Mirrors of UCT: Mamphela Ramphele

It was assumed by many at UCT that NRF A-rated microbiologist Prof. David Woods would succeed Saunders as VC. Woods was a highly regarded biological theorist and applied researcher, an effective administrator and has a long string of successful graduate students. He had also been a superb DVC for Research for several years. In short, he was the quintessential ‘Old Boy’ successor. Dr Mamphela Ramphele, the other finalist, was: a medical doctor; a relatively recent recipient of a PhD in a ‘soft’ discipline (social anthropology – criticized by Archie Mafeje) and had only reluctantly agreed to become a part-time DVC. So, why was she the clear choice to lead UCT through to the end of the millennium?

The main reasons were: her experience in the Black Consciousness Movement; understanding of the suffering and needs of (and opportunities for) oppressed students (especially woman); vision for academic transformation; and ability to attract massive non-governmental funding without kowtowing to the ‘Old Guard’ or ‘Captains of Industry’ to make her vision a reality. She also inherited Saunders’ long-serving , highly experienced and effective Registrar (Hugh Amoore) and members of his “Monty Python” team of ‘Old Boy’ DVCs. They held considerable complementary academic and administrative experience. During her three-year tenure, Ramphele and her team – coordinated by UCT graduate, Rhodes Scholar and long-serving (1990-2002) DVC Prof. Wieland Gevers – took even more rapid, decisive and constructively transformational action than Saunders. Indeed, rather than allowing for the planned six-month transition period for her to work with Saunders, she sent him directly into retirement and got on with the job. Rather than using the persuasion and nuance employed by Saunders, she hosted regular dinners at Glenara at which she and all the DVCs accounted to and answered questions from the HoDs who, in turn, were “grilled” on department performance. From then on, Bremner Admin Building took on a corporate structure which initially accelerated constructive ‘decolonization’. For those genuinely interested in UCT’s history her memoir Laying Ghosts to Rest: Dilemmas of the Transformation in South Africa places her thinking and actions into context.

Centralization of power/control, faculty/departmental mergers and curriculum restructuring

Ramphele’s most pivotal institutional transformation action was the creation/empowering of a highly paid, centralized, corporate administration, including ‘Executive Directors’ and further-empowered DVCs. She also took steps to lessen the authority of the Registrar. Under her firm guidance, these centralized managers began to challenge (usurp?) academic authority of the Deans and of the HoDs, especially in matters of curriculum planning, departmental expenditure and the appointment of staff. Another major shakeup was the enforced merger of faculties (strongly impacting the Humanities), reducing the long-standing ten to six, and encouraging departmental mergers. This created both opportunities for transdisciplinary collaboration and academic innovation and upset academically ‘strange’ bedfellows.

Restructuring undergraduate academic pathways

Nearly a decade before the word “decolonization” became popular, Ramphele felt that longstanding, Euro-Americo-centric curricula and pedagogy at UCT, especially in the Humanities, were “antiquated” and “non-structured”, producing graduates that left UCT with a “collection of credits, but no lucid knowledge base that could guide future development of their careers”. She – with Gevers acting as ‘point man’ –  therefore promoted radical, but constructive, reorganization of undergraduate teaching (encouraging inter-disciplinary teaching) organized into relatively rigid, career-oriented ‘Programmes’.

This curricular ‘revolution’ involved the appointment of cross-departmental ‘Programme Convenors’, a cohort of ‘managers’ whose actions were resisted by Core academics who did not welcome further ‘managerialism’. Furthermore, some Programmes were perceived to artificially and drastically restrict current curricular options available to undergrads, potentially undermining their ability to ‘forage’ for a personal course programme that would optimize their career success. At a broader scale, rigid, canalized programmes also impeded the evolution of novel courses and course-combinations. Many departments in the Humanities simply refused to implement Programmes. The Faculty of Science dropped them soon after Ramphele’s departure.

