South Africa

Academe, Jul/Aug 1999 by Levy, Norman

Apartheid's gone, but the lack of money makes it hard for the government to carry out the reforms needed to overcome years of educational inequality.

PERHAPS THE MOST COGENT RECENT STATEment about the challenge facing academics in South Africa is the warning of Bhiku Parekh, professor of political science at the University of Hull (United Kingdom), in Education for Change in South Africa:

In all countries, the institutions of higher education are subject to contradictory pressures. On the one hand [universities] are expected to serve the country's need, reflect its social composition, nurture its pride, and so on. On the other hand, they are universal in their nature and concerns, constantly interact with their counterparts elsewhere, write for an international academic market, and seek and see international recognition as the basis of their self-worth. All this tends to draw them away from their national moorings, and encourages them to ignore the . . . problems posed by their national experiences, to treat those devoted to the study of the latter as somehow less gifted, and to create a subtle hierarchy of research and researchers.

Two aspects of this statement have implications for academic freedom in South Africa. The first relates to recent attempts to make research "more relevant" to the needs of local realities. The second involves the close collaboration among the academic, business, and policy communities in promoting the restructuring and socioeconomic development of the country. The legacy of apartheid, under which research and teaching were directed toward maintaining a regime based on the defense of white privilege, had far-reaching results whose effects will die hard.

The apartheid regime alienated South Africa from the rest of the world and isolated its universities from the mainstream of research and intellectual exchange, with serious consequences for the quality of graduates and for the education and training of black academics and professionals. Besides that, apartheid silenced intellectuals who feared detention and trial under the security laws and encouraged university leaders to refrain from criticizing the regime for fear of jeopardizing government subsidies or losing corporate grants. Perhaps the recent testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by some members of the academic, business, and professional communities, apologizing for their role in reinforcing the old regime, ended this episode of shameful acquiescence in apartheid.

Today, the largest single problem in South African higher education is the lack of money. The opening up of a system consisting of twenty-one universities and fifteen technikons, as South Africa's technical institutions are called, to the entire population has led to huge pressures on the funding of higher education. Government is, at present, the principal source of subsidies and grants to universities and technikons. In 1998-99, the Department of Education spent 4,154 million rand, just under $700 million U.S., on 368,329 students at universities. That amount constitutes about 57 percent of the higher education budget. For the 193,700 students at technikons, the department spent 1,549 million rand, just under $250 million U.S. and about 20 percent of the higher education budget. In addition, there is a national Student Financial Aid Scheme to help poorer students go to college. Resources are, however, limited and will become increasingly so as the demand for higher education increases.

Restructuring the educational system from the balkanized fragments of the past forty years has involved creating a single national education department for all groups in South Africa. Previously, the country had at least fourteen departments of education-ne for each of the ten bantustans, territories carved out of the former African reserves with notional degrees of selfgovernment; one for each of the country's three other population groups (Indians, whites, and coloreds); and one so-called national department of education. The challenge has been to achieve this transformation without causing a budget deficit that will distort the economy and increase unemployment and social unrest.

Higher education has inherited an unpleasant legacy after decades of racial and economic inequality-the inadequate resources of historically disadvantaged institutions, that is, the formerly black universities or bush colleges of the apartheid system. Ten of the universities and about seven of the technikons fall into this category. These historically black universities cannot match the rich infrastructure of the formerly white universities, and they remain impoverished both by comparison and in real terms. Faculty in these institutions have little time or opportunity for developing new policies or creating the necessary infrastructure for the reorientation of their universities. The underdevelopment of the historically disadvantaged institutions is apparent from their inadequate facilities, lack of staff development, poor networking, high student dropout rates, and limited resources for research.