The Transformative, Responsive University in South Africa (original) (raw)
Related papers
Transformation in Higher Education, 2016
Universities, in their multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, are by their constitution expected to both symbolise and enact transformation. While institutions of higher education in South Africa have been terrains of protest and reform – whether during apartheid or post-apartheid – the intense multiplex roles which these institutions assume have metaphorically come home to roost in the past 2 years. Not unlike the social-media-infused rumblings, coined as the ‘Arab Spring’, the recent cascades of #mustfall campaigns have brought to the fore the serious dearth of transformation in higher education and have raised more critical questions about conceptions of transformation, and how these translate into, or reflect, the social and political reform that continues to dangle out of the reach of the majority of South Africans. What, then, does transformation mean and imply? How does an institution reach a transformed state? How does one know when such a state is reached? These are a few of the concerns this article seeks to address. But it hopes to do so by moving beyond the thus far truncated parameters of transformation – which have largely been seeped in the oppositional politics of historical advantage and disadvantage, and which, in turn, have ensured that conceptions of transformation have remained trapped in discourses of race and racism. Instead, this article argues that the real challenge facing higher education is not so much about transformation, as it is about enacting democracy through equipping students to live and think differently in a pluralist society
Transformation Discourses and Universities in South Africa
2008
Our vision is of a South Africa in which all our people have access to lifelong education and training opportunities, which will in turn contribute towards improving the quality of life and building a peaceful, prosperous and democratic society'. (Department of Education, Vision Statement, 2008) 'What is it about [higher education] which keeps alive our optimism in its socially transformative power and provides the preconditions for any socially transformative project, yet which also pulls in the opposite direction -towards an ethos of individual competition and the reproduction of a hierarchy of social advantage?' (Ruth Jonathan, 2001, p.48) This paper explains some of the terminology used to describe South African universities, traces key shifts in access, and seeks to explain and identify issues around the transformation project in higher education. It constitutes a work-inprogress contribution to thinking in the research team on how we understand transformation discourses and practices in relation to policy and institutions on the one hand, and poverty reduction and pro-poor professional education on the other. Jansen et al raise the question as to what the reach and impact of changes in higher education have been on higher education practices, what changes mean to higher education practitioners, and how changes are shaped by both the national context and the global arena. How poverty reduction is framed by universities, by selected professional education sites in those universities, and how this framing is acted on, negotiated, understood by diverse actors and shapes professional education is central to the research project. Framings of transformation and human development discourses and practices in relation to professional education by universities and diverse actors are then also at issue.
Discussion Paper: Transformation Discourses and Universities in South Africa
Our vision is of a South Africa in which all our people have access to lifelong education and training opportunities, which will in turn contribute towards improving the quality of life and building a peaceful, prosperous and democratic society'. (Department of Education, Vision Statement, 2008) 'What is it about [higher education] which keeps alive our optimism in its socially transformative power and provides the preconditions for any socially transformative project, yet which also pulls in the opposite direction -towards an ethos of individual competition and the reproduction of a hierarchy of social advantage?' (Ruth Jonathan, 2001, p.48) This paper explains some of the terminology used to describe South African universities, traces key shifts in access, and seeks to explain and identify issues around the transformation project in higher education. It constitutes a work-inprogress contribution to thinking in the research team on how we understand transformation discourses and practices in relation to policy and institutions on the one hand, and poverty reduction and pro-poor professional education on the other. Jansen et al raise the question as to what the reach and impact of changes in higher education have been on higher education practices, what changes mean to higher education practitioners, and how changes are shaped by both the national context and the global arena. How poverty reduction is framed by universities, by selected professional education sites in those universities, and how this framing is acted on, negotiated, understood by diverse actors and shapes professional education is central to the research project. Framings of transformation and human development discourses and practices in relation to professional education by universities and diverse actors are then also at issue.
Leeds African Studies Bulletin, 2019
The term 'transformation' has become a commonplace among many people in South Africa. The social and economic conditions of the so-called historically disadvantaged people work parallel to and contradict how 'transformation' is discussed and understood in some established institutions-in particular, South African higher education. Against the backdrop of colonisation, apartheid and post-apartheid neo-colonialism, frustrated by unemployment-inequality-poverty, some South African students responded and demanded for decolonial 'transformation' of South African universities in 2015/2016. In this article, based on more than two years fieldwork in Cape Town, I draw on data based on key social actor's perspectives and interviews to challenge how 'transformation' is understood in the context of higher education-in post-1994 South Africa. In so doing, drawing from existing literatures on transformation-#RhodeMustFall and #FessMustFall and participant observation, I present a discussion about refocusing discourse on 'transformation' to socioeconomic empowerment of the so-called disempowered people in South Africa. I argue that 'racial binary' is not synonymous to 'transformation', and the 'real' transformation lies in refocusing discourse on transformation to social and economic empowerment of the South African people.