However, this effort to ‘pre-decolonize’ curricula was a missed opportunity. Had it been handled by innovative and progressive Core-discipline academics who voluntarily chose to develop novel, more “structured” curricula, the current chaotic ‘decolonization process’ might not be ’happening’ today.

Violence and illegal protest

During Ramphele’s administration, student violence on campus declined markedly. The rare instances of illegal protest and intimidation and destruction of university property were dealt with decisively. Academic justice was meted out within departments headed by senior scholars who sought out leadership and had requisite academic experience, authority and administrative power. When alleged victims or perpetrators were dissatisfied by within-department decisions, there were structures allowing appeal within faculties led by similarly scholarly deans with vision. The few incidences of indiscipline that could not be handled within faculties were dealt with by university-wide structures run jointly by democratically elected students who sought leadership and an executive that understood the educational process and was resolutely dedicated to academic freedom.

To deal with student demands, Ramphele developed a new mission statement for UCT, improved trust between all parties and promoted an ebbing of scepticism. But, she, unlike VC Max Price, had a bottom-line vis-à-vis student involvement with university policy:

“Given their status as a transient population … students cannot be allowed to participate in decisions where conflicts of interest are so glaring as to make a mockery of the integrity of higher-education institutions.”

Outsourcing

Ramphele was also scorned and harassed by some non-academic workers and unions who persisted with non-constructive/disruptive/destructive/violent behaviour that had featured strongly during the Saunders Administration. In the end, when the major union (NEHAWU) made a strategic negotiating error, she slashed the salaries of, and fired/outsourced, hundreds of grade 1-4 workers so she could increase the pay of academics. This policy was ‘justified’ on the basis that it gave priority to UCT’s primary mandate – education/research. Inadvertently, it planted ‘seeds’ for the ‘blossoming’ of Fallism to come much later.

Academic demographic decolonization during the 1990s

Ramphele aggressively and strategically attracted highly visible and competent PoC (especially female) academics to change the ‘white’-male profile at UCT. This was done without compromising “excellence”. For example, in the biological sciences, the Department of Zoology (today merged with Botany into Biological Sciences) appointed a South African, home-grown academic, Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan.  Anusuya is a Wits PhD graduate who was a product of Ramphele’s Growing Our Own Timber Programme designed to recruit and ‘fast-track’ young South African PoC (especially women) into academic careers. Anusuya earned ad hominem promotion to full-professor in 2002 and, thereafter, an NRF A-rating. She is THE global expert on the microscopic structure of the bones of extinct vertebrates – especially dinosaurs. Virtually single-handed, Anusuya resurrected high-quality first-year biology lecturing and shepherded the merger of the Botany and Zoology Departments as HoD.

Ramphele also implemented a pragmatic policy for decolonizing the student population. She decided, strategically, to admit more, but not massively more, first-years and rather to focus on building up numbers of PoC post-graduate students who could be jump-started to leadership roles and senior academic positions. This strategy was well-suited to fast-track the production of the young PoC-academics so desperately needed within UCT and nationally. In doing so, UCT resisted the government’s pressure for “massification” of first-years educationally ‘disabled’ by South Africa’s grossly deficient Basic Educational System.

This is one of many examples of Ramphele taking tough, potentially unpopular decisions.

Administrative reorganization and development

In terms of UCT’s institutional structure, Ramphele was also critical of UCT’s Council, which she felt was controlled by “an old boys network that had paid more attention to continuing traditions than to management and maintenance”. This legacy of neo-colonialism somewhat frustrated her efforts to transform the university. To cope with this, she supported and instigated the transformation of Council into a broadly representative and effective governance agent, thereby potentially benefitting her successors. Indeed, in one of her final addresses, she stressed:

“I think that possibly the thing I am most proud of is changing the institutional culture of UCT.”

This strategy led to a concentration of power in the Executive. Sadly, Council became dominated by individuals who appear to condone (or be intimidated by) actions of radical pro-Fallists.

The Ramphele ‘Downside’

The Mamdani ‘Affair’ – