Category Archives: Education

[Below is the full and slightly extended text of my Sunday Times article awkwardly titled “While the rich get education, SA’s poor get just ‘schooling’” [8/11/2015]

Looking back on the last 30 days in South Africa you cannot help but conclude that the issue of university exclusion on financial grounds has struck a nerve in the national psyche. There are not many issues in our country where there is universal consensus across issues of race or class, and yet this is one of them.

Deserving students should not be excluded from university because their parents cannot afford the fees. This is unjust, unsustainable and unacceptable as almost everyone now agrees. How we will pay for this is another story – and one that deserves attention – but we all agree that rationing access to limited university positions cannot be based primarily on parental income. Yet, this is exactly what happens in South African schools.

If you can afford to send your child to a former Model-C school or a private school, there is no question about it, you do! I am willing to bet (and AfricaCheck please follow up on this) that there is not a single member of Parliament who sends their child to a no-fee school in our country. Not one. It is an unspoken truth that no-fee schools are for the poor and ‘good’ schools are for the rich. To put this in context, no-fee schools make up the vast majority ranging from 66% to 88%* of schools (depending on if you ask students or principals respectively), and almost all of them are dysfunctional in that they do not impart to students the necessary knowledge, skills and values needed to succeed in life. There are at least 10 different independently conducted nationally-representative surveys attesting to this.

The problem here is two-fold: (1) Most parents cannot afford the fees at these schools since they are frequently as high as university fees (R31,500 per year), and (2) there are very limited places in these schools. Of the 25,741 schools in South Africa only 1,135 are former Model-C schools and 1,681 are independent (private) schools. Put together that accounts for only 11% of total schools. Even if we abolished fees in all these schools – and I’m not sure that is the way to go – you cannot fit 12 million children into 2,816 schools!

I completely agree that a system where access to quality schooling is almost exclusively a function of parental wealth (i.e. our current system) is unjust and must change. But purely from a numbers perspective we simply have to find ways of improving the quality of the 88% of schools that are already no-fee. Thinking about South African schooling as a zero-sum game where there is fixed number of ‘good’ schools will not get us very far.

Why do we have fees?

The reason why we have public schools that charge fees is that policy-makers at the time of the transition were afraid (probably correctly) that if they abolished fees in public schools, all white teachers and white students would go to private schools and we would be stuck with mostly white private schools and exclusively black public schools. Allowing these former white-only schools to charge fees was the trade-off for preventing that outcome. To try and prevent a system that was split entirely on ability to pay, the Constitution declares that no child can be denied admission to a school because his/her parents cannot pay fees.

Yet this is exactly what happens in the majority of cases. How is it that the majority of fee-charging schools manage to maintain a student body drawn primarily from that small subset of the population that can pay fees? Presumably by excluding the ones that can’t pay fees, in formal and informal ways. After speaking to some of the principals of these schools – many of whom are incredibly dedicated and committed to social transformation, I am not under any illusion that there is a simple answer to this or that these are not well-meaning individuals who are trying to maintain a high-quality of education on a very tight budget. Yet the reality remains – . The rich get access to universities and well-paying jobs while the poor get menial jobs, intermittent work or long-term unemployment.

According to the Quarterly Labour-Force Survey of 2014 the South African labour market can be split into four groups with the proportion of the working age population in each group included in brackets:

• Unemployed (broad definition, 35%),
• Unskilled (domestic workers and elementary occupations; 18%)
• Semi-skilled (Clerks, service-workers, shop personnel etc.; 32%)
• Highly-skilled (Legislators, managers, associated professionals; 15%)

The tragic reality in South Africa is that if your parents are in the ‘top’ part of the labour market (the 15%) then you send your children to the ‘top’ part of the schooling system (which charges fees). That gives your children access to university and to that same ‘top’ part of the labour market that you are currently in. If you are in the ‘bottom’ part of the labour-market (the 85%) then the only schools that you can afford and that are available are the second-tier no-fee schools. However, these schools are of an extremely low quality and the only way to get access to university is in spite of them (with a dedicated teacher or an extremely hard-working student) not because of them. In fact grade 8 students attending fee-charging schools (quintile 5) are two to four times more likely to qualify for university than those attending no-fee schools (quintiles 1-4).

