Cape
Messenger
The ‘failed’ debate at UCT
THOUGHT LEADERS / January 6, 2017 / BizNews
UCT – the implications of a
failed debate – Prof Crowe lays it on the line
Undeniable
stout defender of academic standards at UCT, Professor Tim Crowe, takes an
unexpectedly different slant here. Rather than his usual rational, well-argued
but nevertheless outraged treatise, we have an invitation to his opponents to
engage in an open debate. He even sides with them at several points, taking a
crack at the university leadership for not having undertaken more campus
transformation earlier (a bit like the former Rhodesian farmers on the land question in Zimbabwe). Not establishing a larger,
universally-respected black lecturer cadre way back was a huge miss, he argues,
while transformation was deferred to the point where anarchic resistance became
inevitable. He’s taking on the protester leaders – and the university
leadership – in a smart challenge that his detractors will probably argue is
designed to expose their lack of academic and pragmatic planning proficiency.
Whatever motive you may attribute, the argument and rebuttals he offers are
worthy of engagement and can only enlighten the Biznews readership – should
those at whom they are aimed pick up the cudgels. – Chris Bateman
By Tim
Crowe*
You “go
through statistics and reports from UCT”. Have you found information on the
success of educationally disabled matriculants admitted? I have failed to get
these from Dean Shay, the senior UCT officer responsible for their development.
These stats will demonstrate UCT’s failure to help them achieve their dreams.
UCT’s
“silenced majority” is not the ‘problem’. “These people” (I use the term
proudly) are kids and academics who want to learn/debate/research. They made
UCT the respected institution it used to be.
They have little “influence,
guidance and leadership”. That should come from the Senate/Executive/Council.
But, many ‘silenced’ academics resist meaningful transformation because
it threatens their ‘freedom’ to teach and research. That should have stopped
30+ years ago.
The
‘solution’ provided by the Executive was to ‘outsource’ the ‘problem’. This
‘othering’ was compounded with the establishment of Shay’s faculty, formally
delegated with the task of transformation. With noteworthy exceptions, this
strategy has failed. Now, like it or not, “Core Academics” have to buy in and
deliver the educational goods.
To say
that UCT has failed to ‘decolonize’ is incorrect. Certainly since the
1970s, the all-powerful white-male professors have had their fiefdoms eroded.
This set the scene that Drs Saunders and Ramphele effectively exploited
to develop transformation. Sadly, subsequent Executives/Senate/Councils
have dropped the transformation ball.
The
people setting fires and “running around” are lawbreaking ‘protesters’,
aided/abetted by the complicit/emasculated Executive/Senate/Council/Convocation?
The “silenced majority” is anything but “irrelevant”. Without it, the
Panglossian UCT IN THE NEWS would have few achievements to report. Fallists and their academic
supporters (e.g.
the Black African Caucus) have offered nothing to replace it – only
intimidation, violence and destruction.
They ask:
“Who created this crisis.” My answer is: the Executive by deferring
transformation and then suborning anarchist protesters. If Price were serious
about transformation, why didn’t he precipitate the removal of Rhodes’ toxic
statue during the first seven years of his rule using non-vulgar, democratic
methods? Where are the new black professors given that he had all the
funds to insource slave-wage workers?
They ask:
“What were they [the ‘silenced majority’] doing for the last 22 years?”
My answer is producing outstanding graduates and world-class research,
much of which is highly Afro-relevant. Sadly (and they will be made to
pay for this now), they resisted in recruiting black and other
demographically-relevant students/staff.
The
tragedy in this regard is that many (especially younger) white staff are being
vilified, despite their obvious ability to effect meaningful
transformation/decolonization.
The
battle over #Fallist demands grows ever uglier at the University of Cape Town
(UCT).
They are
right using the word “suspect” to describe what will emerge from “this truth
and reconciliation thing”. Neither they nor I (and Fallists and the Price-led
Executive) have any (I repeat ANY) idea of what the Steering Committee and
emerging Commission are going to do. If they advocate and implement ideas
recently professed by eminent decolonist scholars like Mahmood Mamdani and Achille Mbembe, departments/faculties could be
dismembered to form a ”pluriversity” within which courses would be required to
‘inclusivize’, potentially diluting core disciplinary elements of syllabi.
