Restructuring
of higher education: A critique and a
criticism.
A discussion paper presented by Moemedi Kepadisa at the national congress of the Azanian Student Convention (Azasco), held at the Peninsula Technikon on 18-20 April, 2003.
Historically,
the Azanian Student Convention has aptly identified education as a key catalyst
in the transformation of society, our Azanian/South African society, with all
its fragmentations of race and class. This is encapsulated in our rallying
call: Education –an instrument of transformation.
Even
the political organization to which we belong, AZAPO was well recognized as a
champion of the education struggles in our country. It stands to reason, why
Education and its attendant meanings-thought, ideas, skills, intellectualism,
have always been attributed to the black conscious movement since its
inception.
Indeed
Karl Marx, the revolutionary intellectual had long ago correctly observed that,
“It took a change in the education system, to bring about a change in the social
system, it took a change in the social system to bring about a change in the
education system. We must begin from where we are”. The black consciousness
movement had the foresight, to establish the connection between change and the
function of education in that project of change. Hence our emphasis on
conscientization.
This
is a role, which AZAPO-as the true flag bearer of Black consciousness
philosophy, has carved for itself, and it is a role, which we must continue to
perform with distinction. It is a role, which Azasco must embrace, in the
current process of reconfiguring the basic and higher education system, in our
society.
In
order to acquit ourselves well on this task, the following must serve as the
bedrock and benchmarks informing our interaction and response:
1)
An engagement with
current education policies and practices of the bourgeois democratic
government.
2)
The building of a
vibrant and critical student movement and layer of education activists.
3)
The generation of
progressive and responsive ideas and approaches in keeping with our egalitarian
goals.
4)
The advancement of
socialist revolutionary values and norms in contradistinction from the
capitalist path currently being pursued by the bureaucracy.
AZASCO
is challenged and expected as a socialist-national revolutionary movement to
engage and proffer alternatives to the contemporary processes and debates on
the direction, content and tempo of education restructuring. One is quite
mindful of how daunting this task is, and also of the limitations and
constraints that as students you are confronted with.
This
scenario is no different from the challenge that was faced by the class of ‘76
with the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, and the institutional
repression that was the backdrop to the 1972 general student’ s strike, after
the expulsion of Onkgopotse Tiro at Turfloop.
The
restructuring process is the reality of your time, and history will judge you
harshly or kindly, based on how you rise up to this challenge
One
is a former student activist, and will probably; perpetually remain an
education activist as a part of our people’s revolutionary movements. It is
from this vantage point that I will attend the issues. I am no academician and
certainly, no so-called expert. In a sense one is what Amilcar Cabral once
described as ‘an ordinary man, doing my duty, for my country, in the context of
my time’.
One
therefore will resist the temptation to grandstand by engaging in a technical
assessment of the bureaucratic, statutory, and legalistic trajectories, which
the processes is following or has followed. While we may have an interest in
these aspects of the restructuring process, one contends that they should not
be our primary preoccupation as activists. Our principal interest should be the
social impact, the political ends and education value of the policies and its
corresponding legislation.
Some
of the issues one has identified demand to be addressed by posing the following
questions;
1)
Is the current process
open, transparent, and inclusive?
2)
Does the restructuring
project accord with our liberation goals?
3)
How does the process
measure up to the democratic principles?
4)
What is the ideological
content of the restructuring process?
5)
Who are the drivers and
determinants of the process and its outcomes?
Let
us proceed to attempt to answer these:
To
do justice to this question we must evaluate it against the clarion call of the
demands for peoples education of the 80’s and transformation struggles of the
mid 90’s, that call was; NO TO UNILATERAL RESTRUCTURING. Although this call
resonated more loudly in the education struggles, it soon permeated all facets
of our social and political life where the undemocratic government had to
mediate issues about the economy, welfare, and constitutional reform, among
others.
At
the heart of this call was an understanding that all role players and stakeholders
affected by change must be involved in shaping the future and co-determining
the outcome. It is one’s contestation that not only was this call relevant
under conditions of the illegitimacy of the apartheid government, it is as
relevant and noble – perhaps even more- in the era of democratization.
An
assessment of some of the key policy documents that have emanated from either
the national department of education or some of its agencies like the Council
on Higher Education and the South African Qualifications Authority will reveal
that some of the imperatives of consultation have been compromised. Our
observation of the process and evaluation of some of the documents such as the
Size and Shape document, the Landscape document and the Academic qualifications
report, leaves one with the impression that committee work has been elevated
above and is more valued than broader consultation and representivity.