Yes there are exceptions to all of the above. Fee-charging schools do admit some students (perhaps 10-15%) that cannot pay fees, and some that pay partial fees. They also offer scholarships and bursaries. Similarly there are some extremely poor no-fee schools that succeed in spite of the odds – often because of a resilient principal. Yet these are exceptions to the rule or apply only to a small minority.

While the education crisis that South Africa finds itself in has its roots in the apartheid regime of institutionalized inequality, this fact does not absolve the current administration from its responsibility to provide a quality education to every child in South Africa not only the rich. After 21 years of democratic rule most Black children continue to receive an education which condemns them to the underclass of South African society, where poverty and unemployment are the norm, not the exception. This substandard education does not develop their capabilities or expand their economic opportunities, but instead denies them dignified employment and undermines their own sense of self-worth.

In short, poor school performance in South Africa reinforces social inequality and leads to a situation where children inherit the social station of their parents, irrespective of their own motivation or ability. Until such a time as the Department of Basic Education and the ruling administration are willing to seriously address the underlying issues in education, at whatever political or economic cost, the existing patterns of underperformance and inequality will remain unabated.

*The 88% figure is calculated using the 2015 Q1 DBE Masterlist and only counting as ‘fee-paying’ those schools that were categorised as “No” for ‘NoFeeSchool’. It is not clear what the fee status is of the schools that are currently listed as “To Be Updated” and “Not Applicable”. For conservative estimates I would go with 66% from the Action Plan (see pg50 here). The figures for the number of ex-Model C schools were also taken from the 2015 Masterlist – see “ExDept”. 

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Dr Nic Spaull, from the Research on Socio-Economic Policy group at Stellenbosch University, is a contributor to the South African Child Gauge 2015, which focuses on youth and the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The publication was/will be released this week by the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town and is available on www.ci.org.za.

• My @Powerfm987 interview on the Child Gauge 2015 where we spoke about education, reading by age 10, school fees and inequality, teacher training, priorities and whether or not government is working with researchers in education (short answer: yes, but probably not enough)

On the 7th of July the Wits School of Governance together with the OR Tambo Foundation and the UNDP hosted the 4th debate in their series. The title was “Implementing the NDP: Achieving Basic Education Goals”, focussing specifically on accountability. I was on the panel, together with Sizwe Nxasana, the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga and Siphiwe Mthiyane. Melissa King and Barbara Dale-Jones wrote an overview of the event for the M&G and you can read that here. I include my opening remarks and one or two comments below.

“Let me start by saying that I have immense admiration and respect for Minister Motshekga. I don’t think there is a single person in this room that is so naïve as to think that your job is easy or uncomplicated. Or that the solutions are straight-forward. In the face of an ongoing crisis in education you have worked systematically and consistently to improve the system by getting the basics in place. And indeed there have been some improvements and signs of success that we should acknowledge and to some extent also celebrate.

Let me highlight the 4 most impressive achievements as I see them.

• Firstly, we now have a solid well thought-out curriculum that has widespread buy-in from all stakeholders- CAPS. We should not change the curriculum.
• Secondly, everyday 9 million children receive at least one free school meal and this is paid for the by the State.
• Thirdly, each child from grades 1 to 9 receives 4 high-quality workbooks per year – 2 for maths and 2 for language. These structure the curriculum by week and provide lessons for teachers to teach.
• Lastly, we now have national tests – the ANAs – that test children in grades 1-9 in mathematics and languages. With the exception of the census this is the largest single data collection exercise undertaken by government of South Africa. It is colossal

In light of these achievements it is prudent to ask why it is that myself and others continually use the word “crisis” or more accurately an “an on-going crisis” when we refer to our education system. It is not because we are ignorant of these achievements or that we do not appreciate their scale and scope, we do. Rather we use this term because it is the only one that reflects the gravity and severity of the picture we find when we look at the nationally representative datasets in education. Let me give you some examples:

