“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. What ultimately matters is the determination to keep going."

Herman Giliomee ended an article, he wrote in 2011, citing Winston Churchill who often used this quote from William of Orange. In that article, written almost exactly 4 years ago, Giliomee lamented the “onslaught” on minorities in South Africa, given the then court decision in the “kill the Boer” saga.

Lament. Regrettably this is exactly what Giliomee does again in his article titled: Capitulation on campus. Bluntly: it does not help the university sector, minorities nor South African society in general. It just paints a picture of doom and gloom and a nightmare of a future.

A quick google of the word “lament” suggests that the word could either mean: 1) a passionate expression of grief or sorrow; or, 2) a complaint. If only Giliomee’s articles had the first definition instead of the second. In fact, his complaint is against a number of people who he sees as the “boogy-men” in South Africa’s darkness.

Blade Nzimande, Jacob Zuma, leadership of the ANC in 1986 already, O’Brien’s enemies, willing puppets, Comrade Ziko, DJ Du Plessis, Arthur Chaskalson, Ismail Mohamed, Moa Zedong, the Soviet Union, the UCT senate, the Council of Stellenbosch University, the Democratic Alliance and Kyle Thomas. Unlikely bedfellows? It just points out the absurdity of Giliomee’s reasoning.

Back to Egypt? History must teach us.

Those of us familiar with the Judeo-Christian narrative of the Israelites in the desert would recognise the oft quoted text of Exodus 16:3. It reads simply:

“The Israelites said to them [Moses and Aaron], "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."   

Already, as with Giliomee’s earlier lamentation in 2011, in Exodus 15:24 the Israelites had “murmured” or “grumbled” because the waters at Marah were bitter and so Moses calls on the LORD and the waters are sweetened.

In Exodus 16:2, hardly a few verses below, they “murmur” or “grumble” again because again, not satisfied, they make their complaint that they would rather have “pots of meat and [eat] all the food [they] wanted” even if they were slaves!

In fact, the phrase: “...if only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt!...” suggests that the Israelites were confused, maybe deliberately so, as to who the real enemy was. Suddenly, the LORD became the enemy because they suggest that the LORD might have killed them if they were not obedient; if they didn’t flee Egypt.

Disregarding future prospects of the Promised Land, where milk and honey flowed, the Israelites wanted immediate satisfaction. All they could see or experience was their immediate situation of despair. Never mind that through Moses and Aaron the Lord had promised them milk and honey. Never mind that through Moses and Aaron the Lord had provided for them in the past; as with sweetening the waters at Marah.

What they perceived, in their foolishness, was their current state of affairs. Even then, their selfishness and greed (for the pots of meat and all the food they wanted) blinded the true situation wherein they found themselves i.e. freedom!

All this becomes important not because one wishes to preach to Professor Giliomee but rather to point out, as historically as possible, the common trap humans fall into when they are no longer satisfied or their perception is that they are no longer in a perceived advantaged position as they were in the past.

Suddenly, those who wish to help us, the LORD in the case of the Israelites, become the enemies while those who wished our continuous enslavement become our benevolent friends. Giliomee’s defense of Kohler-Barnard and by extension his admiration for her admiration of PW Botha is the most explicit example of this. Instead, President Zuma, Minister Nzimande et al all become the enemies.

If only the Department of Higher Education and Training was funding movements such as #OpenStellenbosch and #RhodesMustFall and refusing to speak and work with the management of both these institutions. How I wish!

How I wish that by now the Minister would have dissolved both Councils and placed both universities under administration, as he and his predecessors have done to other universities, especially previously disadvantaged ones.

Yet herein lies the kernel of Giliomee’s challenge: take us back to Egypt.

An Egyptian narrative that is false

A narrative existed pre-1994 that went that South Africa would go the same route as the rest of (Black) Africa did. It is a narrative that has been coming on since the days of the negotiated settlement when some were advancing opinions to minorities that they had to stock up on candles, on blankets, tin foods and security because when Mandela took over, the country would go to ashes.

The narrative then went on: “when Mandela goes” when it was initially proven wrong. Then Mbeki came along with GEAR, growth swelled, Whites in particular became even more richer than any other race group in the country and the fear became: “when Zuma and the Communists take over”.

Zuma became president, large White companies continued to de-list and disinvest going to the UK and Mauritius instead and the mantra then became: “well, when Mandela dies”. Nearly, two years on and they have not been proven correct and so they look for anything that will support their flawed hypothesis.

