Admissions policy articles and replies for 2013
2013
15 Aug. School Year Blog: Are South African Schools ‘Just Pushing Black Students Through The
System’? .................................................................................................................................................. 2
21 Aug. UCT “needs more black students”. Transformation too slow, says price ................................... 4
26 Aug. S. Africa universities racially skewed: watchdog ........................................................................ 4
6 Sept. Universities must inspire the next generation of black professors – Xolela Mangcu .................. 7
27 Sept. Race classification is a problem – eNCA .................................................................................... 7
21 Oct. Union rejects varsity intake plan ................................................................................................ 8
21 Oct. Attitude, not colour, shapes race – Xolela Mangcu .................................................................... 9
22 Oct. Call to delay exams ................................................................................................................... 10
22 Oct. UCT rejects call to delay exams................................................................................................. 10
22 Oct. More than skin deep - Editorial................................................................................................. 11
22 Oct. New class struggle - Editorial .................................................................................................... 12
23 Oct. Race based confusion – Sean Archer ........................................................................................ 13
23 Oct. It’s not true about UCT – Gerda Kruger .................................................................................... 13
24 Oct. UCT ‘does not want to change its admission profile’................................................................ 15
30 Oct. UCT Admissions policy: race and redress – Jacques Rousseau ..................................... 16
31 Oct. Admissions policy debate at UCT – Power FM.......................................................................... 22
5 Nov. Mangcu just muddies the water on UCT's admissions policy – David Benatar .......................... 23
8 Nov. UCT professor “troubled” by persistence of racial tags ............................................................. 24
8 Nov. There is no such thing as “race” – Anton Fagan ......................................................................... 25
11 Nov. Why UCT’s admissions policy is the right one for our time – Insaaf Isaacs .............................. 26
20 Nov. Race may not be biological, but it's part of life - Irma Liberty ................................................ 26
24 Nov. Using apartheid's vile tools to try to redress its legacy – Dr Max Price.................................... 28
25 Nov. New admissions policy placed on back-burner ........................................................................ 29
25 Nov. UCT delays new admissions policy ........................................................................................... 30
25 Nov. Affirmative action – Cape Talk ................................................................................................. 30
27 Nov. ANC slams UCT for new admissions draft policy ......................................................................... 31
27 Nov. Structural racism: the invisible evil - Pierre de Vos .................................................................. 32
1 Dec. The triumph of black racial communalism – RW Johnson .......................................................... 35
1 Dec. Make quotas unnecessary – William Thomson .......................................................................... 41
1
11 Dec. Higher education: Redress does not mean settling for mediocrity – Dr Max Price... 42
17 Dec. UCT's racial admissions policy: A reply to Max Price – RW Johnson ........................................ 43
15 Aug. School Year Blog: Are South African Schools ‘Just Pushing
Black Students Through The System’?
August 15, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment
This blog post is part of a year-long series, School Year: Learning, Poverty, and Success
in a South African Township. Read more on the School Year Blog.
A few weeks ago, I met a student from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Our
conversation made me reflect on an interesting dilemma facing COSAT.
The UCT student was a junior who had grown frustrated with her school. I asked why. “I feel
like they’re just pushing black students through the system,” she said.
In her opinion, the school’s top priority was making sure that black students, like her,
graduate. She felt a disproportionate amount of support was going toward struggling students
– many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds – and not enough support was going to
help the best students excel.
UCT has long been criticized for admitting students who are underprepared. The school has a
lower standard of admission for black and mixed race applicants, many of whom attend poor,
underperforming public schools. Nearly half of these students, once admitted to UCT, never
graduate. To address the problem, the school has begun identifying at-risk students and
giving them extra academic support.
But what about black students who aren’t struggling, like the junior I spoke to?
“Whether I get As, Bs, or Cs – that doesn’t really matter to UCT,” she said, “as long as I
graduate.” I asked what made her feel that way. She shrugged. She said it was just the feeling
she got – and she said many of her friends felt the same way.
I wasn’t sure what to make of her comments. But they got me thinking about a similar
challenge facing COSAT.
When the school was founded, 14 years ago, it was much smaller and more selective than it is
now. “The idea was to find the most gifted township kids, and give them an education that
was truly on par with private schools in the suburbs,” said Estelle van Schuur, a biology
teacher at COSAT who served as the school’s first principal.
She said, in the early days, COSAT was producing a lot of high-achieving students, and they
went on to top universities. The school got a lot of attention and racked up the awards, many
of which still hang in COSAT’s lobby.
2
Then, the government came knocking. It forced the school to expand so that more students
could attend, and the province’s woefully low graduation rate could get a boost. COSAT was
forced to lower its standard of admission to meet new enrollment requirements. With more
struggling students in classes, teachers had to dedicate more of their time to Saturday school
and remedial lessons.
Meanwhile, special opportunities for top students – like trips to science fairs and math
competitions – became more limited, and were shared among a larger group of students.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the number of high-performing students at COSAT has declined.
What are we to make of these trends?
On the one hand, it’s great that UCT and COSAT have opened their doors to more students.
Clearly, giving more learners access to these institutions benefits them, as well as their
families and communities. But, on the other hand, top students may be losing out, as attention
is focused elsewhere. That could be a detriment to them, their communities, and even the
country.
Is it possible to serve large numbers of underprepared students, yet still push top students to
be their best? That’s a question both institutions are trying to answer.
3
21 Aug. UCT “needs more black students”. Transformation too slow,
says price
26 Aug. S. Africa universities racially skewed: watchdog
4
Shortcomings and inequalities in South Africa’s public school system a major contributor
Only one in 20 black South Africans succeeds in higher education, and more than half who
enrol at university drop out before completing their degree, according to research published
this week.
“Access, success and completion rates continue to be racially skewed, with white completion
rates being on average 50 per cent higher than African [black] rates,” says a damning report
by the country’s Council on Higher Education (CHE).
The body calls for a radical overhaul of curriculum structures still rooted in the colonial
education of a century ago, most importantly by extending undergraduate courses from three
years to four.
The 260-page document paints a gloomy picture of South Africa’s education system nearly
20 years after the end of racial apartheid. The country’s needs are not being met “largely
because much of the country’s intellectual talent is not being developed”, it warns, leaving a
shortage of skilled graduates in the labour market.
The report uses the term “African” to refer to black students and “coloured” to refer to those
of mixed race ancestry. “No group is performing well,” it says, noting that more than a third
of white students, the best performing group — who mainly study at historically advantaged
universities — fail to graduate within five years.
“However, African and coloured student performance remains the biggest cause for concern,”
says the report. “The net effect of the performance patterns is that only five per cent of
African and coloured youth are succeeding in higher education. This represents an
unacceptable failure to develop the talent in the groups where realisation of potential is most
important.”
South Africa’s higher education system has grown by more than 80 per cent since the dawn
of democracy in 1994; total enrolment now stands at more than 900,000. This has helped
redress inequalities in admissions, with black enrolments reaching 79 per cent and female
enrolments 57 per cent of the total by 2010.
However, of the best-performing cohort analysed to date (that from 2006), only 35 per cent of
students graduated within five years, and it is estimated that 55 per cent will never graduate
— a loss of some 70,000 students.
The CHE, a statutory body that advises the higher education minister, acknowledges that
universities do not exist in a bubble. The governing African National Congress (ANC) is
accused by critics of failing to bridge the gap between rich and poor, with its persistent racial
dimension, and has also been charged with presiding over woefully inadequate schools that
deny millions the chance to realise their potential.
“Access to and success in higher education is strongly influenced by the socio-economic
background of individuals,” the report states. “This is especially so in the South African
context where the large majority of black students come from low-income families that do
not have the financial resources to support the pursuit of higher education.”
5
Increasing access and completion rates depends largely on addressing the apartheid legacy, it
continues. “It is clear, however, that whatever the merits or otherwise of policy interventions
that have been put in place thus far, there has been limited success post-1994 in addressing
these challenges.”
The World Economic Forum’s 2013 global information technology report ranks South Africa
140th out of 144 countries in terms of the “quality of the educational system”, below all other
African countries surveyed except Burundi and Libya.
Not by funding alone
The CHE says starkly: “It is common cause that the shortcomings and inequalities in South
Africa’s public school system are a major contributor to the generally poor and racially
skewed performance in higher education.” But with little prospect of an improvement in
schools in the short term, universities must come up with their own remedies, the CHE
contends. Funding students alone is not the answer, since many who fail to complete their
studies are not indigent.
