Closer to home: Student unrest and the welfare function
South Africa's tertiary education
institutions are plagued with apparently endless unrest. This
constitutes a major crisis, not only for those institutions but for the
country as a whole: we cannot do without properly functioning
universities and technikons.
But the phenomenon is also a puzzle. The government, quite clearly,
believes that student struggles had a part to play in the broader
liberation struggle of the 1980s but, in the face of continuing unrest,
campus trashing and the like, is inclined to say 'it's time to stop
such antics now - we must get on and build the country.1 Patently, this
has no effect.
There is, in fact, a real question mark over why student unrest
continues. No doubt the causes are complex and plural. What we need, I
would suggest, is a new 'way of seeing' this phenomenon.
About two decades ago the art critic, John Berger, directed a
remarkable television series - later re-worked as a fascinating book -
entitled Ways of Seeing. Among other things, Berger drew attention to
the way in which the work of the great Dutch masters, including
Rembrandt, had hitherto been presented and analysed by conventional art
historians. Predictably, much of trie orthodox analysis cantered on
issues relating to artistic technique - the use of colour, brush,
paint, the portrayal of light and darkness and so on.
What Berger did, however, was go further and emphasise the material
and cultural conditions prevailing in the Netherlands at the time -
conditions which in another context the historian Simon Schama
characterised as constituting 'An embarrassment of riches' - and show
how this too shaped Rembrandt's work. By drawing attention to the
mercantile success of the Dutch nation and the pivotal role played by
men in the guilds, Berger emphasised how, in addition to his inherent
artistic genius, Rembrandt's work could not but mirror the economic
climate in which he worked.
After Berger, no sensitive observer or art critic could ever again
contemplate a gigantic Rembrandt canvas of grouped male portraits
without being acutely aware of the fascinating link that exists between
17th Century Dutch economic success and the artistic expression of a
golden age.
Borrowing from John Berger's method, let us first examine the
conventional political analysis of contemporary student unrest. Let us
then revisit the same phenomenon from a slightly different historical
and sociological perspective to see whether this does not offer us
another 'way of seeing' and understanding contemporary student
behaviour which often appears as mindlessly violent as it is poorly
directed.
Massification: wave of the
future?
The conventional wisdom - which I think holds sway in government
circles, in most non-governmental organisations, many development
agencies, and among left of centre academics and sections of the
English press - runs along the following lines. The problems currently
experienced in South African tertiary education are, in the main, a
direct consequence of our racially tortured past and more particularly
of apartheid and its appalling policies.
To overcome these inequities there is the need, first, for financial
redress - redirecting resources away from privileged 'historically
white universities' to much neglected 'historically black
universities'. Secondly, there is the need to make sure that the state
helps right the historic wrongs of Bantu education by rapidly
increasing access to an integrated system of tertiary institutions
which are themselves simultaneously developing policies to overcome the
deficiencies of an appalling secondary schooling system.
The daunting quantitative dimensions of this task are outlined in the
government's recent Green Paper on Higher Education Transformation
where it is noted that:
"While it endorses the major elements in the case [made by the 1995
National Commission for Higher Education] for a 'massification' of
higher education, the ministry believes that the report's suggestion
that the participation rate of the 20 to 24 year cohort should be
increased from 21% to 30% over the next 10 years (a rise in student
numbers from about 800 000 to about 1 500 000 in 2005) should be
treated as provisional until more detailed demographic and labour
market analyses are available."
In addition to the call for the so-called 'massification' of tertiary
education, there is also widespread agreement that the sector should
become more firmly rooted in the social, economic and political
realities of the continent. In order to do so, institutions of higher
learning must manifest greater cultural sensitivity by paying greater
attention to the issue of 'Africanisation' which should, in turn, be
coupled to a thorough-
going reform of curricula and syllabi.
Furthermore, existing structures of governance that were shaped by the
old and discredited order, need to make way for 'models of co-operative
governance' which would not only seek to involve a wider range of
stakeholders in tertiary education but, by so doing, also deepen and
strengthen democratic practice at every level of the system. All of
these elements taken together constitute what in the current debate is,
quite correctly, characterised as the process ‘of transformation' in
higher learning.
At first blush this programme of transformation - which reflects some
undeniable political, social and cultural forces at work in
contemporary society - has more in it to laud than to lament. It is
precisely because of these underlying realities that most of us have
come to adopt its ultimate goal as a broadly desirable educational
outcome, and come to confine our criticism as not to the ends it seeks
to reach, but to the means that are used to achieve it.
For most South African citizens it is not the goal of transformation
itself that is at issue, but the questionable means that an often angry
and impatient generation of student activists uses to achieve its
objectives. But even such public criticism there is, is often muted -
more in sorrow than in anger - precisely because the underlying notion
is that much of the activity is directed towards a desirable
educational outcome.