Clearly,
this spells danger for our nascent democracy, for what it means is that our
democracy is descending to a rule by the experts and the bureaucrats. The input
of many stakeholders such as the community, students, workers, parents,
academics (as opposed to university/technikon/college officials) is being
ignored and marginalized.
The
current method of policy making by the education ministry is a diminution of
the exciting, fresh and innovative approach of the National Commission on
Higher Education (NCHE). Though the NCHE process itself was often criticized as
laborious and long drawn, ultimately most of us who were part of it, were
generally agreed on one thing about it; facilitation of stakeholder
participation. It represented democracy at work, for a nation emerging from the
embers of authoritarianism.
Azasco
has both a duty and obligation to challenge this erosion of the rights of
stakeholders affected by restructuring. Paternalism has never been a feature of
our struggle in the black consciousness movement. This movement was born
precisely to resist this abominable phenomenon in our struggle.
It does not matter how sound and good the
policies and legislation may seem, the government must not decide what is good
for us without soliciting our views. Azasco must insist and campaign for the
restructuring process to be open, transparent and inclusive.
Our
liberation goals and objectives were encapsulated in the broad rubric of
TRANSFORMATION. We made a clear distinction between reform and transformation.
We understood transformation as making a clean break and a radical shift from
racial-capitalist inspired education. Today we use the euphemism of
restructuring: But is restructuring transformation?
The
liberation movement across the board was in agreement about the compelling need
to overhaul education in a post-apartheid dispensation. It was so and had to be
so, because in apartheid’s social engineering project, our education system did
not escape its clutches. Some may argue that, education was the most potent
arsenal in achieving apartheid’s grand designs.
Not
only were schools, technikons, universities and the curriculum segregated along
racial lines, these divisions were also entrenched along ethnic and lingual
lines. At the risk of making too fine appoint, there was education for blacks
and whites; there was education for the Amazulu and BhaVhenda; there was
education for English and Afrikaners, and lest we forget, education for the
rich and the poor.
It
is against these artificial differentiations, these conservative boundaries;
these divide and rule stratagems of the regime that the universal campaign for
transformation was initiated in the mid 80’s .
During
the mediation of this discourse at the National Commission on Higher Education in 1995-96, after the demise of apartheid,
the debate among all stakeholders was framed by these crucial points,
interalia:
- Access into the system
- Redress and equity
- Curriculum restructuring
- Governance of institutions
- Articulation across systems
Access was meant to evaluate and facilitate equal and fair
entry by all, particularly those who were previously denied (us Blacks) into
the system. This meant increasing our low participation rates in comparison to
whites, and the removal of restrictive and unfair barriers like race, gender,
class and language were they existed.
Curriculum
restructuring recognized the need to
align qualifications and academic programmes to the new democratic ethos,
within the context of our national realities like demographics, gender, and
diversity and past distortions. The content and purpose of our curriculum had
to be reviewed to reflect the true and new realities of change.
Redress
and Equity took into account the
deliberate degradation of the black education system, in general and black
institutions in particular, by the previous government. This was done through
the disproportionate allocation for student funding, physical infrastructure
financing and research grants between black and white educations.
Governance addressed issues of power and across the system and
within institutions. The impact of role players like business, the workers,
students, government, civil society, academics etc on our national education
was subjected to enquiry and scrutiny. Hence, the proliferation of new
Transformation forums then, charged with the task of reconstituting
university/technikon councils, senate and academic boards, and student
representative councils.
Articulation across systems was intended to focus on the rigidity
and lack of uniformity between the various levels within the system. The system
then comprised of various levels including college, technikon, and university;
often offering similar programmes but with conflicting recognition approaches
for courses and qualifications.
Teacher
education, Nursing education, Theological Education and Agricultural Education
were some of the programmes offered by all three levels, but with contradictory
and discordant recognition mechanisms. Most of these dysfunctionalities were
inherited from the undemocratic past and had to addressed and corrected.
The
current restructuring process undertaken by Kader Asmal does not take into
account most of these realities and concerns, and their relevance to the
historical goals of the liberation struggle. Granted, it does make pretensions
about ceasing to make the University if the North a university for Basotho, and
Peninsula Technikon an institution for “coloureds”, but at the same time (and
therein lies the education minister’s hypocrisy) it wants to keep Stellenbosch
an Afrikaans university and Wits an English-white liberal university.
It
acknowledges the university of Northwest (formerly university of
Bophuthatswana) as a product of Bantustan planning, but stops short of
recognizing Rhodes University as a bastion of colonial, conservative English
triumphalism.
