ILL-INFORMED UCT ADMISSION POLICY
The University of Cape Town (UCT) recently announced impending changes in their admissions policy. The changes are in part premised on an assertion that many blacks "come from good schools and can be admitted on a competitive basis without the need for reference to their race." The proposal seeks to consider a basket of variables when admitting students including: performance; class (socio-economic) and potential (regardless of race); and probability of student success.
Discrimination appears in many forms not just in vile epithets. Today, it may be harder to find overt bigots. In the arranging of relationships, discrimination can be subtle yet no less sinister and pernicious. The UCT policy is cast in the language of transformation. There is power in propaganda and misinformation. If truth be told, the UCT policy would result in further marginalization of black and women applicants. Curiously, the proposal says nothing about the historical oppression of women and how this would be addressed in it admission choices.
At stake is a contestation about opportunity and transformation. The messenger and the message needs deconstruction. UCT like other "liberal" institutions prides itself in historically resisting apartheid. The facts belie the misleading narrative which is enveloped by layers of hypocrisy. It is a story of appearing to run with the hares but in truth hunting with the hounds. Many black students that attended UCT can vividly recount the racism that permeated UCT. One example is telling.
The apartheid regime required black students to procure a Ministerial permit to attend UCT. A medical student that attended UCT would not be permitted to partake in the dissecting of a white cadaver. Yes, until very recently, UCT and not the apartheid regime, told black students that a white cadaver was beyond the physical touch of a black medical student. How much of that spirit still resides at the institution?
UCT towers over the remains of the indigenous Khoi and San. UCT Rector, Dr. Max Price has defended the UCT policy in several forums. Dr. Price, by some twisted logic of Zionism, which most of the world characterizes as a pernicious form of racism, may claim a right to bury his ancestors in ancient Palestine, as an entitlement inherited by race.
Entering the precincts of UCT with its multiple signs of "private property" sets you off on a bad spirit. As a public institution, the proclamation "private property" is cocky and brazen beyond incredulous. Unless by some similar twisted logic, Max Price and UCT believe Cecil John Rhodes' bequest entitles UCT to cast it itself as a "private" institution, which can keep out the public, or ignore and distort the constitutional imperative of transformation.
The UCT admissions policy is premised on "taking account of the changing realities of race and class in South Africa since 1994." Under their policy, "75% of students would be selected without reference to race, while 25% would be race based." The policy purports to acknowledge the reality of race but further states it is concerned about policies "which impede opportunities for the individual".
The policy is further premised on "change in the educational preparation of many black applicants to UCT resulting in their no longer being significantly disadvantaged and no longer needing affirmative action interventions". There is a boundary between fact and obfuscation. Their account of a changing reality is spectacularly delusional, a story of Alice in Wonderland, totally inverted.
It is an undeniable empirical truth that South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. The Gini coefficient has exacerbated and not improved since 1994. It is an equally undeniable and sad empirical truth that race, as a rule, is a class determinant in the South African reality, with exceptions on either side of the racial divide. UCT seeks to ignore the rule and calibrate its admission policy suited to the exceptions. Despite the exceptions at both ends, racial inequality has increased over the past two decades and not ameliorated as UCT suggests.
The rhetoric notwithstanding, if UCT was sincere about transformation, it would enhance the rule which addresses the norm and like India, and if necessary, nuance it for the exceptions. India introduced affirmative or corrective action based on caste for many decades. Its admission policies reward the historically disadvantaged lower casts with numerical quotas. India further nuances the policy to exclude what it considers the "creamy layer" from the historically disadvantaged group.
UCT instead has resorted to the jurisprudence, which emanates from the current conservative US Supreme Court, which seeks to minimize the reality of race in the polity whilst elevating other variables. UCT's findings on the use of race mirror the views of the most conservative judges on the US Supreme Court, such as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia who write about black perceptions of inferiority flowing from affirmative action and the resentment of the "innocent" white. This conservative tilt is a model to be avoided and not emulated.
The UCT policy provides a template for admission which punishes the historically disadvantaged. Considering the other variables they propose for assessing disadvantage, even if a Black student attends the same quality high school as a white student, or if their parents went to a tertiary institution, there are historical realities and intangibles, which provides the white student a significant advantage.
In a seminal article, two decades ago in the Harvard Law Review, Professor Cheryl Harris wrote about whiteness as a property interest in the US, which exists two hundred years after the adoption of their Constitution. This and other studies in the US, in response to the conservative judges (whose views UCT adopts), demonstrate the power structures, based on white privilege and white supremacy, despite the breakdown of racial barriers which advantage whites.
These practices perpetuate the marginalization of Blacks and other disadvantaged. The arguments of liberalism and supposed meritocracy is neither neutral nor colorblind. Instead, it serves the self-interest of a privileged group which downplays systemic inequalities, customs and the legacy of past racism.
Similarly, there is a peril in the UCT policy, which minimizes the apartheid legacy and race. Studies by progressives in India, the US and Malaysia to name a few, show that in societies with a history of racial subjugation, despite legal equality, race will continue to exert a substantial influence in determining opportunities and substantive outcomes for decades. Something sinister is happening at UCT.
When UCT states it seeks to build a society "which does not distribute resources and opportunities based on one's membership of or classification into race groups" it sounds eerily reminiscent of a story straight from the playbook of right wing groups and the conservative affirmative action jurisprudence in the US. To deny the centrality of race, the lingering reality of historical white privilege, the intangible benefits that advantage whites, represents the worse form of racism.
There are some at UCT and particularly its law school that are prone to flap their tongues whenever there is wind. When there is no wind, they are prone to create their own wind. Their tepidness if not outright silence concerning the UCT admission policy is revealing. Is UCT is engaged in wilful obtuseness? Perhaps. Are the policy makers at UCT out of touch with reality? I doubt it. Its policy represents old habits from an institutional creed, which if it is not racist has a history of too many racists.
Our government needs to act decisively to stop the implementation of this sinister policy. Be prepared for the elite to scream foul. Academic freedom does not include the right to keep the playing field tilted to perpetuate subordination. Nor does it represent the right of a privileged elite to be the gatekeepers of the academy. Government needs to ensure all tertiary institutions chart a course consistent with the best values of our Constitution and its imperative of transformation. The ball is now in Minister Blade Nzimande's court, to thwart what can only be described as an unpalatable conservative recipe, mired in obfuscation, to serve the beneficiaries of privilege.
Lucky Thekisho is Chairperson of the Higher Education Transformation Network
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