Furthermore, academics would cease being scholars in the international sense
and be morphed into (or replaced by) “public intellectuals” and “citizen
scientists” imbued with ‘knowledge’ reflecting “lived experiences”. Read the
relevant publications.
They
“like the way these protestors are bringing out into the open some really bad
practices in that institution”. Please give some examples. If there are “some
student residences that give first preference to those students whose parents
also resided in those residences”, this policy should be exposed and stopped.
However, if you support that places in residences should be allocated solely on
the basis of demographics, I object. I suggest that places in residences should
go first to totally-support bright young Makgoba-Rampheles. Then, places should
be offered to maximize the diversity of residence-dwellers to encourage
interaction between kids with different “lived experiences”. This could promote
one-on-one understanding and cultural synergy instead of assimilation.
Like Adv
Geoff Budlender (at the Convocation AGM) you miss-represent my “call for a poll
among alumni, staff, and students” as “rigged” to favour the views of whites.
He and you deliberately ignore that my suggested poll encouraged those
consulted to self-identify by ‘race’, gender, age, etc. I wager that a majority
of, for example, ‘black’ women students would have voted against intimidation,
violence and destruction and for representative (election-based) ‘protester’
negotiators. The “silenced majority” is defined by its exclusion, not
race/gender. Price ignored it and embraced the self-appointed lawbreakers whom
I refer to as abantu behlanye nebekhanda behlaza.
If you
want to know how “Black South Africans [and other Africans] decode my little
tricks”, I can provide you with a long list of successful graduates.
Yes, I am
familiar with the article to which you refer. Its title, ‘We want to go back’, supports the view that the
majority at UCT wanted to get on with learning/debate/research and to be
allowed to choose who represents it on “this truth and reconciliation thing”.
John
Porter tries to emphasize the tragic consequences of South Africa’s “worst
schooling system in the world” which has educationally ‘disabled’ a broad range
of kids over the past 22 years.
You’re
right in condemning him and academics at UCT for playing the blame game. Had
UCT and other tertiary institutions produced more highly competent/motivated
teachers/principals, perhaps the situation would be better. Furthermore, from
the 1980s, when Saunders started the process of admitting bright disadvantaged
students, core academics should have taken the leading role in nurturing them.
They left this largely to ‘outsourced’, often poorly qualified ‘others’.
Now UCT is paying the ‘price’ for this ‘ad hocery’. The Executive compounded
the problem by not hiring bright young black lecturers who could have
established themselves in their own right or appropriately ‘understudied’ the
white ‘silver-backs’ and forged their own way ahead.
This is
precisely what the UCT Postgraduate Programme in Conservation Biology has done
for nearly 25 years. UCT IN THE NEWS has had an article outlining this in
detail for more than two months but has failed to publish it.
I agree
with you 100%: “At the end of the day education is about communication” and
needs to “factor culture and social background into their communications”. But,
“factor” means just that, not deconstructing largely functional programmes in
the name of “decolonization”.
Yes,
academics who “blame students” for their failures should be disciplined/fired.
By the same token, academics and students who fail demonstrably should
not escape accountability because of how they self-identify.
Yes:
“Europeanized [whatever that means] culture” at internationally regarded
universities is “alienating [especially] for black students”. In my
universally unacceptable view, UCT should adapt the numbers of
disadvantaged/disabled to a level that can be nurtured effectively to become
leaders, not ‘passengers’. Like it or not, it is the academics (who are
inextricably linked to their pedagogical clients) that will also sink or swim.
Having said this, the communication between mentor and mentee needs to recover
the practice of in loco parentis. Otherwise, if the lawbreaking
Fallists (and I fear Mamdani and Mbembe) have their way, it will revert to the
derived Spanish word: loco.
If you
favour changing university “profiles to create a university that reflects the
democratic values of our country”, remember that the democratic process almost
enshrined the ANC.
Let’s
keep this debate alive and include the real key players: today’s students and
academic staff!
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