The
approach of the minister and his advisers is informed by superficial, abstract
and capitalistic worldviews of downsizing. It has little to do with our
struggle objectives, developmental challenges and democratic consolidation. The
education department panders to the whims; ad serves the interest of the elite
in our society, the aristocrats of the liberation struggle, the black economic
empowerment clique and the white conservative bloc.
It
is this conservative section of our society that is saying: Wits, University of
Cape Town and such like institutions must not catch a whiff of transformation
(restructuring per the Minister), because they are the so-called “centres of excellence”.
They
uphold this view to the total exclusion of and without problematizing this
notion of “centres of excellence”. What is its conceptual origin? How did these
institutions attain this status (if it is a status at all)? What is its merit
in the formation of a new democratic education system? What is the reverse or
flipside of its meaning?
“Centres
of Excellence” to be sure was a defensive shield under which some of these
institutions repelled the demand for Transformation. In their narrow
perspective, the call for transformation was worthy of Bantustan and Bush
institutions, but not of their conservative English liberal, self-poking, ivy
league institutions.
In
spite of these institutions’ resistance to change, this notion was challenged
by the revolutionary student movement and education activist alike. Valiant and
bold struggles were waged on these conservative and racist campuses to defeat
this nebulous notion. Needless to say, we therefore feel a sense of betrayal
when former comrades and activists like Saki Macozoma and Minister Asmal
nullify those sacrifices and negate the gains made in those struggles.
They
nullify those sacrifices and negate those gains by originating a restructuring
policy that sounds the death knell on black institutions and treats as
sacrosanct white institutions.
What
is even more deplorable and depressing is that education activists and the
student movement, our political organization, AZASCO and AZAPO respectively,
have by their inaction and inaudibility, bought into this scheme of chicanery
by the government. Our organization as a collective has not engaged, critiqued
or challenged the unfolding process of restructuring. Azasco, particularly,
representing the sector of our society that will be most affected by this reconfiguration,
is the one social force that - given the history of our democratic struggle -
can knock sense into Kader Asmal's head.
To
respond adequately to this question, we must not be circumscribed in our
thoughts by the bourgeois and compromise constitution of our country. We ought
to think critically, and radically about what in our perspective, constitutes a
democratic principle and practice.
We
know through the study of historical materialism that “the ruling ideas are the
ideas of the ruling class”, this axiom applies equally to the instruments and
apparatus of the state, and our constitution is one such document. We must at
all times, when we refer to our constitution, remember that, it is a product of
negotiation and trade offs between the National Party and the African National
Congress.
Therefore
some of the precepts and values that it propagates were not the legitimate and
genuine interests and wishes of all the peoples of our country.
Section
29 of our Bill of Rights asserts,
“Everyone has the right to further education which the state, through
reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible”.
Measured against this right, does this restructuring process fulfill the spirit
and letter of the constitution, if it reduces the number and access points to
further education?
Approximately
50% of former Colleges of Education have been shut down, and much of the
infrastructure is lying fallow and wasting. We have also seen the reduction and
closing down of many professional colleges offering nursing, theological, and
agricultural tuition. In short, access to further education is being narrowed
and limited, and it is going to culminate in the merging and outright closing
down of some universities and technikons.
The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights also recognizes access to education as an
inalienable right under article 26. Article 26 states “Everyone has the right
to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and
fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and
professional education shall be made generally available and higher education
shall be equally accessible to all, on the basis of merit”.
Our
Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, advocates noble and
pristine values. Yet, our situation and experience, in our country and the
whole world, reflects otherwise. What we know is that in practice education –
basic and higher-is being progressively commodified and intellectual pursuit is
being proletarianized. Black, poor and working class students are being
continually pushed to the margins, and their vain hope is salvation in mediocre
educational institutions.
The
continuing trend to privatize education and other state utilities has only
served to make education less and less accessible, and more elitist and
exclusive. A revolutionary student movement cannot remain static and silent in
the face of this flagrant erosion of education rights. Azasco can least afford
to be accused of having acquiesced to the establishment.
If
ever there had to be a critical interaction with our democratizing education
system, its ethos and praxis, this is the crucial question to pose.
As
socialist and national revolutionaries, we are trained to and we know that
ideas shape our being and behaviour, and the education system is a vital
transmission agent of these ideas. Concomitantly, we are forced to ask: What
ideas or whose ideas inform and shape our
“education ideology”?