Interrogating Transformation in South African Higher Education
This paper makes the argument that South Africa is an important site for understanding how universities are engaging with the questions of change and transformation. It argues that what it means to be human is a more intense question in South Africa than it is in most other parts of the world. It tries to show how this theoretical space is being opened up in the South African academy and uses the experience and examples of key interventions within the higher education sector such as the new Reitz Centre at the University of the Free State, and the Centre for Non-Racialism and Democracy at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. By working through the examples, the article makes the argument that these new initiatives are important for scholarly efforts elsewhere in the world on the question of human development. This is especially so in the emphasis South African universities are placing on the question of race. The article argues that the challenge facing this South African effort is its relative neglect of questions of epistemology and forms of knowledge that fall outside the mainstream Western model.
THE UNIVERSITY IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY
Recent South African history has witnessed a period of political conflict in the transition from the hegemony of the apartheid era to the democratisation of South African society after 1994. In the light of the subsequent transformational discourses in South Africa, it has become necessary to pose the question-to what extent have South African universities contributed to the making of a new South Africa, not only in widening participation but, for example, in constitutional reform and the spreading of an era of social openness and civil society? Such a question, however, requires that the idea of the university, as well as its role in society be reflected upon critically. The history of universities is punctuated by periodic debates on the idea of a university and what is considered to be its proper role in society. The Socratic and Platonic claims that virtue is knowledge and that education produces good men-a humanist philosophy of education-are amongst the casualties of the contemporary modern mega-universities. The image of the university as an ivory tower dedicated to the pursuit of truth and knowledge for its own sake-a metaphysical philosophy of education-has been tarnished by radical and activist movements who acknowledge no social obligations except in some instances of bringing about the violent destruction of the society that supports them. In more recent times the movement towards mass and even universal higher education and the emergence of the multiversity have witnessed a categorical shift in the fundamental idea of a university and its role in society. No longer is truth the fundamental category in the role of a university-the essence of its distinctive role is now declared to be utility. In short, the twenty first century has witnessed an important shift in the role of the university in society, in that the university has become a much more influential scientific institution and a less significant cultural and civilising power. The argument in this essay, therefore, is that the role of the university in South African society post 1994 is beleaguered by a climate of utility whose forces are principally those of democratic politics, mass markets and technological prowess.
IntechOpen eBooks, 2023
In this chapter, I provide a perspective about what can constitute the struggles of the educational development practitioner for social justice and equity from the position of a senior manager. I enunciate the case of three crisis events about educational development from the social realist explanatory program, which draws on the critical realist philosophy, by arguing that what can be the crisis cases in the academic project can take place because the actors in such cases might be informed by the privileged discourses of economic rationality and neoliberalism (ER-NL) instead of social justice and equity (SJ-E). The instrumentalist and personal interests can allow for what can ultimately become more of the reproductive than what ought to be transformative outcomes. Such cases are antithetical to the value of university education as the public good. The analysis about the cases took a particular focus on the university education phase of its development as the two management and governance regimes were grappling with the institutional transformation change in general and the challenge of the academic project. The scholarly engagement of the cultural and human systems for some crisis events during the "change of guard," albeit with demonstrable silences about the critical construct of quality enhancement, allowed for what could be finally declared as the exploratory research. The significance of such exploratory research is thus the advancement of what ought to be the theorization and conceptualization about social practices in contexts of historical and structural disadvantage and their expressively veracious considerations.
Critical Discourse Studies, 2015
Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distinctive identities that are locally relevant and globally aspiring. This has led to the semiotic refiguring of universities from spatial edifices of racially based unequal education, to equal opportunity institutions of higher learning, and to the blurring of historical boundaries between these universities. We conclude that the universities have reconstructed distinct and recognisable identities which speak to a segregated past, but with a postapartheid voice of equity and redress.
The Arhythmic Pulse of Transformation in South African Higher Education
2011
This paper makes the argument that South Africa is an important site for understanding how universities are engaging with the questions of change and transformation. It argues that what it means to be human is a more intense question in South Africa than it is in most other parts of the world. It tries to show how this theoretical space is being opened up in the South African academy and uses the experience and examples of key interventions within the higher education sector such as the new Reitz Centre at the University of the Free State, and the Centre for Non-Racialism and Democracy at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. By working through the examples, the article makes the argument that these new initiatives are important for scholarly efforts elsewhere in the world on the question of human development. This is especially so in the emphasis South African universities are placing on the question of race. The article argues that the challenge facing this South African eff...
Looking Backwards: How to Be a South African University
2015
IntroductionRecent protests at South African universities around the question of "race" and identity, particularly as they relate to the question of transformation at the Universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, and Rhodes, have brought into sharp focus the debate about the future of the university. What is the new South African university to be? How does the South African university work with its legacy-to continue where it is already engaged in socially transformative work, to begin new initiatives to transform itself in places where it is struggling, and to develop an agenda that shows clearly how it understands itself in relation to the social context in which it finds itself?In this paper, I argue that the contemporary South African university cannot be understood and engaged with outside of an appreciation of its constitutive beginnings. Race is central to these beginnings. But how race takes form, is worked with and deployed in the university is, to be historically ...