Mirrors of UCT: JP Duminy

After VC Davie’s death in 1955, he was succeeded – eventually – by Rhodes Scholar, applied mathematician and Springbok cricketer Dr Jacobus Petrus Duminy. Duminy earned an UCT MA before obtaining a BSc at Oxford (a post-graduate degree no longer awarded). After taking up the...

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JP Duminy UCT Vice Chancellor

After VC Davie’s death in 1955, he was succeeded – eventually – by Rhodes Scholar, applied mathematician and Springbok cricketer Dr Jacobus Petrus Duminy. Duminy earned an UCT MA before obtaining a BSc at Oxford (a post-graduate degree no longer awarded). After taking up the VC-ship, he was awarded an honorary LLD by the University of Natal and, after retirement, an honorary Doctor of Laws by UCT.

There were many applicants/nominees for the VC post. Apparently, Sir Basil Schonland [UCT professor of physics, founder and first president of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, voted South Africa’s Scientist of the Century in 1999] was offered the post but declined. One might argue that the politically moderate, classical liberal, tradition-respecting, Duminy was chosen by the right-leaning UCT Council to a put a damper on the aggressive anti-Apartheid trajectory set in motion by Davie.

Pre-UCT Duminy

Duminy spent 20 years as an academic (ultimately Dean of Science) at the bilingual Transvaal University College in Pretoria. He was one of the few who opposed its conversion by the Afrikaner Broederbonders into the Afrikaans-medium University of Pretoria. Then he spent a decade as principal of a polytechnical college that eventually evolved into the Tshwane University of Technology. During this period, Duminy’s commitment to liberal ideals was strengthened by his close friendship with progressive thinker, academic and politician, JH Hofmeyr – a strong advocate of human rights and supporter of non-racial government and of gradually empowering people of colour (PoC).

A ‘hospital pass’

For sixty year-old Duminy, the UCT VC-ship was a ‘hospital pass’. He succeeded a VC who had laid foundations for increased student resistance to Apartheid. But, his time as VC coincided with that of a powerful, controlling and conservative Council and the premiership of Hendrik Verwoerd, Apartheid architect and relentless, ruthless engineer/practioner.

At that time, UCT was politically diverse, tolerating left-wing socialists, communists and the Trotskyist Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) that opposed any collaboration with the ‘white hegemony’. However, Her staff and Council were dominated by the Bloedsappe wing of the United Party who, although opposing academic segregation, favoured gradual social integration and non-racialism. Despite this stodgy situation, discussion and debate during the Duminy Era were generally civil and unfettered.

Duminy initially aligned with moderate-to-liberal factions of academics and Council and argued that Apartheid could not be justified because it was impossible for groups separated by ‘race’ to enjoy equal rights. He reacted to the Extension of University Education Act by co-leading (with Chancellor van der Sandt Centlivres) a procession followed by the signing of a pledge to preserve academic freedom at UCT.

The South African and UCT ‘wickets’ become ‘sticky’

The 1960s were characterized by rapid/widespread decolonization of Africa, promoted strongly by Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” speech. However, the rise of African nationhood was sudden, and radical regime changes made transition to independent states unorganized and marred with violence and marked political turmoil. Moreover, the culturally mixed (Dutch/German/French), highly conservative, ‘European’ Afrikaners [who had lived in Africa for three centuries; developed their own language, history, religion, culture and national identity; founded and farmed/industrialized the Cape, Transvaal and the Orange Free State] had wrested control of the country and had ”nowhere else to go”.

Duminy was sympathetic to Afrikaner aspirations and fears, but not differentially beyond that of its ‘black’ African counterparts. He was totally opposed to the narrow, racist nationalism of Verwoerd.

Duminy’s 1961 booklet, South Africa’s dilemma: what is the way out?, demonstrates that he differed from Verwoerd in that he envisioned “a happy [political, educational and social] solution between the Whites and Cape Coloured folk”. He still averred that “the idea of granting universal franchise to” … “rural indigenous Africans” who were “backward, superstitious, ignorant and eke out an uncertain existence” was, at the time, “quite unreasonable and altogether untenable”.

