In cutting university subsidies in the current manner, the ANC is reneging on its election promises, argues University of Natal philosophy professor Daniel Herwitz
As an American academic recently arrived from California, I wish to speak out decisively against the funding formula put in place by the Ministry of Education this year.
In the name of redress, the formula redistributes funding away from historically “white” universities to historically “disadvantaged” universities.
I wish to speak out against this because it is self-destructive, which everyone in university life already knows well. All one has to do is witness the student unrest of the past week to know that the new funding formula is having its greatest effect on the very students — black students — it was intended to help.
But what also is at stake is the African National Congress’s fundamental vision of itself as a democratically elected government, a government whose fundamental mission should be to represent its constituency, the majority of South Africans who elected it.
It is well-known that the funding formula takes a sizeable percentage of the budget of “white universities” and redistributes these funds to historically “black” or “disadvantaged” universities (we shall have to ask what these terms mean soon enough).
It begs the question: What are the grounds for this redress? What is being restituted? By what argument is a black university (so- called, for the moment) owed something by a white one? Black universities owe their existence to the old apartheid state, rather than to white universities.
If one presumes a moral argument about redress according to which white universities owe something on account of their whiteness during those years, then one is failing to distinguish the historical role of a university like the University of the Witwatersrand or the University of Natal (both of which opposed the state) from a university like the University of Pretoria (which did not). To lump these together is racism, the obliteration of the most profound moral differences on the basis of sameness of colour: white colour.
Now what is this white colour which attaches itself so persistently, so indelibly, to Wits, a university which disavowed the politics of racism from the birth of the apartheid state? In persisting with this label, is the education ministry not simply perpetuating the categories of racism which were created by Verwoerd and his gang of bad apples?
First: Wits now has a majority of “black” students, Cape Town has about 50%, Natal about 68%, and the Afrikaans universities have rapidly rising figures. Significant numbers of the best of these students are at these universities (Cape Town, Natal, Wits), rather than at the “disadvantaged” ones. Before you argue, take a closer look at the situation.
Second: all universities are participants in the process of transformation. All of them are working out new ways to accommodate vastly divergent student populations, all are coming to terms with what it means to be educated in a globalised, African world.
Where does the stigma “white university” come into it? Apparently it comes down to the university faculties: the faculties of white universities are essentially white, those of black universities are not. But redress in this case should be confined to issues of firmly applied affirmative action. No funding formula ought thereby to come into it.
At this point a second range of arguments comes into the picture, those about the differential capacities of “white” versus “disadvantaged” universities to find alternative sources of funding. The argument is twofold. First, that “disadvantaged” universities are inferior because of inequalities in the allocation of resources during the days of apartheid. However, the “Bantu” universities were provided with ample university resources (compare the grand buildings of University of the Western Cape to the crumbling lecture halls of Wits — but not to Stellenbosch which always had extra funding in the past). And if the library at Wits is superior to that of say, Zululand, that is simply because Wits is a far older university. Should it be punished for that?
The minister of education has spoken of “leveling the playing field” of the universities in the name of total and complete equality (no library should be better than another). But that apparent recipe for “total equality” sounds rather like taking a better rugby team and starving its players until they drop to the level of the less adept teams so that everyone is “equal”. Is that a recipe for the institution of mass education and the improvement of South African social life?
Second, the argument is that “white” universities are better equipped to find alternative sources of funding than “disadvantaged” ones. This is of course not an argument about redress but instead about the relative sustainability of different universities in economic hard times.
All South African universities could dramatically improve their fund-raising capacities. But at the moment, it is those universities which the outside world has identified (rightly or wrongly) as “disadvantaged” which are favoured to receive funds. Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries have been most generous to these universities.
South African corporations have been notoriously tight-fisted in their philanthropic activities and in any case, no company will invest in an institution which it perceives to be unstable. By rendering universities unstable, and turning them into investment liabilities, the new education policy has thwarted its own aims.
It is ironic that the burden of pain inflicted by the current policy is being borne by the population of serious and hardworking black students whose careers at Natal, Wits and the like are endangered on account of it.
A student came into my office a week ago wanting me to write him a letter of recommendation for a menial job, so that he could earn money to continue his third year of university. He is among the best philosophy students in our programme. He is lucid, dignified and highly reflective. If there ever were a person needed by a society in transition — a society requiring new modes of thinking and the supple intelligence of the young to do it — it is he. If the policy is breaking his back, it is breaking the back of the nation. South Africa, like any society, must replicate itself with young people who have the audacity and the quickness to think new thoughts. To lose this student is to lose nothing less than this precious feature of life.
This is truly a loss of standards. It is not the presence of this student at the University of Natal that we fear; it is his loss, a loss which the ANC is bringing about with complete authority.
Having recognised that the policy will produce such results, the ministry of education is now trying to raise more scholarship funds for “black” students. Yet it is doing so in a way that will preserve the underlying formula for redress intact, and merely supplement it for “blacks”.
The illogic of this is complete: having engendered a situation of educational atrophy and cronyism, the government will throw a bone to those of the required tribe who are losing out. But this titbit will not prevent overall decline of the university. My student’s need for a good education is hardly served by a sinking ship. The across-the-board cuts in educational funding will exacerbate this decline.
It is the politics of tribalistic cronyism, as opposed to those of representative government, which is the real issue here. Indeed one suspects that the policy of redress is simply a code for getting black faculties on the gravy train. The inherent cronyism repeats the political tribalism of the National Party. Except that the ANC was elected not by a tribe but by a broad constituency to which it is accountable. Call it a “majority”.
This is where the ANC contradicts itself. There have been in effect two ANCs in existence since the party assumed power, operating according to two narratives. One is a narrative of liberation, of riding the waves of history in the name of all South Africa. According to this narrative, the ANC has acquired legitimacy through its past, its leaders have authority because of what they did 10 years ago (their “role in the struggle”). It is a powerful and a unifying image.
But there is another, ultimately far more just, narrative, which is the narrative of a popularly elected government, which owes its existence to “the people” who voted it into power.
While the struggle lends moral authority to those who risked their lives for it, it has nothing to do with the politics of representative government. What matters now is not what the ANC did in the past, but what it is doing at the moment, whether and how it responds to the needs of South African citizens.
Let me paint a nightmare scenario: black students will have less and less access to universities of quality. The quality of all universities will decline because of the cycle of deterioration I have described. All those who can afford it will go abroad, adding to the brain drain from the country. A kind of Brazilianisation of the country will take place, with increased anomie, lack of access to middle-class life, violence, retribution. Not a pleasant scenario.
But decline in the quality of a nation’s universities inevitably is accompanied by a general decline in the nation itself. Let the ANC realise that its incoherent politics of redress is a failure to address the broad constituency of South Africans.
The ANC has been remarkable for its refusal to give in to the politics of resentment, politics which never produce anything worthwhile. Let them quickly redress the current lapse from this remarkable moral success.
Daniel Herwitz came to South Africa from Los Angeles. He is professor and head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Natal, Durban