Joy Petersen (picture: provided)
Read the Khampepe Report here.
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The recent spate of human dignity violations on the Stellenbosch University (SU) campus has made me question the sincerity of our actions and the affordances we granted our students in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The recent spate of human dignity violations on the Stellenbosch University (SU) campus has made me question the sincerity of our actions and the affordances we granted our students in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The level of compassion SU espoused through a pedagogy of care and action, signalled a concrete enactment to repair, restore and transform as a university. The race and transformation conference provided me with a conceptual understanding of how transformation operates, affirming that change is happening, reassuring us that we are not going back.
I did not come on my own accord! I was called!
Of course, the majestic mountains, how the oak trees signal with nature’s precision each season, and the energy and essence of youth make the calling even more enticing, inviting, even seductive. Not to say I don’t notice the subtle ways in which I am steered to think and act in a particular way, or how the students’ anguish is belittled. Finding a language for these daily, tiny transgressions is difficult when your own default setting hovers on sincerity, the good, innocence – you become ignorant of the arrogance.
I have been at Stellenbosch University for five years. This year, 2022, surpasses the turbulence and turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic. The incidents of human dignity violations (three separate cases of young white men urinating on the educational lives of black students) and the death of Siphokazi and Ky throw me out of kilter. I come to the Race and Transformation Conference looking for expert, substantive ways of understanding race and transformation globally, and at Stellenbosch University. I crave an ethical and empirical sense-making, gatvol of the patriarchal, anecdotal tales I am fed, before being silenced.
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I come to the Race and Transformation Conference looking for expert, substantive ways of understanding race and transformation globally, and at Stellenbosch University. I crave an ethical and empirical sense-making, gatvol of the patriarchal, anecdotal tales I am fed, before being silenced.
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Professor Nico Koopman kicks the proceedings off by bringing our attention to words. Logos in its etymology means “word, discourse, or reason – an eternal and unchanging truth present from the time of creation, available to the individual who seeks it”. This is my quest.
In this article, I highlight my main takeaways that made me ponder the truths of our own peace laureate and elder, Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Don’t raise your voice – improve your argument
There are two paradigms of equality, proffers human rights law expert Professor Sandra Liebenberg. A formal equality approach is one founded on racial inclusion and assimilation. Another approach is substantive equality. Substantive equality seeks to address the underlying systems, institutional practices and cultures and economic disadvantages that create patterns of privilege for some groups and subordination for others. Substantive equality has been endorsed by the Constitutional Court as the interpretation that should apply to the right to equality and non-discrimination in section 9 of the Bill of Rights. In her professional summation of the Khampepe Report, Professor Liebenberg states that Stellenbosch University has been on a formal equality trajectory. She provides the language to recognise that our efforts at transformation and addressing inequality have been narrow and superficial. A substantive equality approach for deeper, more enduring change must be pursued.
We need to stop just pulling people out of the river, we need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in
The conference is organised to expose us to the university’s role in the community and its obligations to the public. We exit the university greenbelt to arrive at Cloetesville, parched, on the outskirts. Mr Meyer, the school principal, welcomes us warmly and leads us to the scantily resourced school library. Here we learn that at Cloetesville High, despite its proximity to the university campus, the community has not been left unscathed from the scourge of gangsterism, drugs and teenage pregnancies that has besieged the so-called coloured communities on the Cape Flats. Only 55% of the scholar intake, progress to grade 12, and annually fewer than 10 students make SU their university of choice and are accepted for studies. The desire to achieve and succeed is grim. Why? The next speaker, Mr April, provides us with substantive reasons for this, based on his lived experience. Cloetesville, he said, is a broken community, battling the plague that is called poverty. Poverty brought on by their forced removal from the centre of Stellenbosch town and sections that the university now occupy – the families are still living with that trauma!
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The desire to achieve and succeed is grim. Why? The next speaker, Mr April, provides us with substantive reasons for this, based on his lived experience. Cloetesville, he said, is a broken community, battling the plague that is called poverty. Poverty brought on by their forced removal from the centre of Stellenbosch town and sections that the university now occupy – the families are still living with that trauma!