• At the end of Grade 4 more than half of our students cannot read for meaning and interpretation and a third are completely illiterate in any language.
• 61% of our grade 9 students did not know that three fifths was equal to 0.6.
• 76% were not minimally competent in maths or science in grade 9 – that do not know about whole numbers or basic graphs. They are 3-4 years behind the curriculum.
• Or if we look at the matric pass rate – that much touted, publically celebrated statistic that is also deeply flawed as a barometer of the system, last year that figure was a respectable 76%. But if we look at 100 students that started school in 2003, only 49 actually made it to matric in 2014, only 37 passed and only 14 qualified to go to university. So the ‘real’ matric pass rate is 37% not 76%.
• And while 14% qualify to go to university, only 10% will actually go to university and only 5% will get a degree. So of 100 kids that start school, only 5 will get a degree. 60 will get absolutely nothing – not a matric pass, not a certificate, not a degree. Nothing!
• In one study comparing the North West and Botswana, at the end of the year our maths teachers had taught only 40% of the maths lessons they were scheduled to teach, compared to 60% in Botswana.
• According to an education report by OECD released this year SA ranked 75/76

Still in 2015 – 20 years after democracy the reality is that most Black children in South Africa continue to receive an education which condemns them to the underclass of South African society, where poverty and unemployment are the norm, not the exception. Where 10 million people live on less than R10 a day. This substandard education does not develop their capabilities or expand their economic opportunities, but instead denies them dignified employment and undermines their own sense of self-worth and agency. In short, poor school performance in South Africa reinforces social inequality and leads to a situation where children inherit the social station of their parents, irrespective of their motivation or ability. Low quality education becomes a poverty trap that is virtually inescapable. This is the antithesis of social mobility. It is unacceptable. It is morally despicable. It is also unsustainable.

So how does all of this relate to accountability and this debate? I would argue that almost all of these problems relate to 2 issues: a lack of accountability, a lack of capacity. Too many people cannot do their jobs and have not received meaningful support and training. For too many people – teachers and bureaucrats alike – there are no consequences for non-performance.

Accountability is not, (or should not be) a vague concept. Accountability is another word for consequences. When there are no consequences for non-performance there is no accountability. It isn’t complicated. Currently there are no consequences for non-performance. Not for teachers, not for principals, not for district officials, not for union leaders, not for bureaucrats, not for DDGs. No one. I must add a caveat that I do not believe you can hold people – especially teachers – accountable for things they cannot do. Capacity precedes accountability. This is why we have to offer our teachers meaningful learning opportunities (which we absolutely have not done) before we can hold them accountable for performance. Absenteeism, misconduct etc. by all means, but if a teacher in rural Limpopo cannot do fractions because she was given inadequate training under apartheid and token in-service teacher training post-apartheid, we cannot speak about accountability for her until she has been given a meaningful learning opportunity. Then we can talk about accountability and board exams and all that but only then.

I believe that the major cause of both of these problems is (1) the politicisation of the civil service and the practice of cadre deployment among bureaucrats and teachers, (2) the networks of patronage that permeate our system, (3) The unhealthy relationship between parts of SADTU and the Department of Basic Education – nationally and provincially, particularly in the Eastern Cape.

This all works to the detriment of quality education for the poor. Minister I honestly believe you have done a lot to improve our education system and you are the best education Minister we have had so far, but two areas where you have not succeeded are ending cadre deployment and developing a comprehensive plan for meaningful teacher development.”

[End of opening remarks]

In what was meant to be ‘closing remarks’ for the debate, the Deputy Minister of Education Mr Enver Surty, attempted to discredit most of what I was saying by arguing, at length, that all of this data I was using was “outdated” and on the contrary that “We have a good story to tell.” For those of us who are specialists in using education data, who are professional researchers adept at  using cross-national education data, who work with it daily and present on it at local and international conferences, this rebuke came as somewhat of a surprise. To set the record straight it is worth emphasising four points: (1) education systems do not change rapidly in the space of 2 or 3 years, see chapter 4 of this paper (2) The TIMSS and PIRLS studies were done in 2011 but the report and data were only ready and released in 2013, 2 years ago. (3) The ANAs are not substitutes for these rigorous inter-temporal comparisons – see here, here, and here. (4) Apart from a 1.5 grade-level improvement in the TIMSS 2002–>2011 maths and science improvement there is no other evidence that the educational outcomes in South Africa have improved. I do not have any reason to distrust the TIMSS improvement, but it’s important to remember just how low the post-improvement level of performance really is and that starting from an exceptionally low base this is not that unexpected at all. I am more than happy to expound any of these points in detail and at length if they are still unclear. This is what I do.

