Caroline White
a second look
I am on a Boeing 747 struggling to get some sleep on the journey to London. I start thinking about how often I have made the journey and why this is the last time since I first returned in 1983 that I will be leaving without a home to go back to in South Africa.
While my co-passengers are leaving in search of another life, free of violent crime, where their children will have a more certain future as whites entering the job market, I am being forced into a new life because my old one in South Africa shut its doors on me.
In July 1983 when I went to live in Cape Town after 22 years away, I was filled with the desire to contribute to the transformation in the air. Within days of arriving, I was taken to the launch of the United Democratic Front.
Later I joined a protest at the University of Cape Town (UCT) against the presence on campus of ministers in the National Party government as guests of the political studies department.
Why should they profit from “academic freedom” when those whom one would want to invite to give the opposite point of view were jailed or exiled? Back then “academic freedom” meant the right of universities to choose who should teach or talk on campus, and who and what should be taught.
Curiously, given what has happened recently to Rob Shell at Rhodes and to me at the University of Natal, being too outspoken was never an issue. We took for granted that robust debate was the stuff of academic life. Today we have both been dismissed for this “misconduct”.
Between my arrival in 1983 and my departure a week ago, I engaged in activities that have contributed to transformation.
The struggle in South Africa has always been about equality and justice for all. I have worked in different institutions to advance this goal. UCT reformed its discriminatory employment practices as a result of my efforts and those of the women’s group I founded there. Other universities have followed suit.
The “affirmative action” approaches we pioneered have been adopted elsewhere. I consistently argued for these procedures as a member of various organisations.
There is no dispute that equity and justice are worth fighting for; but another critical component of democracy is under attack at present: freedom of speech.
Accustomed to a regime of censorship, South Africans are quick to complain that opinions they disagree with should be banned. Given my commitment to free speech and open debate, I was proud to become a founder member of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission in 1993.
During my six years there it consistently supported broadcasters’ right to rely on their own judgement and to disseminate controversial material, as long as conflicting views were heard and children appropriately protected.
Employment equity and freedom of speech were goals that I pursued in my “free” time. It was in my paid employment as academic teacher and researcher and in the transformation of academic institutions that I hoped to contribute most in returning to South Africa.
All my research in South Africa was policy and development related: the domestic division of labour, employment, housing for the homeless, energy use among the poor and the promotion of civic culture are topics I have covered.
Funders ranged from the African National Congress Women’s League to the Ford Foundation. My projects involved training black researchers. I introduced innovative methods in my own teaching and encouraged my colleagues to pursue learning strategies that were appropriate to less-advantaged students.
In recognition of my contribution in the Eighties, I was made an honorary vice-president of the National Union of South African Students and UCT awarded me with a citation including “pioneered new courses; contributions to academic freedom; conditions of service for staff; mediation in student crises; encouraged and advised staff and students; monitored staffing appointment procedures; shown an example for her readiness to confront difficult issues, for her concern for the disadvantaged, and for her determination to help UCT meet the demands of a changing South Africa”.
In 1997, after six years spent doing policy-related research, I returned to what I regarded as my true mtier: university teaching.
Invited to take the chair of social anthropology at the University of Natal, I responded enthusiastically to the challenges of a department that needed to revise its teaching methods and courses, and restructure. Initially all went well. Even the dean who subsequently sought to get rid of me remarked that my relations with students and staff were “excellent”.
It was a shock therefore to be told, six months after a sharp exchange between myself and the dean about his handling of a student complaint, that I was to be suspended pending a disciplinary inquiry into charges of misconduct.
I was banned from all teaching and marking, not allowed to go to my office or the library, and not allowed to attend any function on the campus. A year and two inquiries later (costing R70?000 in legal fees), and after I had turned down an offer of R453?000 to resign, I was dismissed on December 1 2000 for misconduct.
None of the charges were upheld. Instead, I was found guilty of an “offence” to do with the powers of deans but, “more seriously”, I was found guilty of having e-mailed my friends about my suspension and, in the process of expressing my shock, had failed to give the university’s side of the story!
Ominously, though perhaps only coincidentally, Dr Rob Shell, a well-known historian and Aids researcher, was summoned back from Princeton University to face disciplinary charges only days after my dismissal.
Like me, Shell had come back from a long period of absence to contribute to the transformation of universities and to do relevant, policy-related research. Like me his dismissal has been recommended not because he has performed poorly on the contrary, his track record in these areas is similarly excellent.
He must go because he has been critical of his superiors and this, it seems, academics must learn the hard way to stop doing.
That is why I suppose what I am doing on this Boeing 747 is emigrating. Shell is probably on the next plane unwillingly and sadly part of the “brain drain” that South Africa can ill afford, especially when it includes those who have shown they have a real contribution to make. Can the same be said of those responsible for their departure?
Some of South Africa’s most senior academics have rallied behind Professor Caroline White, an internationally renowned academic, after her suspension and eventual dismissal from the University of Natal, and have approached Minister of Education Kader Asmal to intervene