This passage from his booklet was interpreted by Fred Hendricks as evidence of Duminy’s “paternalistic racism”. But, Hendricks ignores Duminy’s calls for “provision made, without delay, for a system of representation in which every responsible inhabitant of the country [to] have a fair voice in its government” and that “the only way out of the ‘dilemma’, is that Whites had to “overcome their prejudices and agree to join such a common society” that “requires an intergenerational effort to create a more open and dynamic society”.

History goes ‘pear shaped’

In 1960 the African Resistance Movement (ARM) was formed [before Umkhonto we Sizwe/Poqo] by members of the Liberal and Communist Parties committed to violent revolutionary overthrow of apartheid. In 1964, UCT members of ARM bombed a Cape Town railway and Frederick John Harris bombed a Johannesburg railway station killing a grandmother, permanently disfigured the face of her 12 year-old granddaughter and injurung 21 other innocent civilians. Much more dynamite, detonators, timers, et al. were found at Harris’ hideout. Matters soon came to a ‘boiling point’ when Adrian Leftwich,UCT academic, past President of the NUSAS and a founder of the ARM, was arrested. He quickly collaborated with the police and betrayed the identities of many ARM cadres.Unrepentant Harris went to the gallows singing ‘We shall overcome’. Many ARM members and supporters were imprisoned, some for more than a decade on Robben Island. Leftwich was freed and allowed to emigrate to the UK where he had a successful career as a university academic.

Apartheid oppression in general, Leftwich’s betrayal, et al., seriously impacted Duminy and exacerbated the political polarization within UCT’s Student Representative Council (SRC) and NUSAS. It also eliminated any hope for reconciliation between NUSAS and the Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB), the student front of the National Party that viewed UCT liberalism as “the sprout of Satan” and “vipers’ blood”. In response, in parallel with UCT’s Fallism, students became increasingly aggressive in the struggle for university autonomy and non-racialism.

These developments did not sit well with Duminy’s traditional upbringing within an Afrikaner Cape Dutch-Anglo ‘bi-cultural’ family. During his time as principal [his preferred title] he required students who met with him to wear a jacket and tie or a dress. He favoured (but did not enforce) the banning of racially integrated dances. Like VCs Beattie and Falconer, he censored publications, expelled students and Varsity editors when they brought UCT into “disrepute”. For example, Duminy personally and Council collectively banned blatantly confrontational and sexist articles in Varsity magazine, e.g. How to Seduce a Freshette”. In his bookUCT under Apartheid, Part 1: From onset to sit-in 1948-1968 – UCT historian Howard Phillips characterizes (P. 312) this ‘seduction recipe’ as only “mildly suggestive”. In the end, because Duminy did not harbour Davie’s aggressive non-racial ideology, some left-wing students arguably unfairly characterized him as “Yellow Duminy”.

So, by 1964, Duminy may have felt betrayed by leftists/radicals at UCT and thereafter now sided with the Bloedsappe UP faction of Council. This strategic change initiated and promoted conflict between student leaders who advocated more direct challenges to Apartheid and those (including Duminy) who feared that this confrontation could lead to massive government interference in the university’s affairs and decreases in funding which could have crippled UCT.

Despite all this, Duminy co-hosted (with the SRC and UCT Staff Association) a protest meeting which demanded that government either charge or release detained members of the UCT community. For this, Duminy earned the opprobrium and vilification of the NP and left-wing students who refused to invite Duminy to attend Robert Kennedy’s Affirmation Day address. Despite his and UCT’s opposition to apartheid, under Duminy’s tenure, UCT was unable to register PoC students without government approval. When Duminy began his time as VC, UCT’s student population was 4 782 and there were 39 ‘Bantu’ students. By 1967, only two out of a total of 6 712 students were PoC.