“Equally important is addressing the affective or psychological and social factors that are also
a barrier to success in higher education.”
The University of Cape Town (UCT), ranked the best in Africa, has a controversial policy of
admitting black students who have substantially lower test scores than whites.
But the CHE’s task team, chaired by former UCT vice-chancellor Njabulo Ndebele, stops
short of recommending positive discrimination.
Instead, it urges an overhaul of a curriculum structure that evolved from the adoption, early in
the 20th century, of the Scottish educational framework.
This lineage is explained by colonial ties and, specifically, the fact that the South African
school system — like Scotland’s — ended a year below the English A-level.
The CHE calls for an additional year as the norm for core undergraduate degrees and
diplomas, within a flexible structure that allows for high-achieving students to finish more
quickly.
“The projections presented indicate that the flexible curriculum structure would produce 28
per cent (about 15,000) more graduates than the status quo from the same intake cohort, at an
additional subsidy cost of only 16 per cent reflecting a significant increase in efficiency,” it
says.
Some experts have questioned universities’ admission policies, however. Jonathan Jansen,
vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, has warned that schools and universities
have adjusted expectations downwards, especially in relation to black students who enter
higher education underprepared. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2013
6
6 Sept. Universities must inspire the next generation of black professors – Xolela
Mangcu
27 Sept. Race classification is a problem – eNCA
A youth group is lobbying to have race classification removed from university application forms. It
claims that race grouping is a form of racial profiling and is preventing students that don’t fit the
profile, from furthering their education. An estimated 11% of black youths, between the ages of 18 –
24 years old, enter university each year. This number is worrying Equal Education lobbyists. Despite
this, Afriforum Youth says race should no longer be factored into university admissions. The
organisation says affirmative action in higher education should be abolished and it claims its
campaign has the backing of thousands of students. Charl Oberholzer of Afriforum said: “Race has
become some kind of passport to determine what kind of opportunities you get in SA. I don’t believe
7
it’s the best parameter, for instance Tokyo Sexwale is a millionaire but his son will benefit from
affirmative action policy. It’s better to use a different yard stick, use socio economic standards and
see where that person comes from.” The report continues: UCT is believed to be considering doing
away with its race based admission policy. While UCT’s management would not confirm this, student
bodies oppose the idea. SRC’s Chanda Chungu said: “SA is still a very unequal country, most of the
educated people are white, most of the businesses are owned by white people and it’s only fair that in
a country that is trying to achieve equality through the constitution and through its leaders, that in
application processes black people are slightly favoured.” While all the major universities in the
country request that a student a student’s race be divulged, it’s not required by law. None of the
universities approached to comment were prepared to discuss their admission policies.
http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/email/eNCA.AffirmativeAction.27Sept2013.avi
21 Oct. Union rejects varsity intake plan
8
21 Oct. Attitude, not colour, shapes race – Xolela Mangcu
9
22 Oct. Call to delay exams
22 Oct. UCT rejects call to delay exams
11
22 Oct. More than skin deep - Editorial
12
22 Oct. New class struggle - Editorial
13
23 Oct. Race based confusion – Sean Archer
23 Oct. It’s not true about UCT – Gerda Kruger
THE article, "Union rejects varsity intake plan" (October 21), refers. In the article
you stated that the University of Cape Town’s (UCT’s) proposed new admissions
policy would replace race with other criteria to determine if a prospective student
was previously disadvantaged.
This is not true. UCT is not abandoning "race" as a factor in determining
disadvantage. Should the new proposed admissions policy that is currently being
explored be accepted, "race" will become one of a number of criteria determining
past disadvantage. Some of these criteria will relate to prospective students’
socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, for example financial indicators and
the education of prospective students’ parents. Following an admissions policy that
14
uses self-declared "race" as an indicator of disadvantage over the last few years,
UCT has discovered that the issue is infinitely more complex: apartheid’s attack on
the dignity of black people was mounted at a variety of levels, leaving a legacy of
many sites of disadvantage. This is what we seek to address in revising our
admissions policy, by exploring a more refined model that defines disadvantage in
ways that better capture what caused the damage and how "race" is experienced
today at both individual and group level.
UCT will never reverse its commitment to affirmative action in admissions. Black
students will also not be reduced at UCT as a result of any changes in admissions
policy. The policy models being explored are underpinned by the fundamental
principle that we should not lose the diversity that we currently enjoy but instead
grow it further (almost half of UCT’s South African students are black, coloured or
Indian).
Gerda Kruger
Executive Director: Communication and Marketing, University of Cape Town
15
24 Oct. UCT ‘does not want to change its admission profile’
16
thinking about politics, religion and rationality
30 Oct. UCT Admissions policy: race and
redress – Jacques Rousseau
October 29, 2013 · by Jacques Rousseau · in Academia and teaching, Morality, Politics
The various Faculty Boards at the University of Cape Town are currently considering
alternative models for UCT student admissions. These models arise from a debate
the University has been having for some time now, regarding whether “race” is still
the most effective identifier of likely disadvantage available to us. Some participants
in this debate argue that race has become an increasingly crude proxy for
disadvantage, resulting in a large number of false positives (which in turn has the
effect of shrinking the number of places available for people who are actually
disadvantaged, whatever their race might be).
That line of argument is also frequently accompanied by the observation that the
racial categories we use in South Africa (and elsewhere, but South Africa has a
particular history in this regard) are innately odious, and should be eliminated from
legislation, policy and discourse wherever we can.
Some critics of that position argue that to eliminate recognition of race as a special
category for attention simply perpetuates racism, and that any policy shift in this
regard would be regressive. Others argue for the more moderate position that while
race should be eliminated from policy in principle, it is too soon to do so – and that
even though race is mostly a proxy for disadvantage, it remains the best one we
have available to us in the present moment.
17
The contribution to the debate offered below merits wide distribution, and is shared
here with the permission of the author, Professor Anton Fagan of the Law Faculty.
For what it’s worth, I agree with his position, and find the paragraph below to be a
strikingly crisp articulation of the obvious wrongness of including race as a criterion
for disadvantage in perpetuity:
to make an applicant’s preferential admission conditional upon her having identified
herself as ‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘Indian’ or ‘Chinese’ is to make the receipt of something
that is deserved, unconditionally, conditional upon a Faustian bargain. To get what
she deserves, as a matter of justice, an applicant is compelled to validate one of the
foundational principles of the racist apartheid order – the principle that everyone
falls, naturally and in a way that can be read off one’s biologically-determined
features in a mirror, or can be determined by inspecting one’s nails or one’s genitals,
into one of the following groups: black, coloured, Indian, Chinese, and white.
UCT’S NEW ADMISSION POLICY
ANTON FAGAN
UCT’s new admission policy has much to recommend it. In so far as it seeks to undo
inequality, by looking at home and educational circumstances, it represents a major
step forward. However, the criteria by which the ‘Faculty Discretion’ is to be
exercised, especially ‘racial diversity’, are troubling.
In 1987, I was an LLB student here at UCT. In an evidence class, the lecturer
discussed a 1957 Appellate Division decision called R v Vilbro. It concerned the
admissibility of a witness’s opinion as to whether the accused were ‘white’ or
‘coloured’ for the purposes of the Group Areas Act. The Court held that such an
opinion was admissible. For, it said:
‘There may be people who have had a reason to apply their minds specially to the
question of distinguishing the races. Such a witness was, in the present case, the
Chief Inspector of Indian and Coloured Education . . . .’
‘[T]here may be people who, in respect of the persons whose race is in issue, may
have had more opportunities of observing them than the magistrate. The latter only
sees them in court, dressed up for the occasion, a woman probably with make-up . .
18
. Other people may have seen them more frequently and in different circumstances,
and have had more opportunities and more time of forming a definite impression
about them.’
Upon hearing these passages, a student in the class, Zehir Omar, shouted out
angrily: ‘Who was the judge?’ I sat forward expectantly, like everyone else, keen to
hear who this racist was. The lecturer answered: ‘Fagan CJ.’
The effect of this view of admissibility was that the accused’s conviction under the
Act was upheld. But that was not the main reason for Mr Omar’s outrage and my
shame. Indeed, I am not sure that the lecturer even mentioned this outcome. Our
outrage and shame were grounded, primarily, on something that Mr Omar, and I,
and many others in the class took for granted: racial classification, in itself, is morally
repugnant. We knew that the division of persons into ‘coloureds’, ‘whites’ and
‘natives’ had no biological basis. We knew that this division was not merely a social,
but a political and ideological, construct. We knew that it took its life from, and was
inextricably linked to, the practice of racism under apartheid.
