The challenge of decolonisation: UCT's transformation journey
5 April 2016
Since the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, UCT has been in the midst of a far-reaching change that will see a fundamentally different university emerge.
This change is part of a national dialogue taking place about higher education. While what happens nationally will have profound implications for UCT, how UCT deals with its own challenges will in turn influence the national debate. Indeed, the ramifications are international: when "Rhodes Fell’ at UCT, it triggered a re-examination of our colonial legacy, not only in South Africa but also in the colonial heartland itself, Great Britain. On campuses around the world, heritage symbols, names and statues are being challenged and the invisibility of those who suffered, resisted and overcame those race- and slavery- based colonial systems of power is being highlighted.
What ‘new UCT’ will emerge is still contested. But what is indisputable is that the old UCT of white historical privilege is being transformed, if for no other reasons than history and demography.
Indeed, the very language that is used to describe the transformation process is contested. The language and content of “transformation” is argued by some to surreptitiously maintain the status quo against which the alternative of decolonisation has to be championed. The former, it is argued, is about reconciliation, redress, affirmative action to achieve equity, academic support programmes to counter the effects of schooling deficits, and ultimately the incorporation of those previously disadvantaged into the economic and power structures of society.