Although it was unfortunate not to have a right-of-reply after the Deputy Minister’s misinformed ad-hominem attacks, I am not particularly concerned because the data and consequent research base speaks for itself. It is clear, unambiguous and well documented. I maintain that we have an ongoing crisis in education and that poor children continue to be condemned to hereditary poverty as a direct result of the low quality education they receive at school. Poor quality education was and is a poverty trap. This should be our biggest source of national shame.

Today the Minister of Basic Education Mrs Angie Motshekga released the results of the Annual National Assessments for 2014 (report here, speech here). This is not my post on the ANA results – I will write an article for next week’s M&G for that. (However, if it were my blog on the ANAs I would talk about how Grade 9’s abysmal results are rooted in Foundation Phase and the early grade ANAs are not accurate reflections of learning. O, ya, and also that the ANASs are absolutely, categorically and unequivocally NOT comparable year-on-year). But as I said, this is not my blog on ANAs.

Instead it is my blog on the Minister’s excellent choice to focus on reading. In her speech today she devoted considerable attention to the importance of reading and highlighted the numerous initiatives that the DBE has undertaken to improve the state of reading in South Africa (see page 20 and 21).

The Minister also makes extensive reference to the 2013 NEEDU Grade 5 Reading Report (draft). Together with Lillie Pretorius’ excellent article, this NEEDU report was the best thing I’ve read on reading all year. To give an overview of the report let me quote from the introduction:

“This report begins with a brief discussion of literacy and the complexity of reading and reading instruction. It gives a short explanation of the difference between decoding and comprehension and the importance of oral reading fluency for understanding and interpreting what is being read. The report outlines the importance of reading norms, and in particular reading norms for a country like South Africa with the large majority of its early readers reading in a second language. Finally, before the NEEDU Grade 5 reading data is presented, the recent and current national strategies and interventions to improve learner reading proficiency are tracked, suggesting that the crises in reading in South Africa is not new, is not unknown, yet persists” (p 4).

I have argued elsewhere that I believe we need to adopt a national education goal in South Africa; “Every child must read and write fluently by the end of grade 3.” Anyone who is seriously interested in education in South Africa and how to improve the state we’re in should read this draft of the upcoming NEEDU report. It is truly excellent.

My new working paper (co-authored with Hamsa Venkat) was released today:  “What do we know about primary teachers’ mathematical content knowledge in South Africa? An analysis of SACMEQ 2007”  (Stellenbosch Economic Working Paper 13/2014)

ABSTRACT:

Primary school mathematics teachers should, at the most basic level, have mastery of the content knowledge that they are required to teach. In this paper we test empirically whether this is the case by analyzing the South African SACMEQ 2007 mathematics teacher test data which tested 401 grade 6 mathematics teachers from a nationally representative sample of primary schools. Findings indicate that 79% of grade 6 mathematics teachers showed content knowledge levels below the grade 6/7 band, and that the few remaining teachers with higher-level content knowledge are highly inequitably distributed.

Full paper HERE.

Picture from an excellent NYT article on mathematics in the US – see here.

For those following the SA media you will have noticed that South Africa has once again succumbed to the World Economic Forum education rankings published every year. This year South Africa ranked  148/148 on the “quality of math and science education.” I was sufficiently angered by these preposterous rankings that I have written an article for the Mail & Guardian which will hopefully come out next week Friday. But in the mean time Martin Gustafsson (of ReSEP and DBE) has written an excellent piece on the matter which I have re-posted below (original here). In short, things are bad, but not that bad.

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Each year the World Economic Forum releases its Global Competitiveness Report which aims to “assess the competitiveness landscape” and “provide insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity.” They furthermore claim that this report “remains the most comprehensive assessment of national competitiveness worldwide.” Included in the report is an indicator of education quality where South Africa performs extremely poorly (133 of 148).

Much of the work conducted at RESEP focuses on education in South Africa, the quality of that education and the links between the schooling system and the labour market. Martin Gustafsson, one of the researchers at RESEP, has looked into the WEF rankings on education and discusses four salient features which explain why the WEF rankings on education are especially problematic.

1. Once again, in 2014 the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has caused a stir in South Africa as, despite a relatively good overall competitiveness ranking (53 out of 148 countries in the 2013-2014 report), a few indicators related to government service delivery, in particular education, put the country amongst the worst in the world, and for some indicators at the very bottom of the ranking. Specifically, in terms of the ‘quality of primary education’ we are at position 133 out of 148; we are at position 122 for the net primary enrolment ratio; position 146 for ‘quality of the educational system’, and position 148 (bottom of all countries) for the quality of mathematics and science at the higher education level. The 2013-2014 report does not really present anything new. Figures in reports from earlier years are very similar.