You may know the book Racecraft, written by Karen Fields and Barbara Fields, and
published last year. The Fields are sisters. One is Professor of History at Columbia
University. The other is a sociologist, based at the Center for African and African
American Research at Duke University. They have written a great deal on slavery,
witch craft, and racism. The following extracts from their book show some of its key
ideas:
‘Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals,
despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as
well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and
that the earth stands still while the sun moves.’
‘Race is not an element of human biology . . . nor is it even an idea that can be
plausibly imagined to live an eternal life of its own. Race is not an idea but an
ideology. It came into existence at a discernible historical moment for rationally
understandable historical reasons . . . Thus we ought to begin by restoring to race . .
. its proper history.’
19
‘[R]ace is neither biology nor an idea absorbed into biology . . . It is ideology, and
ideologies do not have lives of their own. . . . If race lives on today, it [is] because we
continue to create it today.’
‘[T]he first principle of racism is belief in race, even if the believer does not deduce
from that belief that the member of the race should be enslaved or disfranchised or
shot on sight by trigger-happy police officers . . .’
‘[W]hat “race” is’ ‘is a neutral-sounding word with racism hidden inside’.
The current UCT application form requires applicants to identify their ‘population
group’, the choice being between ‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ or ‘white’. An
applicant may refuse to choose any of these, in which case he or she will be
assigned to the open category. It is fair to assume that UCT’s new admission policy
will be implemented with an application form that requires more or less the same.
The effect of this will be a continued naturalisation of race. The division of persons
into ‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ or ‘white’ is presented as part of the natural
ordering of the world, rather than as what it really is, namely an historicallycontingent, politically-constructed and ideologically-driven ordering. The historical,
political and ideological connection between these categories and the racism of the
apartheid state is simply swept from view. Rather than that categorisation being
presented as being deeply-embedded in a particular history, politics and ideology, it
is presented as a free-floating categorisation with a logic and reality all of its own.
Worse than that, the categorisation into ‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ or
‘white’ is supposed to be insensitive to distinctions of social standing or class. Being
the son of a billionaire entrepreneur, or the daughter of an unemployed domestic
worker, will neither qualify nor disqualify an applicant for any of the categories. It
follows that the primary basis for categorisation must be biological difference. The
effect, therefore, is not merely to continue the naturalisation of race. It is to entrench
a form of bio-racism.
The Fields sisters gave their book the title Racecraft, because they see the idea that
a person has a particular race as analogous to the idea that a person is a witch. Just
as there are not really witches, and never have been, so there are not really races,
and never have been. Neither ‘witch’ nor ‘race’ has, as they put it, ‘material
existence’. Both the idea that a person is of some race and the idea that a person is
20
a witch are merely ‘illusions’ or ‘fictions’ created and sustained by social practices.
Now imagine that a university has decided to provide redress for those who were
victimised on the ground that they were witches. It would be odd for the university to
pursue that redress by asking every applicant to the university this question: ‘Are you
a witch or are you not?’, and then to make the provision of the redress conditional
upon the person answering: ‘Yes, I am a witch.’
There undoubtedly are many applicants to UCT who, because of inequality, deserve
preferential admission. However, to make an applicant’s preferential admission
conditional upon her having identified herself as ‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘Indian’ or
‘Chinese’ is to make the receipt of something that is deserved, unconditionally,
conditional upon a Faustian bargain. To get what she deserves, as a matter of
justice, an applicant is compelled to validate one of the foundational principles of the
racist apartheid order – the principle that everyone falls, naturally and in a way that
can be read off one’s biologically-determined features in a mirror, or can be
determined by inspecting one’s nails or one’s genitals, into one of the following
groups: black, coloured, Indian, Chinese, and white.
Getting what one unconditionally deserves is made conditional upon one’s
willingness to treat as real, as essential, as natural, and as morally-neutral, an
ordering of the world created by the apartheid state in order to pursue its racist
objectives. If you do not admit to being a witch, you will get no justice. If you do not
admit to being what D F Malan and H F Verwoerd decided you are, namely a
coloured, a black, a member of the other, you will not get the justice you are entitled
to. Writing about the American context, the Fields sisters make a similar point:
‘Like a criminal suspect required to confess guilt before receiving probation, or a
drunk required to intone “I am an alcoholic” as a prerequisite to obtaining help,
persons of African descent must accept race, the badge that racism assigns to them,
to earn remission of the attendant penalties. Not justice or equality but racial justice
or racial equality must be their portion.’
The continued requirement of racial identification in UCT’s application form reveals a
failure of imagination on our part. Damaged as we are by the experience of
apartheid, we find it hard to envisage a future in which South Africans do not see
each other through the spectacles which Dr Malan and Dr Verwoerd welded onto our
noses. And because we find it so hard to envisage this future, we do not recognise
that one of the first steps we must take to secure it is to remove the distorting lenses
21
of our racist apartheid past. We must refuse, collectively, to continue seeing the
world, and each other, in the way which the racist apartheid project required.
It is possible to do so. We have a policy in my family that none of us refers to race.
As a result, my six year old, Lihle, does not see race – at any rate, not yet. Of course
he sees skin colour, and hair colour, and so on. But he does not see race. A few
months back, my daughter’s boyfriend was having supper with us. Lihle turned to
him and said: ‘Rahul, you and I are both brown.’ But that was not a case of Lihle
seeing race, and certainly not race as constructed by the racist apartheid state. For
then he would have said: ‘Rahul, you are Indian but I am black.’ – which he did not
say.
Were I an idealist, I would now propose that all reference to race or population
groups, as well as any requirement of racial classification, be removed from UCT’s
application forms. Like the Fields sisters, I would argue that what matters is not racial
inequality and racial injustice, but inequality and injustice full stop. And I would argue,
as they do, that a continued focus on race, on the one hand, is not necessary to
achieve equality and justice and, on the other, is likely to blind us to, and therefore
also to leave uncorrected, many of the inequalities and injustices that plague our
society.
But I am enough of a realist to curb my ambition a little. I therefore propose, as a
compromise, the following:
No applicant should be asked to state whether he or she actually is ‘black’,
‘coloured’, ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ or ‘white’, or is a member of a population group so
described. Instead, applicants should be asked to which of these groups the racist
apartheid state most probably would have assigned them.
This way of posing the question makes visible the historical contingency of this racial
classification and its connection with the racist programme of the apartheid state. It
therefore helps to guard against the naturalisation of these racial categories, and
against the entrenchment of the belief that they are an inevitable biological or cultural
fact. It also avoids the Faustian compact spoken of earlier: an applicant entitled to
redress would not be required, as the price for getting it, to treat as true one of the
racist apartheid state’s great falsehoods, namely the claim that there are black
persons, and coloured persons, and Indian persons, and Chinese persons, and
22
white persons, and that each of these are a kind of person essentially different from
every other.
31 Oct. Admissions policy debate at UCT – Power FM
Debate about UCT’s admissions policy does not seem to go out of fashion. Is there something wrong
with using racial categories in universities admissions policy? Not sure why this is a debate only about
UCT because it affects all of our tertiary institutions and the way they design their admissions policies.
The presenter says he thinks race based policies are acceptable in order to redress past injustices.
He further says he can’t understand why people find it problematic that universities use race based
policies as tools of redress, when apartheid used race to disadvantage people. It wouldn’t be possible
to capture all the legacies of apartheid when you try to have a policy of redress based on socioeconomic needs rather than race. The presenter reads a comment by a listener who says it is
important to keep the race based policy in order to ensure a flow of black students through the higher
education system. Another listener comments that race based policies perpetuate racialism in a
society.
http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/email/PowerFM.AdmissionPolicy.31Oct2013.mp3
http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/email/PowerFM.AdmissionPolicy2.31Oct2013.mp3
http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/email/PowerFM.AdmissionPolicy3.31Oct2013.mp3
23
5 Nov. Mangcu just muddies the water on UCT's admissions policy –
David Benatar
24
8 Nov. UCT professor “troubled” by persistence of racial tags
25
8 Nov. There is no such thing as “race” – Anton Fagan
26
11 Nov. Why UCT’s admissions policy is the right one for our time –
Insaaf Isaacs
20 Nov. Race may not be biological, but it's part of life - Irma Liberty
PROFESSOR Anton Fagan asserts that "There is no such thing as race" (Cape Times
Insight, November 9). Well, I suggest you try telling that to the 47 distinct tribal
groupings in the Amazon equatorial forests, or perhaps the Maori, or the Inuit of
British Columbia, or the Laplanders, or the Bushmen (as they now prefer to be
called), or those from outer Mongolia, or even the mixed-race Basters of Rehoboth
in Namaqualand (who will tell you in no uncertain terms "We are Basters, not
Coloureds" — see PhD thesis of Professor John Sharp).
