind of advertising perpertrated in the name of sport.
Hopefully they will ignore the fact that we appear to be greedy vultures, and agree to play against us again. — Heather Tracey,