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Jimmy Manyi, Adam Habib debate transformation

Johannesburg - The student body at the University of the Witwatersrand is looking pretty good in transformation terms, with over 70% of the students black. But the same cannot be said of the staff, vice-chancellor Professor Adam Habib said at a debate on the subject of transformation held at the university on Thursday.

Of a total of 483 professors, just 158 are South African, with the rest coming from countries around the world. “Of those, 130 are white, 12 are black African South Africans, five are Coloured and 11 are Indian,” he said. He smiled and nodded at the audible gasps from the audience. “Yes, it’s a real indictment of the system,” he said.

Habib was debating Jimmy Manyi, one-time head of the government communication and information system and now president of the Progressive Professionals Forum. The two men did seem to be coming at the subject from different perspectives, however, with Habib focused part of the time on practicalities and the specific role of Wits University, while Manyi took a more national perspective, demanding that Wits see itself as part of the national transformation project.

“A university is born in the nation but is also a product of the globe,” said Habib, pointing out that while the role of the university is to create people who are appropriately equipped to meet the needs of the country, it is also tasked with turning young people into citizens of the 21st century – people who can handle both diversity and the cosmopolitan nature of the world in which they are likely to be living.

“You must have an international profile. The great universities of the world do not accurately map the demographics of their countries,” he said, pointing out that at the London School of Economics, 52% of the students are foreigners from other countries.

Manyi countered this by quoting the law: “Equitable representation is a legal issue,” he said, but asked: “Is Wits involved in transformation, or is it involved in assimilation?” He said that transformation is about more than changing the colour of an institution – it involves fundamental alterations to the nature of the institution.

The university, he said, is operating on a framework defined centuries ago which may not be appropriate to a transformed South Africa. He referred to the life-cycle of a butterfly to illustrate what he meant by transformation: a butterfly starts as an egg, becomes a caterpillar and then pupates to emerge as a winged creature, quite different from either the egg or the caterpillar.

No black female academics

Dr Hugo Canham, senior manager of the Transformation and Employment Equity Office at Wits, said that one of the most glaring absences is that of African women academics. “It is not okay that a student can study here for four years and never once be taught by an African woman.” The gap means that young people lack role models, not only for a possible academic career, but also for life.

But how do you fix these issues under the present circumstances, asked Habib. With a year in the post of Wits vice-chancellor behind him, he has a firm grasp on realities. It takes between 15 and 20 years to become a professor, he pointed out, and a professor earns about the same as a director in the public service, who needs a degree and a few years of experience to reach that position.

Black students in particular are under huge pressure to earn: many are from working class backgrounds and are the first generation to access a tertiary education.

Continuing with honours, masters and a doctorate would mean not only not earning, but also raising funds for fees and living expenses. In many developed countries, the state pays for post-graduate education because the understanding is that this benefits the society as a whole; in South Africa, tertiary education is already hugely under-funded.

This is why transformation stalls at the end of an under-graduate degree: far more white students go on to do post-graduate studies.

Habib laid some stark facts on the table: 1.1 million children enter primary school in South Africa; we lose nearly half of those in the next 12 years, with 600 000 leaving school. About 200 000 of those get good enough marks to be accepted into university. Half drop out, and of the others, only 15% – 15 000 – will finish their degree on time.

Shocking waste of talent

“This is a shocking waste of human talent, and it must be fixed,” said Habib. And the answer is, at least partly, to provide all children with a first class education – to compromise on that in the name of transformation, instead of seeking the best possible teaching talent, even if it comes from outside South Africa, is to compromise, ultimately, on the transformation of the greater society.

While he admitted freely that, in some respects, the university had in the past paid lip service to transformation and needed to turn that into action, a university is not the same as a factory or fishing company, where you wanted to see, as Manyi suggested, provincial companies reflecting provincial demographics and national organisation reflecting national demographics - a university has a different goal.

Its aim is to turn out citizens who are capable of going out and changing society themselves, and that project cannot be compromised.

With that goal in mind, access to a world class education for working class children, as much as for the children of the elite, is essential.

 - Fin24

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