Ironically, those at the forefront of challenging the govenment’s misguided policies on HIV/Aids are from white institutions. Why have black academics been silent for so long?
Now and then, nations are called upon to respond to extraordinary challenges. Those that appreciate the enormous power and crucial importance of intellectuals and experts turn to the best minds available. In doing so, they hope that “the voice of reason” will inform and prevail in the formulation of their responses. At other times nations may appeal to public sentiment. The latter is usually driven by emotional and shortsighted considerations. In reality, we rarely find complementarity and coalescence between “the voice of reason” (rationality) and public opinion. The challenge of leadership, in such situations, is to find a balance between the two.
The need to balance and to resolve the tension between rationality and public opinion was highlighted by two issues, seemingly unrelated, that have dominated the media over the past fortnight. The first relates to the president’s so-called shift to allow the expansion of the provision of nevirapine to HIV-infected pregnant mothers to prevent mother-to-child transmission. The second relates to the report on the National Plan on Higher Education.
Issue one. President Thabo Mbeki’s softening on the provision of nevirapine to pregnant women comes in the face of months of growing impatience by civil society. It follows closely on the decision by the medical profession and medical associations to embark on an open defiance of the government’s misguided policies. This was before Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu took public positions on the matter. Fortunately, they were spared the abuses that were the lot of those who dared to voice their concerns earlier.
Secondly, the decision comes after the country was bombarded with doses of denials, obfuscations, half-truths and misrepresentations around HIV/Aids. Arguments shifted from debates about what causes what to costs, toxicity and infrastructure. Ironically, those politicians who present themselves as experts on toxicity were, not so long ago, enthusiastically touting a poisonous industrial solvent Virodene as a possible cure for HIV/Aids. Virodene was endorsed without any scientific evidence and despite the fact that its inventors had bypassed all the research protocols and controls at universities.
HIV/Aids had become a struggle between the experts and ignoramuses, between life and death, and between government and the people. Mbeki’s shift is a victory for those who dared to challenge the absurdity and irrationality of his policies. In summary, we witnessed the concurrence and convergence of both “the voice of reason” and public opinion on the one side, and the political leadership on the opposite side.
Issue two. The national working group’s report on the National Plan on Higher Education evoked strong passions and invited great scorn from black students and academics. Respondents invoked passionate and rabble-rousing discourse ? “declaration of war”, “institutional genocide on black universities and tecknikons”, “betrayal of the struggle”, “intellectual disgrace, a political disaster”. Oddly enough, the passion displayed over the report stands in glaring contrast to the stand one would have expected from these intellectuals with regard to black life. Some respondents have been conspicuously absent from the debate on HIV/Aids. Has black life become less important than black education?
Somehow black academics failed to appreciate that the HIV/Aids debates, as advanced by the medically ill-informed, have had the effect of undermining expertise and the role of higher education in general. Those academics desperate for political affirmation have been preoccupied with ingratiating themselves with the powers that be and have failed to provide intellectual and moral leadership. Ironically, it is academics and researchers at the so-called privileged white institutions ? University of Witwatersrand, University of Natal and University of Cape Town ?who have been at the forefront of challenging the government’s misguided policies on HIV/Aids.
Given the passions the report evoked, it may be useful to play devil’s advocate. It is necessary to dispense with the obvious. The contribution of black institutions to the struggle and to professional and intellectual life in this country is beyond doubt. They not only serve the poorest of the poor, but also continue to accommodate academically under-prepared students. Had it not been for these institutions, most of us would not have had the benefit of higher education. Historically located in rural and black communities, the institutions could serve as developmental nodes in line with the government’s integrated rural developmental strategy. There is no reason to assume that, given the support that historically white institutions have enjoyed, these institutions would be unable to set themselves on a developmental trajectory that would result in their becoming world class African universities. Only those who do not expect anything of value from Africans would suggest otherwise.
Notwithstanding this, we should not lose sight of the fact that the identity and geographic locations of South African institutions reflect the geopolitical imagination of apartheid. Black institutions were created to prevent and to stem access to white institutions. These institutions, as the noted scholar Mamood Mamdani reminds us, were intellectual counterparts of Bantustans. As such they “were designed to function more as detention centres for black intellectuals than as centres that would nourish intellectual thought. As such, they had little tradition of intellectual freedom or institutional autonomy. They were driven by the heavy hand of bureaucracy.”
Neither can we be blind to the fact that conditions in black institutions leave much to be desired. Enrolments have been declining and financial deficits have been steadily on the increase. As a result of the crisis of leadership and the culture of non-payment, some of these institutions are perennially embroiled in student protests. In other words, in defending black institutions we need to ask ourselves: what is it that is being defended? Can we honestly argue that their programmes are in line with a black agenda (whatever that is)? The glorious history of these institutions notwithstanding, there is no gainsaying the fact that they do not represent black excellence. They are caricatures of their former selves. Should they therefore be protected at the expense of broader institutional transformation simply because somewhere in the past they made important contributions?
Shouldn’t we rather consider the report as a first step towards inviting workable arrangements in which African scholars are not treated as junior partners in the transformation of the higher education landscape?
Accordingly, we need to ask: what is it that was problematic with the composition, the methodology and benchmarks that were used by the national working group? Were black institutions aware of the benchmarks and performance indicators central to their evaluation? Which of these ? graduation rates, research outputs, staff qualifications and financial stability ? did they disagree with? Why have black academics been silent all along?
Evidently, reliance on racial solidarity has not worked. Let’s hope that the voice of reason will find common cause with public outrage/opinion.