Professor Barney Pityana, vice-chancellor of Unisa and former chair of the South African Human Rights Commission, is to lead a high-level task team of university leaders to probe racism on South African campuses.
Higher Education South Africa (HESA), which represents the vice-chancellors of all 23 public universities, established the task team following a meeting at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) last week.
This comes in the aftermath of the racist video made by students at the University of the Free State (UFS) that was screened across the world, showing black workers eating food that was urinated on by students in protest against the racial integration of residences.
A subsequent email exchange between vice-chancellors about racism at their institutions provided further impetus for the task team’s establishment, and vice-chancellors have issued a declaration in which they enter into a ”social contract” with South African society.
”We commit ourselves to leading our institutions in eradicating all forms of discrimination at each and every one of our campuses and to build and promote a culture of respect and tolerance within higher education so that it can contribute to the achievement of a peaceful and multicultural society,” the declaration says.
The vice-chancellors who will serve on the team are professors Frederick Fourie of the UFS, Jamul Ndebele of the University of Cape Town, Calie Pistorius of the University of Pretoria and Derrick Swartz of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
The investigation will look at diversity in the curriculum, best practice regarding diversity, ameliorating discriminatory institutional culture and promoting diversity.
Vice-chancellors were very passionate when they met at Wits. Why?
Barney Pityana: I had feared in the light of the email exchanges between us that there would be the temptation from some corners to say: ”This [racism] has nothing to do with me.” But the meeting was positive. There was somehow a clearer appreciation of the challenge. So the issue was not the UFS. We came to understand how pervasive racism was at all institutions.
That does not mean that everything that will come out of this task team will be accepted by all. But at the very least we have come to agree that this investigation is something worth investing in as higher-education institutions. Higher education cannot be seen to be silent on an issue like this. Everybody, everybody approved that we investigate this.
How was Professor Fourie, vice-chancellor of the UFS, treated at this meeting?
I personally think that the UFS handled the thing [race video] brilliantly. They did not camouflage. They did not try to find justifications, and their programme of transformation has not been set back. I really don’t think any right-minded person can blame the UFS for causing this incident.
Clearly Professor Fourie is one person who seems to have sought to challenge some of the vested interests at his university. He was not surprised at what had happened, but probably he did not anticipate the extent, and I think he did not buckle under pressure when it happened. I don’t think anybody felt that the UFS had to be attacked [at the meeting]. The proper thing is to support him.
Let us face it: universities are very vulnerable to social pressures. I won’t wish to be the vice-chancellor in his place where every day you need to field questions from New York, London, Frankfurt because your university has become associated with a particular brand of intolerance. I would not want that. I mean, donors must want to withdraw. It is terrible to be a vice-chancellor under such circumstances.
Universities usually mind their own business. Not in this case. Why is this?
It is unheard of. The events at the UFS brought South African universities — and not only the UFS — worldwide attention. Many of us are very proud of our international collaborations and contacts. It really impacted negatively on the entire higher-education sector. So, it was not longer a matter of the UFS; it was a matter for all of us.
You know the higher-education sector has been under intense pressure — sustained pressure — from the government, from Parliament, from the ANC … in particular from the ANC. We have being accused of racism, that our students are failing, that we cannot produce graduates who can write decent proposals and express themselves. We have been under tremendous pressure and now this.
So, when this [incident] came, many of us had to ask some profound questions about what higher education is and what kind of graduates we are producing. Two of the young men [who made the UFS race video] graduated last year and they hold proudly degrees of their varsity. What kind of graduates are we producing? One would assume that higher education produces a kind of refined person — as WB du Bois said, ”a civilised being”. Clearly socialisation is much more powerful than intellectual achievement. So, yes, we all felt a sense of responsibility.
How widespread is racism on our campuses?
Let me answer by saying two things. One is that higher-education institutions did not participate in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Yet all higher education in our country in varying degrees was a product of the apartheid system.
The second thing is that higher education has remained unreformed since 1994. We have some black vice-chancellors, but it is unreformed in the essence of what a university is. It is unreformed in terms of curriculum. It is largely unreformed in terms of how the ethos and culture of institutions are affirming to all the people in it. It is unreformed in that even today the majority of academic staff at senior level are still white and continue to model whiteness as an equivalent to value.
So, the truth is that racism manifests in various ways and mutates in imperceptible ways. When we talk about racism, we therefore don’t only talk about the outrage of Reitz [the male residence where the race video was made] — that is just an extreme manifestation of something that is embedded in our society and the relationships we have.
For me, it would therefore be inadequate if we simply prepared a statement on racism as vice-chancellors. We need to assist each other to devise strategies to deal for racism. One of the shocking things is that 15 years into democracy there is a lot of criticism of higher education. The questions being asked are: What is the cash value of a higher education? Has it produced better South Africans?
What the UFS incident has said is that higher education has not been able to overcome stereotypes and practices that have been embedded in our society. Why? We have never confronted them. We have never challenged people to reflect deeply about their experiences. We put young white men and women and black men and women all together, and we hardly prepare them for the experience. So we can hardly be surprised when it turns out the way it did. This case [Reitz] was the most outrageous, but there are many others.
What about institutions such as the University of Limpopo, which hardly has any white students? Do they also face race issues?
The very fact that the University of Limpopo does not have white students is an issue. There is no reason why white students cannot attend the university, but they don’t. No university in the country has declared itself as a university for black people in as much as no university has declared itself to be a university for white people.
However, in a way language is sometimes used as a barrier. Stellenbosch University’s [former vice-chancellor] Chris Brink [who left last year] battled with this. He tried to say what the politics of language is, but they did not want to hear.
But to what extent can universities really address something that is, in essence, a much deeper societal problem?
Universities are universities. Their participation cannot be guaranteed. But there are things that they can do. For instance, nothing prevents universities — all of them — from having a core module or course on racism that all South African students, no matter where they are studying, will go through.
University study could also demand from students to study a language other than their own to enable them to get to the heart of what it means to be the ”other” South African, and culture studies could get you to talk about racism and culture.
Just those two interventions alone can make a huge contribution to open up the world that is totally cloaked in ignorance for many of us. There are different ways in which we can create an environment where South Africans can begin to feel South African, to be South African rather than aspire to go Perth or Canada; where they can actually begin to value being South African. In some respects, what happened at the Free State was not only negative. Somehow out of that we have a sense of possibility of what needs to be done to construct a better society.
How important is curriculum reform in tackling racism? Can you reform the curriculum without a diversity of staff?
I think curriculum reform is very important. Almost all of us face challenges in terms of employment equity. That is an historical problem. Even with the best will in the world there aren’t black academics and women academics crawling like ants all over the place for us to pick up. We can’t deny the historical fact that it will take a long time to really begin to have an impact on the demographic geography of institutions.
But we need to realise that transformation is the responsibility of everyone — black and white. Transformation is not the preserve of black people. Everybody should see their responsibility. There are many black people who are not transformation conscious. To a large degree it is not about colour; it is about orientation.
Is the term ”racist” not used too readily?
Well you need to be careful. This is what I mean by [the lack of a] discourse language about race. Race in all dimensions should not be used as a swearword — it is not well-considered, not meaning anything; it is an expression of a gut thing you have. There is no rationality.
What I am talking about is an understanding of race and racism that is a depiction of the nature of social relations. When people use race as a swearword it demeans the discourse. If I call Dennis Davis a racist, as I did, the legitimate response is not one of outrage, but to say: ”What do you mean? You just called me something, but what do you mean?”
Then it challenges me to begin to unpack what I meant. Very often I cannot. Then I am forced to withdraw because it might have been in a moment of thoughtlessness or anger. Next time I will not use the word in that way. I am not one to say I must censor every word I say, but I give you the right to challenge me — because you have a right to challenge me if I label you in a particular way and I must justify why I did that.
How will you do this study?
We still have to decide on the methodology. One thing I know is that the vice-chancellors expect this to be consultative.
How deep will you go with the study?
I don’t know, but certainly there is a sense to start at the office of vice-chancellors and ask them to engage their own institutions. My hope is it does not end there. You won’t answer critical questions by just asking Pretoria University to sit among themselves and discuss this. I would like to see that the University of Pretoria and the University of Limpopo allow for discussions of their experiences. All these things would be elements of a consultative process.
Will this study be about discrimination and intolerance generally, including xenophobia, sexism and so forth?
I think I would insist that we try to avoid throwing together a whole range of things so that in the end we don’t have a sharp edge of wanting to deal with this particular issue of race.
Is the rainbow nation a myth?
No, but a rainbow is a number of parallel lines. We need to move beyond the parallel lines and get the lines to criss-cross. In terms of social relations, we are nowhere close to that.