2. With regard to the educational quality indicators, it is important to bear in mind that the WEF does not make use of any standardised testing system in producing its report. Instead, it makes use of an expert opinion approach. In the case of South Africa, around 50 respondents, all from the ‘business community’, are asked to rate the quality of education along a seven-point scale from very good to very poor. One would expect the South African respondents to rate the quality of South Africa’s schooling poorly for a number of reasons. One is that in South Africa we have good data on our educational quality relative to other countries. In particular, the internationally comparable TIMSS testing system has consistently placed South Africa last, or almost last, with respect to lower secondary school mathematics and physical science, amongst the around 20 developing countries that have participated in TIMSS (the other African countries participating have been Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Tunisia and Morocco). However, there are around 150 developing countries in the world (around 115 included in the WEF tables), many of which have very poor information on the quality of their education systems. One suspects that business experts in these countries would not rate their educational quality too poorly as they simply do not have the required information. In SACMEQ 2007, South Africa came eighth out of 15 countries in Grade 6 mathematics. It is noteworthy that although Lesotho did considerably worse than South Africa in SACMEQ, its WEF ranking for the quality of primary schooling indicator is 120, against 132 for South Africa. This illustrates the problem with subjective data on a matter which is relatively amenable to measurement. I, and others, have tried ‘sewing together’ reliable test-based indicators of education quality, by taking advantage of the fact that some countries participate in more than one international testing system, thus creating overlaps. I found that South Africa’s quality of school education ranks position 106 out of 113 countries, so clearly very poorly. However, just looking at the 88 countries not included in my list of 113 suggests many are poor countries with little in the way of credible testing systems and probably a quality of education below that of South Africa. The bottom line is that test-based data suggest that indeed South Africa’s quality of education requires a lot of fixing, and is well below where it should be, yet the catchy slogan that we are ‘at the bottom of the world’ is not supported by the evidence.

3. With regard to the primary enrolment ratio, it is important to note that UNESCO’s enrolment ratios (the data source for the WEF) are widely regarded as problematic and often not amenable to useful international comparisons due to the fact that UNESCO calculates its ratios using official enrolment totals and official population totals, in other words information from very different data sources. In many developing countries there are strange discrepancies between the two sets of data. The problem for South Africa is that this discrepancy works in the reverse direction compared to most other developing countries. In South Africa, total population figures for children are simply too high compared to the enrolment totals. In most developing countries, the problem is that enrolment totals are inflated. South Africa’s enrolment ratios in the UNESCO reports appear to be relatively poor, but this means nothing and has confused a lot of people. Enrolment ratios derived from household surveys are a lot more reliable and these indicate that South Africa’s enrolment ratios, at least at the primary and secondary levels, are good by international standards. There is an abundance of literature that shows this. The WEF report itself points to the strangeness of the enrolment ratios it uses. According to the report, at the primary level our enrolment ratio is ranked position 122, but at the secondary level it is ranked 55. This raises an obvious question: How can enrolments at the secondary level be relatively good when at the primary level they are poor, yet the former depends on the latter?

-Martin Gustafsson

Part of Martin’s PhD research involved developing a method to compare the performance of countries on different (sometimes non-overlapping) international assessments of educational achievement. His 2012 Working Paper “More countries, similar results. A nonlinear programming approach to normalising test scores needed for growth regressions” can be found here.

The lack of capacity of the civil service in South Africa is one of the major impediments to improvement in education (and obviously all the other sectors as well). In the spirit of getting competent people into important positions I thought I would draw your attention to two current vacancies in the Gauteng Department of Education: (1) Chief Education Specialist: Education Planning and Information, and (2) Chief Education Specialist: Education Research. The full description (requirements, remuneration, etc.) can be found here, and the deadline for applications is the 13th of June. If you know of anyone who may be interested in the position please do forward this on to them. (If you know of any government vacancies in education and would like them advertised on here please do send them along and I’ll post them on the blog).

The article below first appeared in the Mail & Guardian on the 2nd of May and is also available on their website (see here).

