Decolonization at Stellenbosch University

...

The ‘Luister’ YouTube video, released by OS, features testimonials by students within the town of Stellenbosch telling their stories of structural violence and racial abuse. The video received significant media attention, putting the spotlight on Stellenbosch University and bringing the institution’s commitment to transformation into the public eye. It is for this reason that comparisons to Apartheid culture have been made about the town and the university, fueling greater pressure towards more visible transformation.

S

tellenbosch University’s ‘Planning for Diversity’

The ‘Planning for Diversity’ publication released by Stellenbosch University in 2012 can be seen as a public commitment to facilitating a more comprehensively inclusive institutional culture at the university, arguably in response to the unrest within the student body. The publication highlights a distinctive “framework for developing diversity” (Stellenbosch University, 2012), describing the approach to issues such as a streamlined admission plan; empowerment of students; employment equity; addressing language and institutional culture; and emphasis on enhancing woman’s rights and freedoms.

Since the release of Planning for Diversity, the university experienced escalating unrest towards the institutional culture and the outsourcing of workers in particular, highlighting the shortfalls of the commitment by Stellenbosch University. The administration of sufficient transformation is questionable – student protests regarding Afrikaans as a language of tutorship, outsourced worker protests and incidents of rape in university residences have rendered the commitment in some eyes as non-credible.

Transformation to more accurately represent the national demographic is a complicated task at Stellenbosch, given the cultural significance of the town to the Afrikaner community. The need to create a more inclusive, universal and engaging educational experience needs to be prioritized without dropping academic standards. If the status quo limits or inhibits individuals, then the institutions must change.

Conclusion

With regards to diversification and integration at South African universities, it is clear that an outdated and inadequate institutional approach to addressing the injustices of the past will not create the environment for young minds to flourish. It is therefore an imperative that critical, rational discourse, as well as flexibility and experimentation are maintained within institutional transformation. The state of education in South Africa is such that the playing field is simply not level, in favor of historical white privilege, and it is our responsibility to realize that.

[1324 Words]

References

Planning for Diversity, (2012). Stellenbosch University.

Stellenbosch University, (2015). Statistiese Profiel – Figuur 2. [Online]. Available: . [Accessed: 14 March 2016].

Jansen, J. (2009). Knowledge in the Blood, Cape Town: UCT Press, pp. 136-139.

Vincent, L. (2008). The limitations of ‘inter-racial contact’: stories from young South Africa, ethnic and Racial studies, 31:8, 1426-1451

Pretorius, S. (2013). The Citizen: SA’s real level of literacy. [Online]. Available: http://citizen.co.za/31407/literatez/. [Accessed: 14 March 2016].

Statistics South Africa, (2014). [Online]. Available:

http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0302/P03022014.pdf. [Accessed: 14 March 2016].

Trading Economics, (2016). South Africa Unemployment Rate. [Online]. Available: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/unemployment-rate. [Accessed: 14 March 2016].