Once ashamed of being dubbed a ‘bush college’, Fort Hare University now regards it as a compliment as it turns its back on the Ivy League model. Adrienne Carlisle visited the campus
On the small campus and impressive grounds of Fort Hare University, it is difficult to envisage that the institution is facing desperate financial problems. The grounds are well kept. Post-modern buildings vie with attractive early-twentieth-century architecture. The campus is home to the celebrated African National Congress archives, and sports a modern art gallery which would be the envy of any university.
Many staff members carry cell phones, an unusual perk at the university — and a symptom of one of the problems which have beset the institution. The cell phones, 200 of them, were donated by a mobile telephone company as part of its pledge to provide telephones to underdeveloped communities. For the staff, it provides a way around a local telephone system that was simply not coping. The art gallery was also donated by a mining house.
The financial crisis at the university was sparked by the non-payment of fees by students, and last month it was estimated that about R12-million was still owed to the university.
The effects of the financial situation are being felt by all, influencing morale and the university’s ability to perform and transform. Vice-president of the Democratic Staff Association Msimelelo Silinga, who is also on the steering committee of the university’s transformation forum, said departmental budgets had been “cut to the bone”, hindering staff development and performance.
The university was being forced to rely on subsidies and was also “eating” into reserves accumulated from student fee payments in previous years, he said. “The current crop of students are not contributing in terms of fees, despite a deal struck with them last year, according to which they could pay in instalments. Teaching is suffering as a result.”
He said the situation was becoming desperate. “Finance is one of the main hindrances to transformation. It is affecting the morale of staff, which is affecting their ability to sustain the process.”
Because of the depletion of reserves, salaries and benefits of staff at the university — until recently one of the lowest-paying tertiary institutions in the country — are unlikely to be improved. Silinga said the financial situation was also contributing to the “brain drain” being experienced at Fort Hare.
Because the constituency Fort Hare serves is traditionally a disadvantaged one, Silinga believes the answer lies with government. “If government responded to the unique challenges facing historically disadvantaged black universities such as Fort Hare, we could become a first-class institution.”
Fort Hare vice-chancellor Professor Mbulelo Mzamane, on the other hand, believes that part of the solution lies in a more astute use of available resources. He said part of transformation would involve identifying and enhancing areas of excellence. The obvious corollary is that some operations, degrees or courses would have to be downgraded or phased out.
“What this institution, this province and this nation cannot afford is to educate for unemployment,” said Mzamane. He admitted that this controversial viewpoint had met with fierce opposition at the university.
“Yes, it will be fiercely contested as everyone wants to guard their turf. It is in the nature of transformation that the revolutionary of yesterday can become the reactionary of today. Change is threatening, particularly if the change is fundamental.”
Mzamane goes beyond mere transformation of Fort Hare and has also repeatedly called for an Eastern Cape university system under one chancellory with one co-ordinating principal, according to which each university retains its areas of strengths and phases out areas of duplication.
“It’s about rationalisation and astute use of resources,” says Mzamane. He is determined that Fort Hare will never become part of the “Ivy League”. On the contrary, he is committed to enhancing its “bush college” image. The university is located in Alice, situated in the rural heartland of the Eastern Cape, and Mzamane believes the university is ideally situated to serve the marginalised, rural population.
The new Fort Hare will be defined as much by its location as its ability to effectively participate in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, he says. It is situated in an area of acute unemployment. Says Mzamane: “We would be content to be satisfactory to average in a number of areas, if we could enhance special areas for which we could have renown.”
Fort Hare is well known for its agricultural training facilities and outreach programmes, as well as its recently established Institute of Government.
Mzamane believes that long after historically white institutions have become majority African, there will still be differences between them and Fort Hare. “They will cream off the best and those nobody else will take will continue to come to Fort Hare. Face it, there will be ‘Ivy League’-type universities in this country, but you are also going to have popular universities and ours will be like that.
“If we are talking about creating a qualitatively new and different South Africa, it is about those people who were marginalised by the former regime. They are rural, impoverished; they are women. This is the constituency Fort Hare services. It is the new South Africa which will be created in places like this.”
SRC President Eugene Motati does not entirely agree with Mzamane. He believes Fort Hare should be given the opportunity to compete with the traditionally white universities. “The differences between ourselves and traditionally white universities must go. We want to provide the same quality. The government must provide the resources to put historically disadvantaged universities in the same position as traditionally white ones.”
He said students did not boycott payments because they wanted to, but rather because they could not afford to pay. Despite the funding problems and the apparent lack of unity in vision, Motati says there is a sense of transformation at Fort Hare. Structures had been formed and the process was moving forward through negotiation, he said.
Fort Hare University faces enormous challenges and how it meets them will decide whether it survives in a province which has a surfeit of tertiary institutions. But its history of successful transformation suggests that it will survive. It was an institution spawned by a segregationist ideal 80 years ago. But it rebelled against that ideal and its alumni include struggle luminaries like President Nelson Mandela, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and ANC stalwarts, the late Oliver Tambo and Govan Mbeki.
Despite the best efforts of the National Party appointees who filled the top positions of the university, it became regarded as a hotbed of student activism. The fall of Ciskei strongman Lennox Sebe also spelt the end of the old order at Fort Hare and former rector Prof JA Lamprecht and the entire council resigned.
In mid-1991, Fort Hare’s first black vice- chancellor, Professor Sibusiso Bengu, now Minister of Education, was appointed. While Fort Hare has its problems, it is probably way ahead of traditionally white universities in terms of transformation. Its post-Sebe council was one of the most democratic and legitimate, as far back as 1991.
But one thing Fort Hare will not be changing in the foreseeable future is its name. Despite the fact that it is named after British coloniser, Cape Lieutenant-Governor Colonel John Hare, Mzamane feels a name change would distract the university from its purpose of real transformation. “It’s about priorities. I refuse to be hijacked into such a highly emotive debate. Right now it will be distracting from something far more fundamental and far more important.”