Thus, most of the criticism is based on the assumption that what we
are currently confronted with are simply local manifestations of age
old methods of student protests and riot, and that if it were not for
the impatience of youth which often takes on anti-social forms and a
lamentable shortfall in state financial resources, the instability in
South African tertiary education would probably fall within broadly
acceptable parameters.
Students, migrancy and the extended
family
We may, however, need to abandon these conventional wisdoms and try to
see the problems in a slightly different way. In particular we have to
examine three propositions that flow from adopting a slightly longer
term historical and sociological perspective and a much closer analysis
of the forms of the supposedly 'antisocial' behaviour that current
student unrest takes.
One, that what we are currently witnessing is not so much a classical
manifestation of 'student unrest' released by unrealistic expectations
coming in the wake of a largely peaceful and successful political
revolution, but an insistent plea for the alleviation of acute rural
(and urban) poverty and distress via a youth cohort that is acutely
aware of its responsibilities to the extended family, and which senses
that it can most readily articulate its demands in educational rather
than social terms.
Two, that in accommodating economic demands that seem to come from
ordinary students struggling to survive in the tertiary sector, but
which in reality derive more from a youth cohort deeply scarred by the
ravages of apartheid schooling and poverty, the current government is
in danger of confusing its welfare and educational responsibilities to
the detriment of both.
Three, that seen in this light, the current disturbances in the
tertiary education sector are both less irrational and less
'anti-social' than they seem. Nevertheless, the short term and short
sighted accommodation of problems that appear to manifest themselves
primarily as 'student' demands, might also hold longer term political
and even potentially revolutionary consequences for society as a
whole.
These propositions are perhaps easier to accept once we place them in
their broader historical and sociological context. In this regard there
are two points which South Africans do not reflect on often enough when
they debate economic development and social dislocation.
The first of these has to do with the nature of the industrial
revolution that we are still experiencing, and an acceptance of the
fact that we hardly qualify as an industrialised nation let alone as a
'post-industrial' society. The South African industrial revolution -
only some 135 years old and unlike that of, say, Europe - is taking
place in a society that has not passed through a protracted feudal
period.
Feudalism tended to produce some of the political, social and
cognitive structures that have served as precursors to
industrialisation elsewhere. But the South African industrial
revolution, which was precipitated by primary industry in a colonial
context, was built on a foundation of communally held African values
which - for better or worse - have long been underwritten by the system
of migratory labour.
An unintended consequence of this has been to prolong notions of
social commitment to, and responsibility for, the extended black family
and to frustrate the emergence of the smaller and more self contained
social units that characterise modern first world economies.
Simply put, most of our planners - including those in the field of
tertiary education - simply do not take sufficient cognisance of the
fact that in South Africa we are more often dealing with extended black
families than with the nuclear or single parent families that form the
social building blocks that characterise many contemporary first world
economies. Black South Africans - including most, but admittedly not
all young black South African students - are extremely serious about
their social and economic commitments to their grandparents, their
parents, and their siblings.
The youth avalanche
It is, moreover, a far more central fact than is often realised that
the South African population as a whole has an unusually large number
of young people. Our planners simply do not fully appreciate how
youthful our population is. Recent statistics show that in 1993 over
37% of our population was younger than 14 years of age, and that it may
be reasonably safely assumed that nearly 50% of our population is 20
years old or younger.
When these two additional facts - the preponderance of young people
and their social commitment to the extended family - are inserted into
a context of acute rural poverty, low economic growth, an unemployment
rate of more than 35%, large scale underemployment, and a rapidly
changing education system, there are consequences which extend well
beyond the mere quantitative dimensions envisaged in the proposed
'massification' of tertiary education. Certain of these problems are
already becoming evident in many institutions of higher learning.
Viewed from this perspective it becomes easier to understand why it is
that many young black South Africans see access to a college of
education, a technikon or a university as assuming an importance that
far transcends the intrinsic value that can be attached to a tertiary
education qualification per se. And why it is that many are willing
literally to fight for the right to enter and stay in the sector
regardless of how well or how badly they have been prepared for it by
their secondary schooling.
For thousands of black South Africans, access to tertiary education
has become the difference between having a roof over your head and
being homeless, between being fed for a part of the year or starving,
between owning some clothing or being decked out in rags, and between
meeting your social commitments by sending home small amounts of cash
to your family, or joining the ranks of those who are fully
unemployed.
In the absence of universal conscription to the armed forces,
significant youth employment schemes or the dole, much of the tertiary
education sector becomes, in effect, a sponge which the state - perhaps
unwittingly - uses to absorb thousands of unemployed youth who still
seethe with a revolutionary anger that derives from the injustices of
the recent past.
