Only the residents of Cape Town who have been living under a rock will deny that the current crisis at UCT speaks to the very nature of the university and that it is symptomatic of a cancer that has crippled UCT for years, says the writer.
Cape Town - Walking down Prince Alfred Road, in the city now called Makhanda, one spring morning in 2016, a black worker was painting over the name of Steve Biko which had been sprayed on one of the building walls of Rhodes University.
The symbolism of that act, by that black worker, could not have made a greater impact on me.
In the aftermath of the #FeesMustFall protests on our university campuses across the country, and its overarching call for decolonialisation, the message that the management of Rhodes University was sending to poor and working-class black students, the black worker as well as the black academic walking past was clear: the name of Steven Bantu Biko had no place at this university.
At least, if it does emerge, then only on our terms. We will manage it. The sad reality at “white” universities, such as Rhodes and UCT, across our country (and their culture remains unquestionably white), is that when those protests broke out, the leadership of all these institutions thought they could “manage” the process.
Sadly, hitherto, these universities, through their black and white management, have been able to “manage” the transformation process and thereby ensure that our universities simply do not become African institutions of higher learning.
This is the cause of the crisis we see today at UCT.
It is therefore sad to see a name such as Jeremy Seekings fast becoming a defender of whiteness at institutions such as UCT.
It is this pervasive push to ensure that UCT remains fundamentally white that has seen Professor Seekings associate himself with the allegations made by an online publication.
An online publication that UCT itself has pointed out has a conflict of interest in the matter.
Instead, Professor Seekings insists that the cause of the crisis at UCT must be laid at the feet of, at best, a few individuals, and, at worst, one person, the current vice-chancellor of the university.
Professor Seekings’ explanation and reasoning makes absolutely no sense. One person, at the helm of an institution for less than six years, cannot be the cause of a crisis of this magnitude.
At the dawn of democracy and again with the Mamphele Ramphele era, the university thought that when it appointed black academics, it would be able to manage them.
Black academics did not rock the boat. They understood all too well that to attain the grants, which are in overflow at these institutions, and climb the academic ladder in these institutions they must play along.
Play along they did, even as recently as the #FeesMustFall protests. At the very heart of the battle for the soul of UCT lies the questions of race, class and gender.
As others have pointed out, the Senate of the UCT, a sacrosanct institution of academics, remains overwhelming white.
As the black academic caucus has stated, it is the voices of whites, together with the then acting vice-chancellor as well as the former deputy vice-chancellor whose voices are heard; even if these voices are heard in an unprocedural fashion.
Only the residents of Cape Town who have been living under a rock will deny that the current crisis at UCT speaks to the very nature of the university and that it is symptomatic of a cancer that has crippled UCT for years.
The Mamdani affair, #RhodesMust-Fall, the 2020 Nattrass affair and the latest attacks on the current vice-chancellor, to name a few, are all symptoms of this existential question that the vast majority of the senate at UCT has refused to diagnose and discuss.
Biko merely had his name erased from the Rhodes wall. The current chair and vice-chancellor of UCT dared to refuse to kowtow to the institutional culture that persists at UCT.
Little wonder then that black women, in the main, are the victims of gender-based violence in our country.
Dr Seale served on the national convening committee of the 2015 South African Staff Network for Transformation as well as the shop steward: academic for the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union at Rhodes University. He writes in his personal capacity.
Cape Times
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