Race, we now know, is not biological, as Fagan agrees: we do not classify people
according to the shapes of their eyes or noses or heaven forbid, the colour of their
skins (we know that skin colour is entirely the result of the differences in the volume
of UV rays at the Equator and the tropics — see the work of the American
researcher, Professor Nina Jablonski). But that race is political, social and ideological
is no trivial matter. Culture is not a racial category, but it is very important to people,
and is a signifier of their difference or distinction as a "population group". This is not
static, but changes over time.
The Inuit of British Columbia in Canada, for example, have reconstituted themselves
as a "group" after much social fragmentation by rediscovering their culture, and
have thereby revived their dignity and group pride. The Bushmen cling to their
culture in the face of severe social fragmentation. We want to move towards not
"seeing race", of moving beyond racism and racial classification. "Racism" and "racial
27
classification" are not the same as "race". These terms have become loaded because
of the racist ideology of apartheid in South Africa, and slavery and racism in the
USA.
I believe that I, as a mixed race person of African, European and Asian descent, do
not "see race", but it is a reality in the lives of vast numbers of people. We can
certainly teach young children to be grounded in their "humanness", and completely
ignore skin colour. That is our hope for the next generation, and proper schooling of
a moral and ethical nature will be required to support this. But for the present, we
have to take into account peoples' lived realities, and allow them their sense of who
they are, without imposing theoretical politics upon them.
The recent case before the Labour Court of the nine coloured Correctional Services
officers who were passed over for promotion by black Africans is a case in point.
This was a political act on the part of the ANC government, which willfully ignored
the demographics of the Western Cape, as they wish to re-colonise the area with
black people from other regions, making the coloured people footballs in their
political games.
The racist ideology of the ANC was very clear in this case, (and in too many other
examples to mention) and the coloured people have no alternative other than to
fight back ideologically. I do not have a PhD in anything, so I would not venture to
argue how UCT should solve its admissions policy. Perhaps Fagan's solution should
be considered, whereby applicants stipulate to what group they would have been
assigned under the old system. To say that "I am coloured", is not the equivalent of
saying "I am a witch", as Fagan seems to suggest.
Irma Liberty, Rondebosch
28
24 Nov. Using apartheid's vile tools to try to redress its legacy – Dr
Max Price
29
25 Nov. New admissions policy placed on back-burner
30
25 Nov. UCT delays new admissions policy
25 Nov. Affirmative action – Cape Talk
UCT’s Associate Professor Xolela Mangcu, speaks about the necessity of using affirmative action as
a policy of redress. This is in relation to discussions within the DA about race based redress
measures. Mangcu says affirmative action is a typically middle class type of public policy, and those
who oppose it, think it’s going to take much more out of them than it can actually ever take. But this
isn’t true, because affirmative action is an ameliorative policy; it is a middle of the road type of policy
which was designed by the western world to deal with an historical challenge. Speaking of the
situation at UCT, Mangcu said we need to retain the policy we have, but in choosing the black
students we choose, we must go about it in a different way than we have been currently doing.
“Choose students with leadership experience and potential, because academic scores say very little
about how one will do in a university set up.”
http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/email/CapeTalk.AffirmativeAction.25Nov2013.mp3
31
27 Nov. ANC slams UCT for new admissions draft policy
32
27 Nov. Structural racism: the invisible evil - Pierre de Vos
The Democratic Alliance (DA) finally bit the bullet and admitted that race still matters in South Africa
and that race-based redress measures remain necessary to address the effects of past racial
discrimination. However, like other liberal institutions (such as the University of Cape Town), the DA
sees race as a proxy for disadvantage and hope, over time, to rely on other indicators of
disadvantage to effect redress. This view fails to address the structural racism deeply embedded in
society and also fails to confront the continued negative effects of structural racism in South Africa.
On a recent trip to Thailand I was struck by the fact that every single model in advertisements
on billboards and on television was far lighter of complexion and far more “European”
looking than the average person in the street. (I deliberately use the contested, racially loaded,
and deeply problematic term of “European” to allude to the often-invisible but prevalent
assumptions in most societies that have been economically, culturally and socially colonised
by the West that white “Europeans” are the norm against which all others are implicitly
measured – and often found wanting.)
It also reminded me of a visit to India when I pored over the personal adverts for prospective
spouses in the Sunday edition of Times of India, fascinated by the fact that many of the
adverts extolled the virtues of the potential marriage partner because of his or her Harvard
degree, Green card, and, most importantly, “wheatish complexion”.
These anecdotal examples hint at the dominant normative assumptions about white
superiority that are so deeply embedded in modern society in our globalising world that they
can easily appear to be normal and natural when, in fact, they are nothing more than a
manifestation of structural racism.
If you care to look with a critical eye, you quickly spot the myriad of ways in which popular
culture, workplace rules and practices, academic discourses, social norms and standards, rules
that validate certain types of knowledge and discount other types of (often indigenous)
knowledge, and commercial advertising send out (sometimes explicit and at other times
concealed) messages that normalise and even celebrate the superiority of white Western ways
of being in the world.
If you happen to be white, it may be more difficult to become aware of how your view of the
world and of yourself is held up as the norm and as superior to other ways of being in the
world. You might find it difficult to accept that this helps to validate you and prepares you for
success in the world.
This is so because when you experience the world as an insider, as someone who does not
really have a race or a culture that is systematically denigrated and held up as inferior, you
may not realise that you are lucky (one should say privileged) enough to have your general
disposition and belief system (if not always all individual traits and actions) held up as
normative, as ideal, as “just the way the world is” or “ought to be”.
33
You might not realise that this position of privilege grooms you for success, signals to you
that success is nothing less than your due. It creates a world in which others assume that you
are competent, hard-working, honest, intelligent, socially well adjusted and appropriately
ambitious.
This bestows enormous privilege on all white people – regardless of their class, educational
background or personal characteristics and attributes. Us white people are immensely
privileged in that the monstrous actions of fellow whites are almost never imputed to us as a
race. Few people would argue that white people are inherently dangerous, violent,
duplicitous, greedy or dishonest because of the actions of an individual who happens to be
white. When we walk into a job we are almost never required to prove ourselves and unless
we fail spectacularly we are assumed to be competent and well suited for the job.
Think about this: white people are absolved of being judged collectively because Hitler killed
6 million Jews or because Stalin killed between 20 and 60 million of his countrymen and
women. When a citizen of Germany, or Poland or the United Kingdom is unhappy with the
actions of his or her government, you are hardly likely to hear them exclaim (thinking of the
Holocaust, Bosnia and the Gulags): “this is Europe, so what can you expect?”
Political activists in Greece or Italy or France would never dream of warning that their
country runs the risk of turning into another Putin’s Russia or another Bosnia. Because Putin
is white, few will assume that his despotic actions sends a warning about the general
disposition of white politicians all over Europe to become despotic.
Few people impute greed and dishonesty to white people as a group because Brett Kebble
was a crook or because Barry Tannenbaum allegedly cheated investors out of more than R12
billion.
When the so-called Modimolle Monster was convicted of masterminding the rape of his wife
and the murder of her son, no one made assumptions about the murderous nature of white
people in general and started profiling middle-aged white Afrikaner men as family murderers.
And when a 17-year-old white farm boy from Griquatown is charged with the murder of his
younger sister and his parents, few people wring their hands and talk about the violent nature
of white youth.
And despite the fact that the vast majority of white South Africans actively or passively
supported and benefited from Apartheid, there is no master narrative embedded in our culture
– despite tentative attempts by anti-racists to create such a narrative – that characterises white
South Africans as inherently evil, prejudiced, arrogant, greedy and heartless. It’s a bit of a
miracle, really, brought to you courtesy of structural racism.