Thus Giliomee writes, paraphrasing O’Brien: “...that there was little indication that the ANC was willing to respect the autonomy or neutrality of the [sic] universities. He [O’Brien] predicted that this attitude would prevail even after liberation.” Giliomee, agreeing with O’Brien, bases this assertion on the fact that the ANC leadership in exile had requested O’Brien to participate rather in the cultural and academic boycott of South Africa at the time than taking up teaching at UCT.

While the boycott was initiated by the ANC, it was later endorsed by the United Nations. Some records show that in 1965, 496 university professors and lecturers from 34 British universities, alone, participated in the boycott. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one who hopefully Giliomee respects, was also a wide known proponent of the boycott.

Yet the question that must be asked, 21 years into democracy, is what has the ANC done to impede or infringe on the autonomy of our universities that would warrant alarm bells from Giliomee’s quarters? The answer is simple: nothing!

But Giliomee, using O’Brien, must lament, grumble and do all that is possible to continue the mantra which demands that we be taken back to the pots of meat of Apartheid. There, despite all of us Black and White being enslaved by this crime against humanity, we could at least eat all we wanted to. Even China’s Cultural Revolution is used to point to this doom that is looming.

Sadly, the reality is that minorities, Whites included, have benefited more from liberation than the majority of Africans in this country.

This was highlighted only recently by the renowned economist, Thomas Piketty, at the Nelson Mandela memorial lecture when he said:

“...other countries in the world, unfortunately, where you have very high unemployment – Spain or Greece, where you also have a 25% rate of unemployment – and you don’t have that level of income inequality. You still have 30%-35% of total income to the top 10% as compared to 60%-65% in South Africa.

So even if the data is not perfect, I think it’s very clear that the extreme level of inequality we have in South Africa is much more than just unemployment. It has to do, certainly, with the legacy of apartheid.

In particular, it is striking to see what is really different in South Africa compared to other countries is the top 10% share – if you take the top 1% share it is not so different from the US today, but if you take the top 10% share, then it’s really higher in South Africa. So this really suggests that you have a relatively large group in the country, around 10%, which is very far away from the rest of the population.

Of course, this group historically has been predominantly, almost exclusively, white. Even today if you look at the data, especially within the top 1%-5%, it will be up to 80% white, so things have changed a little bit, but we are still are very much with this same structure of racial inequality that we used to have. So now how can we make progress? Let me make it clear that I’m not here to give lessons to South Africa, I am trying to see what we can learn from historical experience.”

Giliomee’s reaction, like that of Piet Le Roux and even that of Michael Cardo, has nothing to do with the ANC as being a threat to university autonomy. It has more to do with the fact that those who have sought to perpetuate past privilege in South Africa, and in the Western Cape in particular, has had the very edifices of their intellectual homes shaken.

UCT, long the home of White liberalism, and Stellenbosch, the bed on which Apartheid was conceived, have been shaken by young people who at most can be described as being apolitical and the so-called “born-frees”.

This segment of the population, the “born-frees” are the ones, who according to Giliomee and especially Cardo the ANC should be fearing. For they, it is said, will discard the ANC’s noble history and demand a better alternative. What has shaken Giliomee et al is that these very “born-frees” are actually the ones that have turned on them and not on the ANC.

A South Africa where all can dwell and study in

There are some in the ANC who want the autonomy of universities re-examined in the light of the need (more like a demand now from the “born-frees”) for transformation. Others will defend autonomy to the end. I, for one, support the re-examination of autonomy precisely because I believe that just as universities such as Stellenbosch, UWC and Potchefstroom played a role in Apartheid so too universities have a role to play in the transformation and development of South Africa.

There are some in the ANC that believes Rhodes had to fall while there are others, like myself, who believed and appealed to the maxim of the Freedom Charter that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White i.e. Whites with their history.

Yet herein lies the antithesis to Giliomee’s lament: a transformed South Africa; a South Africa, where Black and White finds a place to dwell and study in. Instead of looking for bogey-men or demanding that we go back to Apartheid’s pots of meat, we must work towards a brighter future for us and for our children. History demands this of us.

If there is one thing that we can agree with Giliomee, Churchill and William Orange then it is that success is never final, failure never fatal but what ultimately matters is the determination to keep going.

Wesley Seale taught politics at the University of the Western Cape.