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Mr April does not hide his anger and rage. The tears shine in the corners of his eyes and his voice falters as he rebukes apartheid. Even so, he is neither embittered nor defeated. Mr April, resilient and pained, is still hopeful and lives the school motto: Always your best. He implores the university to do research that matters, to take up projects that can better the community – we owe them that.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor
Professor Dennis Francis alludes to a plague of a different kind that is manifesting in institutions of higher education and our SU residences – the fear and hatred of students identifying as LBGTQIA+ – queerphobia. At Stellenbosch University, the nexus of gender and Christianity is proving particularly pernicious, They/them state. They/them presented a case study of queerphobia at a residence where the doors of queer and trans students were anointed with crosses in an effort to convert them – violating their human right. Cisheteronormativity reigns supreme, is not troubled enough, states Professor Francis. When this particular case was reported, the incident was trivialised, the victims were told to lock their doors, and the perpetrators’ behaviour went unaddressed. The failure to disrupt queerphobia substantively allows for cisheteronormativity to persist in SU spaces, endorsing the belief that “some are more equal than others”. Professor Francis’s critical analysis of this incident is that “we don’t need more learning on the issues, we need to do more unlearning”. Transformation is unlearning!
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Transformation is unlearning!
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There was consensus among the stellar cast of academics in attendance, that racism and attacks of otherness are attempts to throw the transformation project off course, to divert our attention. There’s a fear, an anticipated loss of dominance, that is palpable. They echoed that change work is hard work, and the pace of change is slow and oft unacknowledged. As academic agents and activists of change, they agreed that we must continue being rigorously reflexive in our praxis for efficacious, substantive and enduring transformation.
We were cautioned against dichotomous thinking of us-and-them. And it reminds me of my own epiphany, following Ky’s and Siphokazi’s passing. The social constructs of race, gender and socio-economic status that separate, have no real standing. In blood and bone, we are all the same. Our approach must unify. The conference also highlighted the generative ability of the arts, sports and music as a vehicle to unite – we should consider exploring and endorsing a curriculum based on the aesthetic.
Hope is being able to see there is light despite all the darkness
At Stellenbosch University, there is a myriad of initiatives, programmes and courses – what Professor Koopman refers to as pockets of excellence sprinkled across campus. Our hope in the darkness.
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At Stellenbosch University, there is a myriad of initiatives, programmes and courses – what Professor Koopman refers to as pockets of excellence sprinkled across campus. Our hope in the darkness.
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At a recent performance of the Stellenbosch University choir, I was gifted this hope, transported to a utopian Stellenbosch University. In 90 minutes, the distress and disgrace of the first semester had evaporated, and I was elevated to a place beyond divinity. Their exuberance and vitality breathed new life into me. The choir succeeded in hushing my confusions and birthing new longings.
Andre van der Merwe epitomises transformation. Together, the choir and conductor make our values come alive by being excellent at equality, at compassion, at accountability, at respect! They are the salve of SU’s soul.
Transformation is soul work, hard and arduous, and fulfilling and rewarding. We have all been called to do this work, the conference reminds me, by virtue of being a Matie.
Also read:
Internasionale konferensie: Slow intimacy (Langsame intimiteit)
Universiteitseminaar: Jan Heunis SC beskou die Khampepe-verslag
Konstitusionele Hof, Gelyke Kanse en Universiteit Stellenbosch
Gelyke Kanse-inisiatief bou momentum: Breyten Breytenbach rig ope brief aan US-rektor
Stellenbosch language debate: Speech by David Jantjies at the DAK meeting with the SAHRC
DAK Netwerk language submission: A petition to the Minister of Higher Education
Afrikaans oorleef by US solank dit "redelikerwys doenlik" is
US-taalbeleid: Breyten Breytenbach reageer op Anton van Niekerk se brief
Baqonde-meertaligheidsprojek: "Laat hulle verstaan" (en laat die tegnologie help)
BAQONDE and multilingual education in South Africa: An interview with Lorna Carson
A response to Marlene van Niekerk’s contribution to the Stellenbosch University language debate
Persverklaring: Universiteit Stellenbosch is verbind tot meertaligheid
Persverklaring: StudentePlein oorweeg appèlopsies ná hofuitspraak in US-taalsaak
Reaksie op Andrew Nash: "Kan die Akademie uitnemendheid oorleef?"
BAQONDE, boosting the use of African language in education: an interview with Bassey Antia
Kommentaar
Hierdie is 'n baie insiggewende artikel. Dankie me. Petersen. Dis so belangrik om van persoonlike ervarings, angs en moontlikhede van verandering te hoor. En dis baie bemoedigend dat mense soveel moeite en erns insit in hul pogings om 'n mooi instelling te bou. Dankie.