During Duminy’s last full year, Council reacted to Education Minister Jan de Klerk’s new apartheid measures [the Extension of University Education Amendment and the University Amendment Bills in the House of Assembly] that put an end to compulsory student membership of NUSAS and re-enforced segregation at social events. University-wide unity was replaced by conflict, division and confusion. Ironically, the president of the deeply divided, back-biting SRC bowed to pressure from Council and fired the editor of Varsity for his refusal to adequately apologise to Duminy for his sustained and scathing personal attacks.

Noteworthy graduates who studied at UCT during the Duminy Era are: George Ellis (cosmologist; collaborator with Stephen Hawking; winner of the 2004 Templeton Prize), Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool (anti-apartheid political and civil rights leader) and Dullah Omar (South African anti-apartheid activist; lawyer; Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa; minister in the South African cabinet). Also during Duminy’s time, Nobel Laureate John Coetzee earned honours degrees in English and mathematics (later returning as a full professor); Louis Ahrens literally created Geochemistry as world class science in South Africa; pioneering heart-transplant surgeon Christiaan Barnard developed his surgical and technical skills; and my academic ‘home’, the now South African Centre of Excellence and internationally highly ranked FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, was established.

 Pseudo-clipping the wings of student power at UCT

Duminy retired, arguably ‘hurt’, but with his dignity intact. Andrew Duminy’s biography refutes the accusation that he was an ”Apartheid collaborator” and (as described by UWC poet/politics-academic Keith Gottschalk) experientially a “less-than-stellar”, “reactionary aberration”, “authoritarian principal of school children” assisted in the Executive by Principal’s Liaison Officer – Apartheid ‘agent’ Danie Fourie. Danie Fourie [described by VC Stuart Saunders as “Mr Fixit”] was nothing more than a police reservist who acted as an effective back-channel liaison officer with the government. He had generally warm personal relations with PoC and an unflinching loyalty to UCT. During question time after Gottschalk’s lecture on Duminy, former Member of Parliament (and UCT Rag Queen during the early Duminy Era) Sheila Camerer challenged Gottschalk on the ‘integrated/dance-issue’, revealing that she had participated in fully integrated dances (e.g. with students from the University of Fort Hare).

In the end, Gottschalk and alumni who questioned Duminy’s integrity deferred to Howard Phillips who was about to publish Part 2 of his history of UCT covering the Davie-Duminy-early Luyr Era.

Phillips concluded that Duminy-Luyt-lead UCT had a “mixed relationship with policies of apartheid and apartheid government” during the 1960s. In an article in UCT NEWS he emphasized –The ‘two faces’ of UCT. When wearing their public, “open university” Face, Duminy/Luyt “collided” with the Apartheid Regime defending ‘Daviean’ principles. ‘Face Two’ involved “kowtowing” to and “colluding” with the Regime and its ‘unfolding’ practices vis-à-vis racial discrimination.

In short, Phillips portrayed VC Davie as a would-be militant, revolutionary anti-apartheid hero; Duminy, Luyt and UCT’s Council, as untrustworthy apartheid ‘Quislings’; and protesting white students/staff as aspirant revolutionaries committed to destroying apartheid and commemorated the memory of the Mafeje ‘Affair’ as evidence of UCT’s long-standing institutional racism.

Phillips makes no mention of railway bomber Harris or his terror attack. He only describes the ARM as “resort[ing] to the use of sabotage to challenge the regime and to try to spark resistance”. He shows traitor Leftwich holding the “Torch of Freedom” (P. 276) and describes him as a “left-leaning” (p. 218), “disillusioned”, “liberal-turned-radical” (302) “yearning for action” (301) who was “convicted” of sabotage (p. 278), and only “resorted to the use of sabotage” (301). Black activists within the NEUM described ‘Leftwichers’ as “untrustworthy”, ‘gutless’, “herrenvolk liberals” (P. 302).

But, in the end, there is no substantive evidence – from Phillips or anyone else – that Duminy – or any UCT VC – colluded with the Apartheid Regime, or punished students or academic activists for political reasons.

[Based primarily on: JPD Remembered (2020) independently published by Andrew Duminy. ISBN-13:979-8679471511]

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