Varsity buildings salute apartheid – Nic Spaull 

This past week we celebrated Freedom Day, commemorating 20 years of democracy in South Africa. Naturally the media reflected on the pressing issues of the day, such as corruption, inequality, poverty and the upcoming elections.

One issue that didn’t feature as prominently was the fact that, 20 years into democracy, Stellenbosch University still has buildings and plaques honouring people such as DF Malan and HF Verwoerd, the founders of apartheid.

We have, for example, the DF Malan Memorial Centre, which is used for indoor sports and graduation ceremonies. Malan was chancellor of Stellenbosch University from 1941 to 1959, and prime minister of South Africa from 1948 to 1954, and he was the very embodiment of supremacist racial ideology and paternalistic oppression.

He was the one who implemented “grand apartheid” and infamously concluded: “The Afrikaner has power over the kaffir. But truly, we would not have possessed this power if it had not been given to us from above. Has God not embedded it with a high and holy calling for our nation?”

Irreconcilable ways of life
This is the same man who believed that the difference between black and white people was “merely the physical manifestation of the contrast between two irreconcilable ways of life, between barbarism and civilisation, between heathendom and Christianity”.

He was a zealous racial supremacist who argued that, in order to avoid being “submerged in the black heathendom of Africa”, the white minority would have to employ “the armour of racial purity and self-preservation”.

Biographical scholarship has helped shed light on what made Malan the man he was and shows that he was obviously a product of his time. But being able to explain his views and policies in no way justifies or excuses them: this man was directly responsible for decades of oppression for millions of black South Africans.

Without any on-site explanation to the contrary – and there is none at the centre – buildings confer honour and respect on their namesakes. Should we really be celebrating and memorialising someone like Malan? Of course, he should be remembered in South African history, but his place is in an apartheid museum, not adorning an important building at a public university.

If you walk across the river from the centre and into the Accounting and Statistics Building (previously called the HF Verwoerd Building), you will still see a large dedication in the foyer: “In grateful memory of the Honourable HF Verwoerd, Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa, after whom this building was named on 3 April 1963 and who on 6 September 1966 died in Parliament in the service of his people.”

Teaching the “bantu”
This “honourable” man was the same one who, when discussing his government’s education policies in the 1950s, declared: “There is no place for [the bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour … What is the use of teaching the bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd.” He is also the one who decreed that it was better “to be poor and white than rich and multiracial”.

But perhaps some would argue otherwise, saying: “What is the harm in keeping the names of these buildings given that they were part of our history and that these were great men at the time?” To this I would answer that any achievements these men may have made have been vastly overshadowed by their heinous crimes against black South Africans.

Nefarious policies
I would also suggest addressing this question to any black student on campus whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were oppressed and subjugated by these very same individuals and their nefarious policies. Names have symbolic power. A black friend of mine who studied statistics at Stellenbosch University told me earlier this year about how, every time she walked into that building, “it served as a constant reminder of where I was and who I am”.

Malan and Verwoerd are by no means the only link between the university and apartheid: indeed, Stellenbosch was the crucible for Afrikaner Nationalist thought in the 20th century. Between 1919 and 1978, every single* prime minister of our country hailed from Stellenbosch University – Jan Smuts, JBM Hertzog, Malan, JG Strijdom, Verwoerd and BJ Vorster – whether as students, professors or chancellors. They then went on to become the architects and implementers of the oppressive apartheid regime of legislated racial exclusivity.

Oddly enough, there is scant mention of any of this on the university website and no mention whatsoever under the “historical background” section. This is a strange omission. Why is there no permanent exhibition or museum explaining the pivotal role that the university and its staff played in developing and implementing the apartheid ideology? One cannot simply sweep this under the rug, especially when you have buildings named after the perpetrators.

As I see it, there are two possible ways forward. Both would involve permanent recognition of the pivotal role the university played in the conceptualisation, implementation and maintenance of the supremely oppressive apartheid regime. Beyond this, one could also change the names of these buildings and remove the plaques.

Half-baked arguments
I have not found a legitimate reason why we should not change the names and put the plaques in museums, only a few legal trivialities and half-baked arguments about keeping a reminder of the past. But these are not benign reminders: they are commemorations, celebrations, remembrances.

