Page 81 - Transformation Indaba Report

widening college base has disappeared, leaving the university system to cater for all post-
secondary education needs’, according to Lolwana (2010:14, quoted in the Blom study).
Although the problem may be over-stated above, it is indeed true that the university
component of the South African PSET system had grown disproportionate to the
‘college’ component – producing the much talked about ‘inverse pyramid’.

4. It has only recently been fully recognized by policy-makers, as expressed in the Green
Paper on Post-School Education and Training of 2013, that the long-term
transformational requirements of the South African post-school education and training
system requires fundamental reconstitution and integrated articulation and development.
This wider system is still in the process of being planned, funded and built from the
existing institutions within the sector, as well as new entities, comprising both public and
private educational providers. In this context, it will become important for us to think
‘university transformation’ not in terms of the internal dynamics and requirements of the
university system, but crucially also in relation to its role, functions and purposes within
this wider post-school education and training system and, more widely, within society
and the economy. In a sense, universities have to achieve a double-transformation:
internally, to better reflect the goals set by policy and South Africa’s constitutional goals,
and externally, in their contribution to the wider PSET and society.

II. Systemic Transformation Challenges

5. The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, in his May 2015
budget speech in parliament, promised an uncompromising push for higher education
transformation in the wake of various student-initiated movements such as the Rhodes
Must Fall campaign at the University of Cape Town (UCT); the Open Stellenbosch
movement at Stellenbosch University (SUN); the transformation battles at North West
University (NWU); and similar ones at various institutions of higher education across the
country. However, such criticisms are by no means restricted to these institutions as the
transformation challenge, read in its widest, multi-dimensional meaning, affects all our
institutions albeit in differential terms. The Minister captures the combination of
difficulties as follows: ‘Despite the significance of symbols such as names and statues, we
must not conflate these with more fundamental matters of transformation. There
remains an urgent need to radically change the demographics of our professoriate;
transform the curriculum and research agendas; cultivate greater awareness of Africa;
eliminate racism, sexism and all other forms of unjust discrimination; improve academic
success rates; and expand student support’ . Our view is that no single South African
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higher education institution today can claim to have overcome these challenges which are
inscribed in differential forms and states of transformation across the institutional
landscape.

6. Recent demands for ‘transformation’ come from a wide range of quarters and are
articulated in varied forms, but do not appear to be fundamentally different in substance

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NelsoN MaNdela UNiversity • traNsforMatioN iNdaba • 2022 75