Higher education's welfare
function
The other side of this rather depressing picture is that over the past
decade our universities, technikons and colleges of education have had
to earmark an ever increasing proportion of their financial resources -
which are in any case declining in real terms - for financial aid to
needy African students.
These intra-institutional budgetary re-allocations to accommodate an
almost insatiable demand for bursaries and loans have produced a set of
highly visible outcomes.
Tertiary education institutions first of all cut back on their
building and maintenance programmes. This results in physical decay
which produces an environment characterised by filth and neglect -
conditions which do nothing to diminish the propensity to riot.
The next part of the budget to absorb a cutback is research which, in
the hierarchy of educational needs, is perceived by some to be elitist
and certainly less important than undergraduate instruction. Finally,
the instruction budget Itself is cut back. The consequence is a
worsening of staff-student ratios, which in turn results in a further
falling off in educational performance, higher failure rates, and a
renewed set of complaints about culturally inappropriate or insensitive
teaching, the need to use only basic English, and the demand to
'Africanise' ever more rapidly.
The physical decay on most of our campuses is very visible and those
who doubt it may quickly enlighten themselves by a quick tour of their
neighbouring tertiary institutions. What is often less well understood
is just how far advanced this process of earmarking funds for
undergraduate bursaries and loans, coupled with declining state
subsidies, has eroded the core activities - research and teaching - at
some of our leading universities.
I give but two examples. Even at two of our most prestigious
'historically white universities' the amount of funds devoted to
bursaries and loans has, over the past five years, outstripped the
amounts allocated to research. At Wits, for example, the research
budget for 1996 was R20 981 000 while R9 800 000 was allocated to
bursaries and loans. In addition, the allocation to Wits students from
the National Student Financial Aid Scheme amounted to R 13 138
128.
Imperceptibly, we are thus turning many of our universities,
technikons and colleges of education into institutions with a
fundamental responsibility for accommodating, feeding, clothing and
transporting - as opposed to simply educating - some of the nation's
poorest and most underprivileged young citizens.
The point comes home even more starkly when it is learned that at one
university in the Western Cape the annual cost of catering, in
residences, already exceeds the university's entire research budget. At
Wits things have not yet reached that point, but the catering budget in
residences now stands at R6 670 000 - much of which is funded through
the university's financial aid scheme since many of the students living
in catering residences are on financial aid - which is already over
two-thirds of the university's research budget of R9 124 000.
it may, of course, be argued that - although not desirable in itself -
the increasing assumption of a quasi-welfare role by tertiary education
institutions at least helps dedicated, committed and focused students
to see through their programmes of instruction without jeopardising
their performances or physical well being. Sometimes, but not nearly
often enough.
There is already a significant amount of qualitative if not
quantitative data which show that many hard pressed black
undergraduates divert large proportions of their loans and bursaries to
the maintenance of their extended families. This they do by foregoing
either their own meals or other needs so that they can make cash
remittances to their extended families - a sort of ghostly parody of
the migrant labour system in which financial responsibilities devolve
upon the village youth rather than upon the village men.
In short, economic necessity dictates that too many of our students
from underprivileged backgrounds use bursaries and loans that emanate
from either the public or the private sector for purposes other than
their own education.
The reality: closer to
home
A few illustrative examples should suffice. The dean of students at
Wits reports that in dealing with cases of students facing 'financial
exclusion', around one in four admits in interview that part of his or
her bursary has been spent on meeting social commitments at home. Since
students know that such expenditure might be regarded as illegitimate
by some, the true figure will certainly not be lower than this and
could be higher.
Moreover, the dean reports that similar trends are visible in the
rollover loan programme - to help those who have met the minimum
requirements to avoid academic exclusion but cannot re-register because
of outstanding account balances.
The programme manager reported that between 1993 and 1997 both the
number of students and the amounts involved more than doubled. Many
students admitted that despite such help and part-time employment, they
still could not re-register for the next year because they had to meet
financial obligations at home.
Thus in a roundabout way students were borrowing from the university -
effectively their banker at preferential rates of credit - to support
families at home. Sometimes this happens simply because students are
holders of ready cash at opportune moments and are asked to lend to
family members -and later such 'loans' prove to be unrepayable.
But the dean of students also reports that at least one in three of
the students he interviews claim that they cannot leave residence
because they cannot now accept going back to live in small rooms which
they share with multiple siblings. This is particularly true of
students in self-catering units. It is not just that to such students
their residence room is their home: they are also relieving pressure on
their family's housing and, often, providing accommodation for family
members arriving in Johannesburg to look for work.
Bread and butter issues such as
bursaries
To which one might add two further illustrative examples: one drawn
from the realm of personal experience and very close to home, and the
other structural, drawn from The National Teacher Education Audit - a
report for the department of education sponsored by the Danish
International Development Agency in 1995.