Yet it is striking how often the action of one black person is explicitly or implicitly imputed
to black people as a group. Despite living in an entirely different country with different
dynamics, a different political economy, a different social reality, the warning often rings out
that we are in danger in South Africa of turning into another Zimbabwe. And be honest,
fellow white South Africans, have you ever encountered a bad driver, an unhelpful
government official, an incompetent colleague and (at last for a second) thought that this is
not surprising because the person happens to be black?
34
I would contend that because of structural racism, white people are almost always viewed as
individuals who are assumed to be competent and virtuous until they prove otherwise, while
black people are almost always viewed as representatives of their race who have to prove
themselves to be thought of as being “as good” as their white colleagues or fellow students.
By structural racism I mean the entire system of white supremacy described in anecdotal
forms above. I am not talking here of gross forms of individual racism in which a person
knowingly and flagrantly displays racial prejudice. I am talking about the assumptions about
white superiority and whiteness as the assumed norm of goodness and competence that is
diffused and infused in all aspects of society, including our history, culture, politics,
economics and our entire social fabric.
As such structural racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism – it is not
something that could possibly have disappeared in 1994 when political power was formally
handed over by the white minority. Because of the way in which structural racism normalises
white dominance and superiority, it entrenches and perpetuates inequalities in power, access,
opportunities, and treatment. This is not necessarily done knowingly and intentionally: the
power of structural racism is exactly its ability to make itself invisible. This allows its
beneficiaries to deny its existence (and genuinely believing in its absence) while benefiting
from it.
Structural racism is more difficult to locate in a particular institution because it involves the
reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually
producing new, and re-producing old forms of racism.
If you accept that structural racism still permeates our society (as I do), then it is impossible
to view race as an (inexact) proxy for disadvantage. Instead, you are forced to accept that
structural racism continues to operate in ways that disadvantages all black people regardless
of their class, educational background or social status. You may be – as the cliché has it – the
child of Patrice Motsepe, but you are still required to operate and become successful in a
world in which the rules are made by and for the benefit of those who do not look like you
and speak like you; for those whose experiences prepared them for success in ways that your
experiences could not.
Of course, your chances of success as a black person in a world in which structural racism is
a defining characteristic will be far better if you happen to be middle or upper middle class, if
you were at least partly “assimilated” into the dominant white norms by having attended an
exclusive private school or having attended an elite University like UCT. But your life will
still be a relative struggle compared to the life of a middle or upper middle class white child
whose culture, world view and race is the embedded norm in the society.
Because of structural racism, race is not a proxy for disadvantage – it is always and remains a
form (if not the only form) of disadvantage.
You do not address the consequences of structural racism merely by creating opportunities
for black people to “assimilate” into the normative white world. Instead, you transform the
society and challenge the basic meaning-giving assumptions according to which society
operates and in terms of which goods, services and opportunities are distributed. In short, you
attack and dismantle white privilege, which is the flip side of the coin of structural racism.
35
Some of us call this transformation.
For most of us whites, this prospect is both scary and threatening. We stand to lose not only
our relative and unearned advantage in the world (which we enjoy solely because of the
cultural, social and economic assumptions of superiority linked to our race), but also our
sense of well-being, our sense of being inherently virtuous and superior, of never being
judges collectively for the evils done by others who happen to be identified as white.
But the corrosive effects of structural racism poison a society, make it more difficult for
people of talent to thrive merely because of their race. Structural racism makes the society
less successful because it fails to harness the talents of all members of that society fully. Even
white South Africans not convinced of the ethical or moral necessity of dismantling structural
racism, must understand that in the long term it is in their own interest to challenge structural
racism in order to ensure that our society will benefit from the full talents of all and will reach
its full potential. DM
1 Dec. The triumph of black racial communalism – RW Johnson
RW Johnson
01 December 2013
RW Johnson says this tendency conquered the Mandela ANC, then the SACP and now the DA
The triumph of communalism
During the middle 1990s I used to see Helen Suzman more or less weekly. Buoyed
by her friendship with Mandela, Helen was keen to give the new government the
benefit of the doubt. This gradually became harder and harder and nothing upset her
more than the ANC's insistent playing of the race card which often descended into
open racism. When she expressed her outrage to me I said it was more or less what
I had expected, having known the ANC in exile. "Well I didn't", she said. "I really
believed Nelson when he told me the ANC was non-racial. I am deeply
disappointed." Indeed, she often went off "to give Nelson a good piece of my mind".
They always remained friends but over time he sank somewhat in her estimation.
She regarded the ANC's increasing resort to racism as something he ought to have
resisted: instead he had capitulated to it.
The persistence of discrimination by skin colour
That memory has been much in my mind this last month as the DA, having flipflopped first for and then against the Equity Employment and BEE bills, then reflopped back towards race. "We specifically support race-based redress to overcome
centuries of race discrimination", the party said, apparently unbothered by the fact
that, by definition, past centuries are not something that anyone can overcome. It is
just as well that Helen Suzman is not here to see her own old party capitulate to
"race-based" policies of any kind. That was, after all, precisely why she and the other
Progs left the United Party in the first place. Helen would also not have been fooled
36
by the party's declaration that it believes in "racial self-identification" because, of
course, one cannot have race-based policies and racial self-identification. In practice
all such policies depend on there being some official classification of who is white or
Asian or whatever.
If, after all, it was open for any white to declare themselves African then doubtless
many would do so in order to benefit from BEE and affirmative action - or simply
because their ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years. But the fact that this
is not allowed is because in South Africa communalism is racial. It is not like being
British, for example. Pakistani or West Indians can emigrate to the UK and within a
generation be counted as British - for Britain is not a community defined by race. In
South Africa it is the opposite. South African universities are full of Kenyans,
Ghanaians, Nigerians and so on - and they can all benefit from affirmative action,
simply because they are black. They can gain "redress" for apartheid even though it
was never part of their lives. Despite being foreigners they will be preferred to local
whites simply because of skin colour. Thus in practice, and despite all the
celebration of South Africa having left the colour bar behind, the colour bar is alive
and well - and officially maintained.
So whatever one says, once you accept "race-based" policies you are back in the
land of racial classification. The DA, like the ANC, continues to insist that it is nonracial so now both our main parties pretend to be non-racial while actually applying
race-based policies. However, both of them are hypocritical about this and thus
oppose the notion of a new Race Classification Act. Instead, the responsibility for
sorting people into racial groups is sub-contracted. Thus while I may classify myself
as mixed race (on the grounds that we are all mixed race and that anyway there is,
biologically speaking, no such thing as race) if my employer, in his equity
employment report, reports me to be Coloured he will no doubt quickly get into
trouble with officialdom for mis-reporting the racial composition of his work force.
Similarly, the government has pressed the banks to extend more credit to black and
mixed-race people. The banks have replied that they don't make any note of their
customers' race. The government, which does not want the responsibility for reenacting the Population Registration Act (1950), has then attempted to press the
banks to keep such racial records of their customers under the counter, so to speak.
So how do the ANC and DA carry out their race-based policies? They would be
embarrassed to go all the way back to the pencil test so instead it's simply a matter
of skin colour.
Liberal slideaways
At almost exactly the same time that the DA was capitulating to pressure to be "racebased", another liberal institution, UCT, was doing much the same. Earlier the
university had announced that it wished to move away from using race as a critical
factor in its admissions policies. Indeed, various university spokespersons gave
lengthy accounts of how they would instead, use other factors indicative of social
disadvantage in their admissions process. This was odd enough: as far as one can
see university entrance in this country is now all about totting up various measures of
disadvantage so that it can be sure to admit the most disadvantaged. That is, the
37
notion of intellectual merit - that university places should simply go to those able
enough to make best use of them - seems to have virtually disappeared.
This is a loss to the whole society and, indeed, it is a crime against the future of the
country. Universities affirmatively admit students who are barely literate. After three
years and a good deal of affirmative marking, they leave with a very poor degree although still not fully literate. They then become schoolteachers, very bad ones, as
a result of which the next generation is even more poorly educated than their
parents. And so it goes on. What chance do township school pupils have if their
teachers are semi-literates?
This is not to say that affirmative action cannot sometimes be justified - in marginal
cases it is downright desirable. But as we all know in South Africa it operates on a
mass, systematic scale, not just in marginal cases. The result, inevitably, is a steadily
descending spiral of education and skills. In the parental generation of South
Africans, black or white, who underwent surgery would be safe in assuming that the
person who cut them open would be the top surgeon available, chosen on merit. In
the next generation they will have the considerably less reassuring knowledge that
the surgeon was affirmatively picked on the basis of his or her (racial) disadvantage
and was far from being the best on merit. A society which systematically ignores
merit in such a fashion is committing social suicide.