Are
we subjecting ourselves and our children to a system that wants to make us
subservient and efficient tools for the capitalist machine, or do we enter this
system to fulfill our human desires and social roles?
Does
our education address and respond to fundamental issues of our time and society
such as poverty, racism, globalisation, inequality and imperialism? Is there
such a thing indeed as capitalist education and socialist education?
These
are fundamental questions meant to provoke our thinking and standpoints when we
evaluate the restructuring process and fashion alternative positions. It is not
the purpose of this analysis to address these issues here, but one is certainly
of the view that these ideological appropriations (capitalist or socialist)
have been made whether openly or subtly, by all institutions and education
systems in our country and in the whole world.
The
version of Economics, Literature and Science that you study is inspired by the
political context, and ideological content of your time, place and society.
Education the transmission of ideas and skills is a political act and process.
It is not objective, value free or innocent. Given this understanding, we must
lament the dearth of discourse within academia and by revolutionaries and
activists on the ideological basis of our education, let alone the
restructuring process.
Many
far reaching policy decisions about Outcomes based education, Curriculum 2005,
and Values in education are being taken by government without a whimper of
concern or expression by communities, especially our BLACK COMMUNITY.
Perhaps,
this attitude is a manifestation of our capitulation as socialist and national
revolutionaries to the triumphalism of bourgeois capitalist norms and values in
our societies.
We
have partly answered this question in some of the proceeding points. There are important documents, which
ultimately will impact profoundly on the landscape and substance of the new
higher education structures. These are
A)
The “Shape and Size”
document published in 2000 by the Council on Higher Education.
B)
The Restructuring
report of the national working group published in December 2001 by the department.
C)
Academic
Policy/Curriculum restructuring published in January 2002 by the department of
Education.
Taking
these three documents as our sample, it is apparent that the principle of
tripartism (state, labour and business) or multilateralism, in this significant
area of policy design has been devalued. From the 42 members of the various
task teams/working groups, only one (known to me) comes from a civil society
structure viz. a trade union federation. The rest of the team members are
company directors, departmental bureaucrats, or university officials (as
opposed to academics). Clearly, this ought to be an area of concern.
What
this state of affairs vividly indicates, is that the restructuring process will
in the final analysis be tailor made to the interests of business and the
state. National interest will feature very little, if at all.
We,
as the Azanian Student Convention, fought very hard to reduce the pervasive
influence and control that the corporate sector had exercised over our
institutions and our academic programmes. Those victories, with the advent of
the new government are being rolled back by the neo-liberals, and the national
bourgeoisie, on the pretext that, they are pursuing the ends of our liberation
struggle. These are falsehoods, and we must expose them at each and every turn.
We
must here make the harsh admission, that the reconfiguration of our education
system is progressing inconsistently with how we had envisaged it during the
liberation struggle and our transformation campaign of the early 90’s.This has
occurred because the revolutionary student
movement has gone to slumber, we have ceased to be critical and
activists in our movements, our institutions and our society.
We
have allowed captains of capital to hijack and distort, the laudable goals of
our revolution.
Conclusion:
This
presentation was meant to highlight mainly two points:
1)
The restructuring
process is being undertaken in the name of Transformation, but its outcomes
will be diametrically opposed to the goals of Transformation as originally
conceived. This, in spite of the reports waxing lyrical about increasing
participation rates, improving quality, making the system efficient and
sustainable for the 21st century.
2)
This deplorable
situation obtains and will continue to as long as activists and broader society
concede space and leadership of this vital process about our the essence of our
being, to corporate planners and the black middle class, which true to its
classical role, has sought accommodation and pacification with the erstwhile
racist and ruling elite.
To make amends it will take Azapo, Azasco, Azayo and
the black consciousness movement committing to the path of revolution again;
the path of activism and discourse. The path of debate and dialectical tolerance.
Not the sycophancy and conformism that is beginning
to internalise itself in ordinary cadres and senior leadership alike. Not this
uncritical acceptance of views and positions in our organisation, and the
inertia in the face of rightist deviations by members and leaders.
Azapo, the black consciousness movement, and our
national struggle has been embellished by the exemplary role that was played by
the SASO generation, the 1976 generation, this trend continued right up to the
80’s and 90’s.
That responsibility has now been bequeathed to you at
this national congress. It is up to you. It is up to you. Let us be reminded of
the words of Frantz Fanon, “Each generation, must out of relative obscurity,
discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it”. What will the current
generation of Azasco do? Choose the path of revolution or capitalist barbarism!
-End-