On 27 February 2017, former South African president Thabo Mbeki was installed as the Chancellor of the University of South Africa. 

To summarize key messages of his inaugural address:

A university needs to:

1. produce the necessary skilled labour and relevant knowledge for South Africa;

2. advance a social justice agenda in a country emerging from apartheid colonialism;

3. ideally, respond to local as well as global imperatives;

4. work consistently against all forms of prejudice;

5. ought to be, perpetually in search of the “elusive thing: truth”.

In fact, tasks 4 and 5 are the essential ones (indeed raison d'etre) of any ‘university’, anywhere – minus the words “ought to be” and “elusive” and replacing “work consistently against” with “resolutely resist”. Before entering university, children are generally only exposed to limited aspects of (perspectives on) the truth. After leaving university, they are plunged into a very challenging and often limiting/unforgiving, “real” world driven by the three ‘C’s “context”, “consensus” and “compromise”. So, prejudice-free-truth-seeking time at university is both limited and precious.

Locally, the “heart and soul” of a “real” university was most strongly and succinctly embodied in legendary University of Cape Town (UCT) vice-chancellor Dr T.B. Davie. This is explicated in a seminal address he gave in 1950, which, if anything, applies even more strongly today. Let me paraphrase/quote:

Universities should be populated by “those fitted by ability and training for higher education” … “aiming at the advancement of knowledge by the methods of study and research founded on absolute intellectual integrity and pursued in an atmosphere of academic freedom”. This should allow “real” universities the autonomy to decide:

1. “who shall teach – determined by fitness and scholarship and experience;

2. what we teach – the truth and not what it is demanded by others for the purposes of sectional, political, religious or ideological dogmas or beliefs;

3. how we teach – not subject to interference aimed at standardization at the expense of originality; and [most importantly]

4. whom we teach – [individuals] intellectually capable and morally worthy to join the great brotherhood which constitutes the wholeness of the university”.

But he was not done. He went on to say that the university community should:

1. “reflect the multi-racial picture of the society it serves;

2. give a lead to the cultural and spiritual development of the different race groups as part of the developments of the community as a whole;

3. aid the state by providing training for and maintaining standards in the learned professions and public services; and

4. serve the community in the true sense of the university, i.e. as a centre for the preservation, the advance, and the dissemination of learning for its own sake and without regard to its usefulness, to all who are academically qualified for admission, irrespective of race, colour, or creed.” 

That’s it in a nutshell. “Give”, “aid” and “serve”.

With Davie’s tragic death in 1955 and the horribly effective implementation of the Apartheid system thereafter, UCT (with noteworthy exceptions) plunged into a 25-year Dark Age during which Davie’s vision was stultified. UCT struggled to maintain an anti-Apartheid position in principle and to keep its academic integrity, in the hope for better times in the future.

Back to President Mbeki.

The other three highly important tasks for universities offered by Mbeki apply to the nation (in fact the world) as a whole and involve the state, non-governmental/private enterprises and religions as well as universities. But, in the absence of performing tasks 4 and 5 there is no “university”. One could even argue against task 2, since “social justice” can be invoked to support normally unacceptable behaviour.

What has gone wrong at South African universities (epitomized by my alma mater, the University of Cape Town – UCT) inter alia, is that tasks 4 and 5 have been compromised-contextualized in favour of the others. 

On top of this, Mbeki correctly emphasized the stultifying effects of “waithood” (another way of characterizing lack of delivery) that undermines students’ sense of urgency to acquire a high quality and “relevant” education and its expected socio-economic benefits. Hence, his use of the Nyerere “we must act; we have to tackle our problems now” quote.

Mbeki then falls into a trap by linking the successful performance of his “tasks” to “radical, waithood-free” change resulting from an “eradication of the legacy of centuries of slavery, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism”. This is because these processes produced (and still produce) “a demeaning European perception of Africa and Africans” and foster “racism, tribalism, regionalism, sexism, patriarchy, and xenophobia”.

The philosophy behind this is embodied in his “I am an African” speech in 1996.

Before you get the impression (that some – who vilify me as “Jim Crow” - have) that I’m a neo-colonialist, racist, sexist, eugenicist, xenophobic monster, I unswervingly support the “eradication” of all the above-mentioned “-isms, -archies and -obias”.

What I don’t not support is linking this eradication to geography and self- or imposed-identification (by race in particular).

During 1980-2000, UCT was rapidly transformed (“decolonized”) from a white/male-dominated /Eurocentric institution opposed to racism only in principle, into a largely panmictic, non-racial entity irreversibly on the track towards achieving Davie’s vision. But, these achievements have been dismissed by some staff and students, who are overwhelmed by “waitness”, as inadequate tokenism.

In the last two years, the transformed UCT has become retrogressively and de-constructively decolonized into many factionalized assemblages. These constitute often highly antagonistic, strongly political-ideological “caucuses” and “movements” delineated largely on the basis of self-identification (by ‘race’ in particular).

First, some of their members (loosely characterized as “Fallists”) seek isolation in “safe places” from which demands to eradicate the allegedly persisting white/male/Eurocentric “hegemony” emerge.

Rational debate has ceased; anti-Fallist statues/paintings/literature/discussion have been expurgated/banned/burnt and have been replaced by endless, fact-free rhetoric, post-truths, protests and ‘progressively’ unachievable demands with short delivery deadlines.

When these deadlines are not met by the normal process of capitulation by the UCT Executive, Fallists resort to (or overtly support/condone) intimidation, violence and destruction. What is conspicuously absent from these Fallists (lawbreaking and otherwise) is a new system that achieves Davie’s vision or even attempts to perform the Mbekian tasks that might constitute a “real rebirth”.