However, when UCT decided to move away from race-based admissions it quickly
encountered strong resistance from Sasco, black faculty members, the campus trade
unions and black students in general. Immediately it offered a guarantee that a
changed admissions system would see no drop in the number of black students which, of course, meant that whatever it said about abandoning race as a factor, the
university intended to carry on classifying students by race, at least in an under-thecounter way. But Sasco and the rest maintained their pressure so the university has
now capitulated and said it will keep race-based admissions at least for another year.
The power of black African communalism
How should one understand these capitulations? If the DA had found itself under
pressure from, say, its Afrikaans supporters to adopt "race-based" policies, those
supporters would doubtless have been expelled. An analogous fate would doubtless
have faced whites who demanded that admission to UCT be "race-based". But
because the pressure comes from the DA's black caucus or from black faculty and
students, that is another matter entirely. In practice - and, again, whatever is said
about being non-racial - demands emanating from that direction are treated as
privileged.
It is as if these various institutions would like to escape from Verwoerd's South Africa
but in practice they are all pulled back into the apartheid era because in reality most
South Africans, of all colours, were - and still are - convinced by apartheid and feel
insecure without clearly demarcated divisions between the various races. In all three
cases - the ANC, the DA and UCT - what has defeated these attempts to escape has
been the power of black African communalism. Politicians of all parties are
frightened of this. Mandela, who began by trying to persuade whites not to emigrate,
was soon accused of being too keen to appease the whites and quickly reversed
38
himself, saying that if whites wanted to leave, well good riddance. Similarly, when he
was told that speeches about Aids did not go down well in the black community, he
stopped making such speeches - with the dire results that we know.
It is sensible to refer to this phenomenon as "black African communalism", even
though one can often find Asians, those of mixed race and sometimes even whites
riding along opportunistically, hoping to get something out of the deal. One of the
clues to this is the uniformly strong opinions of the black commentariat about how
the DA has offended the black vote by its uncertainties over BEE and affirmative
action. The press published many such articles. They were all very poorly argued
and dealt only in generalities: it was just seen as axiomatic that anything less than
full-on support for BEE/affirmative action (AA) was anti-black. Not even one of these
commentators dealt with any of the complex arguments which exist about these
matters. This was a classically communal reaction.
Secondly, this attitude was shared by many who are either themselves unlikely to
qualify for BEE/AA or who would strongly deny that they have benefited from AA in
their own careers. It was enough for such people that BEE/AA might bring some
benefits to some members of the "black community" for them to be in favour of it, a
classically communal reaction.
The nature of communalism
One of the key features about communalism is the vertical identification of interests.
In this it greatly resembles the notion of politics held in 18th century England when it
was held that what was (and should be) represented in Parliament were not
individuals or parties but interests - the landed interest, the trading interest, the
ecclesiastic interest and so on. Thus the landed interest was taken to include all
those who worked on the land. It mattered not that farm-workers and small farmers
had no vote, they were all "virtually represented" by the presence in Parliament of
great landowners who had "the landed interest" at heart. Integral to this notion was
the thought that patronage would flow down from the great landowners all the way to
the farm-workers - at least in the shape of jobs and perhaps in other types of
patronage as well.
It will be seen that such an attitude fits rather well anyone acculturated to a system of
traditional chieftaincy. Such a system is dominated by the great chiefs or other "big
men" who then distribute patronage among their loyal followers, so that the whole
community coheres as one - indeed, it is a key feature of such communalism that the
community must all share the same opinions, the same political loyalties etc. One
can see this displayed in any number of cases in South Africa, for example, in the
large and fanatical following of John Block, the Northern Cape ANC leader. The fact
that Block has been accused of all manner of corruption clearly doesn't matter to his
followers. Block is their "big man" and will distribute patronage among them so that
they are "virtually represented" in his successes or failures.
Ever since 1994 a great deal of South African life has been taking place in a sort of
fairyland in which merit does not count and in which racial symbolism is just about
everything. One of the less observed facts is the way in which South Africa's
communists have also capitulated to black African communalism. Karl Marx, after all,
39
showed that communities were divided along class lines and that workers around the
world, whatever their racial differences, would enjoy a common interest in opposing
the capitalist class. But in effect the SACP has now completely abandoned this in
favour of communalism - they are among the most vehement in demanding BEE and
affirmative action, even though such measures can only help the black haute
bourgeoisie. Indeed, this has led to the notion that fighting for the strongest possible
form of BEE/AA is somehow more progressive, more left-wing and so on.
This is, of course, nonsense. Communalism is neither left nor right wing. It is simply a
primitive form of community organization. The birth of India and Pakistan was
accompanied by bitter fighting between Hindus and Moslems which left millions dead
and the country severed in two. This was communalism taken to its logical extreme:
it mattered not which social class you came from, you were a target if you were in the
"wrong" community. The same logic operated between Hutus and Tutsis in
Rwanda in 1994 or during the wars of religion in Europe. Communal conflict is far
worse than class or national conflict because it is blind. Everyone with whom you
share a tribal origin, a religion or skin colour - is your friend. Everyone with whom
you don't share these things is to be discriminated against or, in the last analysis,
fought. Communalism should be resisted not only by liberals but by Communists
and, indeed, by anyone who is sane and rational.
None of this can be honestly owned up to because everyone wishes to subscribe to
the myth that notions of there being a "right' and "wrong" skin colour disappeared
after 1994 or even 1990. Yet the truth is that in contemporary South Africa skin
colour trumps merit just as it did under apartheid. This dissociation of merit from
achievement has catastrophic effects, of course. It is possible for a central command
economy such as Stalin's USSR or Mao's China to continue for some time on such a
basis because these countries were cut off from the world. But in a country that is
part of an international world, which has to compete with multiple rivals, such a policy
is virtually suicidal. It should really be the job of the Official Opposition to point this
out but, guess what, they have just decided that putting merit first is "almost racist".
Communal ownership of history
Another key aspect of this communalism is that each community in turn is assumed
to "own" its own history in a way that does or does not make it a candidate for
"redress". This has effects which are beyond ridiculous as we have seen in the case
of foreign black academics in our universities. Or, to take another example, my son
is white but he is married to a black woman. She has an MBA, speaks several
European languages, also has a degree in Mandarin and used to work for an
American bank in Bejing. Her family background is modest but she is a perfect
example of how education empowers. She owes her career entirely to merit. Now
she and my son have in turn had a son, my grandson.
In terms of South Africa's communalist thinking he would therefore be classified as
Coloured and he would be regarded as disadvantaged because he could lay claim to
victimhood (and thus "redress") through the history he would then be imputed to
own: the ill-treatment of the KhoiSan, their enslavement, the sins of apartheid, Group
Areas removals from District Six and so forth. In fact this would be complete
40
nonsense for none of these things happened to either of his parents or their families.
In fact his parents are highly paid and he is quite privileged.
South Africa, praise the lord, has more and more such mixed couples. Clearly they
are a problem for ANC/DA thinking. If they are going to commit ourselves to "racebased" policies they will need to have a clear straight line about who counts as what:
the logic would be a return to the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and the
Immorality Act. Similarly, we could enact a Racial Preference/Job Reservation Act
which confirms that because of their skin colour foreign blacks should be given
preference over others in the upper levels of the country's labour market.
This applies only at the upper levels because there are not enough black South
Africans to fill all the jobs at that level. At the labour market's lower levels there are
plenty of black South African applicants so the government frowns on employers
who prefer Zimbabweans and Malawians over local blacks. The principle at work
here is thus a communal one: racial black communalism must rule throughout the
labour market so that if there aren't enough black South African applicants a racial
black preference must still be applied.
The evolution of the DA
What to make of the DA's evolution? It claims to be "non-racial" in order to keep the
vote of the minorities and also promises "race-based policies" in order to woo the
African middle class. This reminds one of the United Party's adoption of "Race
Federation". I used to traipse around UP meetings in order to embarrass its MPs by
asking exactly what the policy meant. None of them knew. The most honest answer
that I got came from Radcliffe Cadman (later Administrator of Natal) who told me
with some asperity that "We had to have a slogan to counterpose to apartheid. On
the one hand we wanted to say bantustans were dangerous and wrong and on the
other hand we needed to re-assure (white) voters that we would retain baaskap."
