The weary taxpayer is completely within their rights to ask: why can’t universities get their act together for a change? Once again there are protests on campus, sometimes violent, disruptive and threatening other people’s rights.
It is rare these days to find a peaceful protest marked by persuasive arguments and calculated strategies for moving the needle on student exclusions, whether from class lectures or a place to sleep. You would think that with all the brainpower occupying our universities, we would have had long-term solutions by now.
It is not my goal to rehearse the reasons for the chaos. We know the causes, whether it is the unreliability of NSFAS funding or the corruption of the National Senior Certificate, where inflated marks in the form of bachelor’s passes (university entrance) push tens of thousands of students to universities with limited places for the top performers only.
What I wish to focus on, rather, is why universities are so inept at managing the violent and disruptive protests even if the students are knocking on the wrong door for the resolution of their problems.
There are three discernible patterns of political dysfunction in our institutions.
The first is the liberal curse of universities like UCT.
When protests turn violent, public roads are disrupted and fellow students ejected from lecture rooms, the liberals at this institution go into handwringing fits of conscience best described as cringeworthy. Should we bring the police or security onto campus to protect public (that’s right) property? In those moments, leaders at the top find their hands tied even as flames engulf artworks, books burn and persons are assaulted.
These colleagues do not understand the difference between anti-apartheid protests and protests within a democratic order. Many of the handwringing liberals are white and middle class and can retreat into secure suburbs and gated communities while the campus burns and they deliver online lessons.
The students (or at least those who are bona fide students) sense this racial ambivalence, and the historical record will reveal the ruins left strewn across this prized campus.
How do suspended students make their way onto campus, block entry to official meetings and get away with such actions? This is only possible when the police are compromised, the political authorities are implicated, and staffers on the inside of the campus are in collusion with disruptive forces outside the gates.
The second is the authoritarian impulse of universities like Stellenbosch.
In recent weeks we have had small but manageable protests on familiar issues this time of the year, but you would have thought there were bomb threats given the armed security near and around the protesters. The idea is to nip things in the bud in case the protesters get out of control.
Driving to work last week, I saw something unimaginable in a democracy. As a small group of protesters marched quietly around campus and city (the two are sometimes indistinguishable in this pristine environment), ahead and behind them were groups of policemen with police vans all over the place. The first student who dared step out of line and disrupt shopping would be nabbed long before Awethu had a chance to follow Amandla. Overkill for sure, but like UCT, it comes from a history of overwhelming force to protect white interests.
The third is the captured state of universities like Fort Hare.
The level of deadly organisation on and around the Alice campus is a textbook case in institutional capture. How do suspended students make their way onto campus, block entry to official meetings and get away with such actions? This is only possible when the police are compromised, the political authorities are implicated, and staffers on the inside of the campus are in collusion with disruptive forces outside the gates.
Professor Sakhela Buhlungu is one of the most courageous university vice-chancellors I know, but even he must realise by now that Fort Hare is captured and there is nothing he can do to change that equation with all the forces stacked against him. The tragic deaths of staffers in the fight against corruption are, sadly, not the end of a relentless push for complete takeover of this treasured university on our eastern shores.
The situation of our students is abysmal. Not a day goes by without another desperate student in my office, one with excellent marks who cannot find the money to register in their final year of study. The annual images of stranded students with large suitcases on the streets around CPUT is heartbreaking.
Protests against injustices of this kind are noble and necessary even if the address for those concerns are government and not university administrations desperately trying to balance budgets with decreasing state funding.
Yet university managements are not innocent in these protest sagas. How we manage protests has to be both firm and humane.
Firm means setting down and insisting on clear rules for protest actions that protect the rights of others whether motorists on surrounding roads or those students who wish to attend classes. Humane means working hard to find and expand the base of resources to enable poor and working class students to continue studies when their academic records show that they upheld their part of the bargain. It is a difficult balancing act that those in university leadership seldom get right.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.