Stellenbosch University recently received and made public the report on racism at the institution by former Justice of the Constitutional Court, Emeritus Justice Sisi Khampepe.

The report details the findings of the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of Racism at the institution following two incidents of racial discrimination on campus earlier in the year.

The incident of a white student urinating on the belongings of a black student in one of the male campus residences especially caused major upset for the university community and provoked a severe public uproar, prompting the university to review its actual progress with transformation.

Endorsed and critiqued alike by commentators, the report offers findings regarding the role of institutional cultures, mechanisms and interventions that advance or frustrate transformation. This is, however, not the first such investigation into racism at campuses.

Its terms and findings are similar to those of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions, after a racial incident at the University of the Free State – an incident which, in itself, is uncannily similar to the one at Stellenbosch, with urinating used as a form of protest.

In that instance, white male students protested transformation on campus with a mock initiation programme of black workers to become members of their campus residence by, among others, secretly urinating in food, which they then offered to the workers.

While the contexts of the incidents and the interventions that followed are different, the two reports offer a powerful resource to track progress with higher education transformation broadly, as much as a yardstick for individual institutions to review the state of change on campus.

The two reports with similar and unique findings comment on and make recommendations mainly regarding the resources, systems and programmes that promote or frustrate change. It is, however, the hidden struggle for people and groups to take hold of the project for change that emerges as the most critical problem – the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people that must achieve it.

The significance of captivating hearts and minds makes the problem of higher education transformation a major part, a sociological one, rather than one only of politics, structure and programme.

The Khampepe and Soudien reports describe the lived experiences of black staff and students on former white campuses and the social realities they must confront in detail, which allows a picture of inclusivity at an institution to emerge – a surface analysis of change as a social problem.

A sociological reading of the problem, however, reveals an undercurrent of the struggle, namely, among others, with symbols, emotions, gaze and imagination. To win hearts and minds, the project for change needs performances, artefacts and statements that symbolise a commitment to the process of change and to showcase the storyline of a shared struggle – symbols that say, “we want to and will change”.

To win hearts and minds, it needs people to become human to one another with authentic displays of their struggle in the process – real emotions bared that say, “I want to and will change”.

To win hearts and minds, it needs people to shift the social gaze, to have different faces and voices lead the discourse for change – real attempts that say, “I see you, as you see me”. To win hearts and minds, it needs people to re-imagine what their community could be and so cast a storyline of an inspired future – combined writing with those most different that say, “Together we are more.”

* Dr Rudi Buys.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Cape Argus

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