"Race Federation" was, in other words, a slogan which could be decoded differently
by different groups of people, according to taste.
It would probably be kindest to view the DA's current "non-racial but race-based"
stance as a similar piece of coded messaging. There is no doubt that the party's new
stance is a defeat for the liberal tradition but it is too soon to say whether it will mean
the end of that tradition. But one senses that more such moments are ahead if the
party succeeds in making itself an alternative career path for young black middle
class politicians - surely the party's future. The problem is that only the party's old DP
core is firmly rooted in the liberal tradition but that tradition is far weaker amongst the
party's more recent recruits - ex-Nats and certain of its Asian, Coloured and African
voters. The most important thing the party had to do was to work hard to convert
these new recruits to a proper understanding of the tradition they had joined - and
this work has not been done, not even at parliamentary level. A hundred and one
lesser things were allowed to matter more than this one vital task.
This failure will have profound effects. Already, we have seen, racial black
communalism conquered the Mandela ANC. It conquered the Communist Party,
which has largely abandoned the championing of class conflict in favour of
community conflict. And it is a force which the universities and other public
41
institutions find it difficult to hold at bay. The great line of defence was the liberal
tradition, which not only resisted in the name of individual rights but in the name of its
refusal to countenance the allocation of resources on the basis of skin colour.
Moreover and most encouragingly, the main carrier of that tradition, the DA,
continued to grow. Now, however, a crucial concession has been made to racial
communalism.
The sad result is bound to be that the party's liberal tradition will become increasingly
submerged as, and if, the party grows. This in turn is likely to have dire results - we
could see DA "big men" with their large Mercs, blue lights and bodyguards, perhaps
even an Nkandla-in-Sandton. In other words, the DA, which has already progressed
some way towards the ANC, could in the end become virtually indistinguishable from
it. Long before that happens voters from the minorities will quietly detach themselves
from the party, retreat into abstention and, like their counterparts in Kenya or
Zimbabwe, will view politics as a spectator sport in which all sides are corrupt,
incompetent and, probably, tribal. It is too soon to give in to such lurid imaginings but
should they ever come to pass there is no doubt that historians will look back to
November 2013 as a great turning point when the liberal tradition began to die
1 Dec. Make quotas unnecessary – William Thomson
42
11 Dec. Higher education: Redress does not mean settling for
mediocrity – Dr Max Price
Max Price
11 December 2013
UCT Vice Chancellor responds to RW Johnson's criticism of his university's admission policies
Seeking redress in higher education does not mean settling for mediocrity
RW Johnson's "The triumph of black racial communalism" (Politicsweb, 1 December 2013) refers. While I do not
disagree with everything he writes, and in particular I acknowledge the growing problem of using race to allocate
opportunities while lacking the instruments to classify by race, Johnson presents a misleading description of
redress in university admissions. I am writing to set the record straight.
Johnson says: "South African universities are full of Kenyans, Ghanaians, Nigerians and so on - and they can all
benefit from affirmative action, simply because they are black. They can gain ‘redress' for apartheid even though it
was never part of their lives." This statement is inaccurate. The University of Cape Town, for instance, only admits
black and coloured South Africans under an adjusted point system. This affirmative action is not applied to
applicants from other countries.
Johnson errs in his interpretation of UCT's proposals for a revised admissions policy (which is not yet approved).
Indeed, these proposals use disadvantage as an additional criterion to increase the academic scores of some
applicants and favour their selection. But this does not mean, as he states, that "the notion of intellectual merit
[has] virtually disappeared". On the contrary, this is precisely a mechanism for ensuring that we select the very
best, since it is patently clear that merit is not the same as marks. Marks are strongly influenced by the school
you go to and your social advantage. If two students achieve the same mark, but one has done so overcoming
the obstacles of socio-economic disadvantage, that student is likely to have more talent and motivation - to be
more meritorious. So taking account of disadvantage leads to a better class of students overall - while
recognising that they will need to catch up initially and be provided with additional support to reach their full
potential. Incidentally, this approach also assists students from disadvantaged backgrounds who may be white,
although in the vast majority of cases, since disadvantage was structured by apartheid along racial lines, the
beneficiaries will be black.
Johnson claims that medical students who are admitted under an affirmative action policy will result in future
generations of surgeons who are "far from being the best on merit". This conclusion is nonsense. Firstly,
repeating the point above, taking account of disadvantage when interpreting what matric performance tells us
about a candidate can improve our discernment of merit. But in the case of medicine specifically, there is no
evidence that matric marks or academic merit predict who will make a good doctor. Yes, there is a threshold
below which students may not be academically strong enough to achieve a good pass in the arduous medical
training. I can assure readers that because of the tough competition, all UCT medical students are well above that
threshold. But once above that threshold, say 70%, students with 95% do not make better doctors than those
with 71%.
Moreover, the many career paths in medicine require a wider variety of talents, from manual dexterity in the
surgical disciplines to personality and social skills for bedside manner, to obsessive attention to detailed
observation in the pathology and imaging specialities, to creativity and lateral thinking in research. There is no
reason to think these qualities are concentrated in the top 1% of school leavers. In the Netherlands, for example,
most medical students are selected by lottery, which draws from a pool of applicants who have all achieved a
minimum threshold of academic marks. This ensures a representative mix of skills, talents, physical, intellectual
and psychological attributes which best serves the profession at large, and thereby the community.
Johnson's allegation of "affirmative marking" is mischievous, at least in the case of UCT. At UCT, although
African and coloured applicants may be admitted under an adjusted score system based currently on race, and
possibly on disadvantage in future, all students must meet the same academic standards to graduate. That this
standard is high is confirmed through the local and global university ranking systems and through surveys of
employers. It is also confirmed by countless parents who were at UCT in the ‘70s and ‘80s, who will attest that
43
their children at UCT, having come from excellent schools, still have to work harder than they (the parents) ever
did.
Finally, Johnson states that the reason UCT has postponed reviewing its admissions policy for one year is
because of pressure that was brought to bear on the university by the South African Students Congress (SASCO)
and the ANC, in support of black students and faculty members. This is part of his argument about the pow
er of "black communalism". This is factually incorrect. The reason for the delay is a logistic one: there would be
difficulties in implementing the new systems required by the first quarter of 2014. But his view also falls foul of his
racial stereotyping. The debates in Senate and Faculty Boards have seen many white staff and students (in fact
more white staff than black) defending a strongly race-based admissions policy. To the extent that race as a
criterion is retained in the new policy; this will be because the overwhelming majority of academic staff, who also
happen to be white, choose to retain it in secret ballot votes where they are not subject to pressures of political
correctness. It's because they believe it is right. That Johnson may not agree with them or may not understand
their arguments does not mean they have succumbed to the pressures of so-called black communalism. In fact,
an increasing number of black students are now opposing UCT's race-based policy, because they do not want
fellow students to assume that they were admitted with lower marks than their colleagues.
If and when a new admissions policy is implemented at UCT, it will continue to uphold the two principles
underlying our current policy: first, that UCT is committed to attracting the best students across South Africa, from
all walks of life; and that UCT is committed to helping to provide redress to South Africans who were affected by
apartheid, and in this way to help transform the country and prepare it to contribute to the growth of Africa and the
world.
Dr Max Price is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town
17 Dec. UCT's racial admissions policy: A reply to Max Price – RW
Johnson
RW Johnson says there is something quite Canute-like about the university's efforts to define and redefine race
and merit
A Letter to Max
In November 2012 I wrote a piece criticizing Judge Dennis Davis, the political and TV judge which led Max Price,
the vice-chancellor of UCT, wrote to the Cape Times to denounce me for being "scurrilous". I was asked by some
why I had made no reply to this accusation. For me this was awkward. Max had been my student at Magdalen
College, Oxford, and there is a sort of code of honour that unites tutors and those they teach such that they
would not normally criticise one another in print. I decided that if Max had broken that code, it did not mean that I
should. I had, after all, publicly saluted his election as vice-chancellor.
Now, however, Max has gone some way further by penning an article on PoliticsWeb which repeatedly criticises
me by name in connection with views I had expressed over UCT's retention of race as a key factor in student
admissions. It seems that I have little option, albeit reluctantly, but to enter the lists in order to reply.
