The ‘back' and the ‘front' doors of higher education: Some personal reflections
Over the last 30 years, I have visited almost all of South Africa's universities, and many of their satellite campuses - many of them more than once. Apart from the three university campuses where I taught, and three at which I studied, from the early 1980s my visits to South African universities have mostly been through the ‘back' door, as it were - most often as a delegate to what is probably now scores of conferences of the NECC, trade unions, ANC and SACP congresses. In other instances I have visited these institutions as an invited speaker by university workers and students through their organisations.
I call these ‘backdoor' visits because they would normally be over weekends, with the first entry point being the registration centres point for conferences or congresses, usually in a sports complex or multipurpose hall and then proceed to residences where delegates are housed. Often one never even sees the front of the institution nor gets any insights into its institutional life. I have had more experience of the university precinct as a site for intense political struggles and debates, lobbying for various political and policy positions, and campuses as places for taking important political decisions that have had far-reaching implications for the political direction of our country.
On the 3rd of September 2009 I paid an official visit to the University of the Free State. As I entered the university, through the ‘front' door this time, I could not help but recall that it was at the same university, where the ANC held its first national conference after the 1994 democratic breakthrough, gathering for the first time as a ruling party. And that it was at the same university that Cde Nelson Mandela was re-elected for the second time as President of the ANC, with Cde Jacob Zuma elected National Chairperson of the ANC. Incidentally, it was at the same conference where I was elected onto the National Executive Committee of the ANC for the first time.
Being at the ANC conference and officially visiting the institutions were two very contrasting experiences of the same space. During the ‘back' door many important decisions were taken that came to shape the character and direction of the ANC as a ruling party and indeed changed the course of our country. Yet debates taking place in conference commissions held at the various university lecture halls were not being adequately captured and reflected once these spaces return to their normal role as university lecture halls. The ‘back' and the ‘front' door is actually the same space!
During this ‘front' door visit to the University of the Free State, three things made a lasting impression on me. The first one was a black student leader's description of the university as "one campus, two races". Through this he took us through the language policy and practices of the institution, as he experienced them. Afrikaans and English lectures are offered at different times within the same university. When it is time for Afrikaans lectures the university lecture halls and their precincts are predominantly white, and then a radical change when it is time for English lectures; the same spaces becomes overwhelmingly black. This alone captures the extent of the complexity of the challenge for transformation at this institution.