Some see poetic justice in black students graduating in the DF Malan Memorial Centre. But at what price? Without on-site explanations denouncing these individuals, their visibility and prominence translate into honour and respect.

One wonders why we commemorate these fathers of apartheid when there are many anti-apartheid Afrikaners who are actually worth celebrating, people such as Antjie Krog, André Brink, Beyers Naudé, Bram Fischer, Nico Smith and Breyten Breytenbach. But we have no buildings named after these honourable heroes. Why is that?

But perhaps some feel that simply changing names is a shallow way of dealing with an inconvenient truth; or worse, that it amounts to whitewashing history. To these people I would say: fine, keep the plaques in place but then install museum-type exhibitions in situ and do so in such a way that there can be no doubt that these men orchestrated and implemented apartheid. They should not be remembered fondly. Given the university’s pivotal role in apartheid, what better place to have the country’s foremost campus-wide apartheid museum?

Remnants of the past
The fact that we are now 20 years into democracy and still see uncritical remnants of the past is all the more peculiar when one looks at some of the positive developments at the university. Last year it voted to make the student residences significantly more inclusive and diverse, and to promote the inclusion of more first-generation students actively. The vote passed 51% to 49% and was a heated affair, but it also marked an important milestone proving that the university is serious about transformation.

Some might argue that the university should not be singled out from other universities and that there are many examples of similarly offensive buildings and plaques at other institutions. Although I would caution that Stellenbosch is different in that it was the epicentre of apartheid, I agree 100% with the sentiment.

Rhodes University and Rhodes Memorial, for example, are named after one of the most despotic, racist and imperialistic men ever to set foot in Africa. This is the deplorable man who infamously said, “I prefer land to niggers” and “One should kill as many niggers as possible”. I focus on Stellenbosch only because I am studying here and I see these memorials every single day.

There is no doubt that it is one of the top universities in Africa. It is functional, entrepreneurial, safe, efficient and productive, and it has begun to make a concerted effort to become a more racially diverse and inclusive campus.

However, it simply has not done enough to acknowledge its role in apartheid and unequivocally distance itself from its infamous apartheid alumni.

Nic Spaull is a PhD student in the economics department at Stellenbosch University. He can be followed on Twitter @NicSpaull

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*This is a corrected version and differs from the printed M&G article. The original M&G article had this as “Between 1919 and 1978, six of the seven prime ministers” which is incorrect and is a small typo from an earlier draft of the article. See here for background info. 

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For those interested in this issue I would encourage you to read Pieter Odendaal’s open letter (2012) to the Rector of Stellenbosch University Russel Botman, Prof Botman’s reply, Johna Fourie’s blog post on this, and the recent article in Die Matie dealing with the topic.

Are there any alternatives to the two options I propose here? If you can think of any please do post in the comments section below.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping abreast of the recent student protests at UKZN (primarily around student funding, housing and fees), you may be interested to hear the latest development which is as sad as it is infuriating. On the 23rd of February four UKZN Masters’ students wrote an open letter to the Vice Chancellor Professor Makgoba criticising university policies and the VC himself. In response to the dissent, the UKZN Student Discipline Office has charged the four students with defamation and ordered them before the Student Discipline Court (see the list of disciplinary charges here).

I’ve just read the letter and while it is verbose, riddled with spelling mistakes and sounds a little like an ill-informed political-manifesto, it is certainly not defamation.  It makes me furious to see the management at UKZN trying to intimidate these students into compliance and, presumably, discourage future dissent. This kind of knee-jerk response smacks of fragile egos and deep insecurities. Universities have always been a hot bed of critique and dissent being, as they are, a collection of intellectuals who usually understand the need for things like free-speech, critical thinking and dissent. Aside from the fact that UKZN’s approach here is morally repugnant and intellectually bankrupt, you also have to wonder, who on Earth is giving this University PR advice?! How did they think this was going to pan out? They presumably thought they were swatting a fly when in fact this strategy looks a lot more like the Dutch boy plugging holes in a breaking dyke, thinking somehow that this is a sustainable solution. Such a pity.

As someone who did their undergrad at UKZN I am a more than a little ashamed that an institution of “higher learning” would take such a thuggish approach to something as harmless as a wordy letter from some politically-ambitious students. It’s called “engagement”/”discussion”/”dialogue”, you should try it sometime…

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Also see the Right2Know write-up here.