The varieties of affirmation
First, Max indignantly denies that Kenyans, Nigerians and other foreign African students benefit from affirmative
action in UCT admissions. I am afraid he has misread me. I had referred to this phenomenon at faculty level, not
student admissions. It is indubitably true that a large number of African faculty members from elsewhere in Africa
have got jobs in South African universities, often in preference to perfectly able non-blacks who are South African
nationals. It is difficult to interpret this as other than an advantage enjoyed through skin colour.
Second, affirmative admissions. I practised this for many years at Oxford. If we had one applicant who was an
Etonian with 3 As at A-level and another who was from a northern comprehensive with 2 As and a B, of course
44
we always took the latter. They were much the more meritorious and one actually got better students as a result,
as well as helping the less privileged. But the thing to notice is that this was on the margin.
Max, on the other hand, commits himself to the view that, in the case of medical students (or, presumably, any
others), it doesn't matter whether an applicant gets 71% or 95%. I have never operated admissions on such a
basis and am surprised at any university that does. A gap of 24% is over a third of the lower applicant's mark and
certainly cannot be regarded as marginal. To accept a gap that wide - so that one might turn down the 95%
student for the 71% one - is to allow non-academic factors (such as race) a predominant role which is simply
incompatible with the purpose of a university.
High marks do mean something; either that the student is more intelligent, or works harder, or both. In either
case, such traits are highly germane to the purpose of a university.
Third, affirmative marking. I cannot comment on whether this takes place at UCT or not but I do know that it
exists in many South African universities. It is often quite a subtle business. Thus, when I was teaching at the
University of Natal in many of my Oxford long vacations, one was often faced with classes with a great mix of
races and abilities. At that time the top students tended to be whites and Indians, the lower ones Africans. In the
former case one was usually trying to sort out who should get 1sts, 2.1s or 2.2s. In the latter case most students
were clustered around the pass/fail borderline.
When I discussed this with colleagues we realised that in effect we had two quite separate marking systems so
that the real gap between a top student (at, say, 80%) and one just scraping a pass at 40% was not a gap of 2:1
but probably 4 or 5:1. This happened more or less naturally because, as we knew, the university was anxious to
pass African students wherever possible, so there was often a tendency to be a little generous on the pass/fail
line. No one ever failed with 37%, 38% or 39%; charity prevailed and they would be whooshed through with 40. I
know that at the University of Durban (Westville) all such tendencies were considerably magnified. Colleagues
there told me that they were so desperate to award some higher marks that they would lower all standards
downwards in order to be able to do so.
Fourth, race. Not long ago an irate Cape headmaster protested angrily that one of his students (an Indian) with
excellent marks had been turned down by UCT while one of his Coloured classmates with far lower marks, had
been accepted. One hears of such cases all the time - very often white or Indian pupils with all distinctions at
Matric who get turned down by UCT and snapped up by foreign universities. I cannot for the life of me imagine a
rationale for turning down a white - or anyone - with all distinctions. In effect one is saying, "No whites thankyou".
The strange case of the Indian who needs no redress
Even more bizarre is the case of Indians. At my old government school in Durban I note that all the top academic
prizes now go to Indians. I don't believe in race having any bearing on innate intelligence, though I'm sure those
Indian boys are clever. What is really striking about them, though, is that they work quite extraordinarily hard.
Natal Indians have a very strong educational tradition: the Indian community has always raised money and
invested it in their own schools. Education is greatly valued and children are brought up to work hard at school.
All of which is extremely praiseworthy. So why should Indians lose out to Coloureds ? They both suffered in the
same way under apartheid. If "redress" was really at work, they would surely be treated just the same. Instead a
crude racial handicap exists. In effect, Indians are punished for being smart and working harder. It was the same
with Jews in Germany.
The white defence
Finally, Max wishes to assure us that the preference for race-based admissions often comes from whites and that
the delay in installing the new admissions process "is a logistic one". (A strange use of the word "logistic", Max. I
think you mean "logistical".) All I can say here is that the news of the hostile reaction to the proposed removal of
race as an admissions criterion by Sasco, Nehawu, Cosatu, the ANC etc was prominently carried in the Cape
Times, with news of the postponement of the new admissions process following hard on its heels. Max also
assures us that faculty members will vote in a secret ballot such that "political correctness" will not be a pressure
on them. What that sentence means is that voting for race is the politically correct thing to do, an extraordinary
admission.
In fact I can easily believe that many whites might vote for race-based admissions because, again, I went through
much of this sort of thing at the University of Natal where, in the late 1980s, Sasco, Cosatu and the ANC all
insisted that a student called Knowledge Mdlalose should not be expelled from the university. The effect was that
45
the more leftish members of faculty quickly fell into line, saying "OK, the cause is mad but the point is solidarity
with the Movement".
Centrist faculty members then also gave way simply because they didn't like the feeling of being on the opposite
side from blacks. Still others would just go with the flow, so only a few "cranks" were left to point out that
Knowledge Mdlalose had several times failed all his exams and stayed on campus purely because he was the
"enforcer" for the boss man who controlled the gambling and prostitution rackets in the residences and who was,
in addition, a Security Police informer. The fact is that whites are capable of voting for some fairly silly things.
After all, they voted for apartheid.
A lesson from Chris Hani
Chris Hani, on returning to Zambia from the abortive Wankie campaign and incarceration in Botswana, was
appalled to find that the ANC there was not interested in those who had fought and died and even less interested
in drawing the necessary lessons from this, the most significant military engagement by MK forces. So Hani and
his comrades drew up a manifesto in which, inter alia, insisted that if the ANC was really going to face up to such
serious matters properly, two things had to happen. First, appointments had to be made strictly on merit, Second,
the movement must be strictly non-racial so that whites, Indians and Coloureds could all make their contribution
too.
The point is that South Africans have been living in a sort of fairyland over matters of race and merit, but this
cannot last. When things get real, get serious, they are going to have to take just the same line that Hani did.
After all, it is a competitive world and no other important country is going to deny merit, put race over merit, or
suggest that 95% and 71% are the same thing. Such things can only be true in fairyland and South Africans can't
all be Peter Pans. They will have to grow up and adopt the norms of the rest of humanity.
The perils of parochialism
Universities can be very parochial places. I remember at Oxford, when computerization was introduced, the
university announced that Oxford would devise its own system, worked out by Oxford scientists, because of
Oxford's "special needs". This was, of course a parochial and ridiculous piece of vanity which collapsed very
quickly as the overwhelming importance of system-compatibility became clear. Soon we joined the rest of the
world in using IBM-compatible machines, Microsoft software and so on, for these were the new world standards.
But at least Oxford was making a fool of itself only with inanimate objects. UCT is sitting down to devise its own
set of rules for the classification and treatment of human beings and it grandly ignores the fact that non-racialism
on the one hand and academic merit on the other are, so to speak, world standards. Max wishes to insist that
there is no lowering of standards at UCT but how can that possibly be true if gifted Indian or white students get
excluded for being Indian or white, or if it is claimed that there is nothing to choose between students scoring
71% and 95% ? Surely, Max, this is definitionally a lowering of standards? This is not rocket science. It's
elementary.
Just look at Australia which used to practise a form of white racial communalism in its immigration policy. That
has long ago been abandoned and Australia welcomes people of any colour if they are talented. Or look at
Silicon Valley. There is certainly no attempt to exclude talented Asians there. The only thing that Americans care
about is merit. Then just ask yourself, where else in the world would anyone make the proposition that students
scoring 71% and 95% are the same ? Not in South Korea, China or Japan. Nor in France, Switzerland or Israel.
Hardly coincidentally, these are all so-called "winning nations".
There is, in other words, something quite Canute-like about UCT, sitting at the southern tip of Africa, trying to
draw up its own particular views about race and about what constitutes merit - in clear defiance of world
standards. Surely it's not a comfortable situation for UCT that it has the only university vice-chancellor in the
world who claims that there's nothing to choose between students scoring 71% and 95% ? The penalty for that
can only be academic, and indeed national, decline.
The problem seems to be that South Africans, black and white, were so deeply convinced by apartheid that they
find it painfully difficult to let go of apartheid-era thinking about racial classification. In effect the Population
Registration Act of 1950 is still being upheld, decades after its abolition. Apartheid itself, of course, was a sort of
parochial nostalgia for the white supremacist attitudes which had once been common across the board but which
were progressively abandoned elsewhere in the twentieth century. But this is the twenty-first century now. The
rest of the world is moving on. It's high time that we joined it.
RW Johnson
46