The new vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Professor
Mamphela Ramphele, addressing the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust
last year, started her talk by noting how she had been the recipient of
an Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Award while she was a student at the
Natal Medical School from 1968 to 1972. There can be no doubt about
Ramphele's ability to focus on her studies, and hers is an undoubted
success story. But she also went on to say:
That bursary award made it possible for me to support my mother and
siblings during the very difficult period following my father's death
in 1967. It was a modest amount by today's standards, but it made an
enormous difference to my life and that of my widowed mother".
A clearer example of the hidden linkage between bursary use and rural
poverty would be hard to find.
Secondly, Rosamund Jaff, Michael Rice, Jane Hofmeyr and Graham Hall,
authors of the National Education Teacher Audit, detected some of the
horrid welfare-bursary-alienation malaise that plagues many colleges of
education, which are often situated in remote rural areas beset by high
unemployment rates, when they noted that:
"The most disturbing finding in the
audit of the college sector was the large proportion of students who
are not committed to teaching and merely want a tertiary qualification
as a means to further study or a job outside teaching... Generally,
students showed little awareness of and interest in wider educational
and societal issues outside political flash points and bread and butter
issues such as bursaries."
It would seem from this and other evidence that important parts of the
education sector have already come to assume as much of a quasi-welfare
as an educational role in our low growth economy.
Put another way, it would seem that for many of our poorest and least
prepared undergraduate students, the short term economic imperative of
gaining entry into the post-apartheid tertiary education sector has
become at least as important as the longer term educational objective.
Moreover, this process is often most advanced in the least developed
parts of our tertiary education system - in our 'historically black'
universities, technikons and colleges.
The economic imperative
Once it is conceded that there is frequently as much of an economic
imperative as an educational objective in -seeking entry into the
tertiary sector it becomes easier to understand student behaviour and
militancy. Admission to, or exclusion from, an institution of higher
learning often involves - quite literally - the difference between life
and death for the poorest of poor black students and their
families.
Academic progress alone ensures continued access to a bursary or a
loan and, like the removal or reduction of the dole in more developed
societies, has consequences that extend well beyond the confines of
certification or graduation.
Seen from this perspective it is easier to understand why it is that
the process of student admission and re-admission is so often
accompanied by violence. Why there is a populist tendency to exert
pressure downward on academic standards (pass one, pass all), and why
all exclusionary processes - but more especially those involving
so-called 'financial exclusions' - are vulnerable to challenge by
riot.
Nor is it surprising that amidst so much apparently mindless student
rioting, canteens and kitchens should become such frequent and specific
objects of attack and looting: what one is seeing is the spectre of
medieval bread riots rather than modern manifestations of student
unrest.
In these struggles one hears much of the 'worker-student alliance' on
campus, which generally means a concerted Nehawu-Sasco front. This is
now easily accepted as an ordinary feature of campus life when in fact
it is not: try getting trade unions and student associations to concert
in this way on, say, British or American campuses and you will see that
such alliances are not unproblematic.
But in South Africa campus cleaners, cooks, security guards, janitors
and lab assistants are often merely older generation migrants to the
city, coming from many of the same rural and small town communities
that their slightly younger brothers, sisters and cousins have come
from to enrol as students. One can often find a real sociological basis
for such alliances in precisely the same considerations of migrancy and
the extended family that do much to explain the character of campus
struggles.
Against a background in which the quasi-welfare function of the
tertiary sector and the hidden class struggle of our most economically
deprived citizens and voters continues to be poorly understood by the
state and an increasingly urbanised middle-class public, the
government's proposal to give priority to the 'massification' of
tertiary education over a better integrated but significantly diverse
system of higher learning, is alarming.
As the French and many other governments in Europe discovered to their
cost in 1968, systems of tertiary education that neglect their core
functions of teaching and research can, in the fullness of time, come
to exact an awful price from society.
South Africa's government needs urgently to think again about how it
intends to incorporate its newly enfranchised, unsettled and
predominantly youthful population. In particular, it needs to give
careful thought to where it wishes to draw the line between the right
of access to tertiary education for adequately prepared scholars and
the legitimate social welfare needs of its rural (and urban)
poor.
Failure to distinguish clearly between these competing demands could
bring about a dramatic increase in the number of poorly educated
unemployed graduates in an economy characterised by a high degree of
unionisation and low economic growth. It is a mixture that has created
a painful history of political instability in, among other places,
post-colonial West Africa.
If one takes such factors into account, campus disputes can no longer
be reduced to a question of whether one is for or against
'transformation', or indeed for or against any of the above processes -
that would be simplistic and would in any case not work. We have to
understand things as they really are if we are to have any chance of
accommodating or managing - let alone changing - them.