The University of Cape Town (UCT) is not an agent of structural change
Universities and tertiary institutions at large have always had these beacons of light bestowed on them. The guide for higher education, and admired by those who cannot access their spaces. They are places that conduct clinical trials, experiments, prepare some of South Africa’s best commercial lawyers, doctors, business people; and yet it really falls flat for me. Every thing UCT has done to show transformation in post-democratic South Africa has fizzled out like a cream soda Double O left open in the sun. We look to higher education institutions to be agents of change, and vocal in it. They should be audacious and leading the front with systemic change not publicity stunts.
One such stunt is not leaving Sarah Bartmaan in peace, but by placing her name on a building with all its roots tied to people like Cecil John Rhodes; benefactors of slavery. The lack of respect is glaring, and this stems from not taking the time or care to learn how indigenous people honoured each other. It is this type of posturing UCT relies on to show they are transformed. They should be reminded that Sarah was used as a spectacle. Her name and her likeness does not belong on a building on stolen Khoi land. But here we are. It is the lack of research and respect that irks me. This trickles down in more ways.
Cape Town is a microcosm for one of Apartheid’s worst legacies; Apartheid spatial planning. Apartheid Spatial planning placed Black and Brown communities away from economic, social and educational opportunities. The further away from the mountain you lived, the darker your skin was. The Cape Flats always fed the worker needs of the white populace of Cape Town.
UCT with an endowment of 11 billion rand has not once thought of expanding satellite campuses to the Cape flats. The Cape Flats being a daily reminder and a literal Apartheid museum of spatial planning. Yet it is also a thriving space filled with culture, economy and many social ills; most of all gangsterism and unemployment. A med school satellite campus has so many benefits. Day hospitals have little staff to see to the medical needs of the communities. One based on the flats could alleviate Groote Schuur (the teaching hospital of UCT).
A Commerce satellite campus can expose the students to how important informal trading is and how functional it is without the frills and fuss of economic theory from the western world. UCT’s architecture students can spend some time in a campus on the flats to work toward a sustainable way to address apartheid spatial planning, on the very shaky ground built to house the Black and Brown bodies forced onto the flats.
I am firm believer in being in spaces, to immerse yourself in it to begin to dismantle and rebuild.
A drama and theatre satellite campus based at Joseph stone auditorium for part of the year can help the surrounding community too. Schoolchildren can perhaps audit classes, be taught Level 1 and 2 of music theory without having to think of where to get transport money to get to UCT campus in Rondebsoch. And get your law school out of moot court please. UCT’s law clinic only deals with very few issues We need the students at cape flats magistrate courts helping address and give support to violent crime, sexual assaults. Perhaps even making sure that victim support at police stations are running the proper protocols in terms of law. That type of hands on experience is unmatched.
A satellite campus takes away the financial burden of travelling, and the mental one of spending 4 hours of each day just to get to a class.
This was a major part of the insidiousness of Apartheid spatial planning on the Cape Flats. People would leave home from 4 am to get to a job at 8 am and rinse and repeat when it was time to go home.
UCT talks a big talk of transformation But it really is showboating and ceremonial. They talk of redress and equity but you empower no one. Eleven billion and all we see is building renamings, so that when someone does a google search UCT looks like these hero’s honouring a woman who had endured the worst in her short life. But hey optics is the name of the game.
They model themselves as the Anglo Ivy girl of Africa but cannot even copy Oxford and Cambridge properly who have colleges peppered all over their towns; that serve their communities with jobs and economy.
UCT needs to show structural change, and expanding satellite campuses to disadvantaged communities is one of the ways it can be done effectively. The drama school, and business school right now is located in prime real estate areas. Areas that do not need their coins and the economic activity a campus brings. The PR alone will give UCT that IT girl status they always crave, but for once it will mean something. It will be tangible. It will create opportunities, jobs and add so much social capital to these spaces that go on for years marinated in neglect and riddled with crime. It is sustainable and wont even cost 1 Billion to do. UCT’s motto is Spes Bona meaning Good Hope. And if you ever climb those steps of upper campus and look out onto the cape flats you realise that hope has to be created and nurtured. AND IF YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES AND CAPACITY, then why am I even writing this today?
UCT boldly says their mission is to actively advance the pace of transformation within our university and beyond, nurturing an inclusive institutional culture which embraces diversity. They have embraced none of this, and should maybe look at how to honour the stolen land it is built on in the proper way, and respecting what is not theirs and never will be by giving back and empowering the communities it looks down on from the top of a very dissonant hill.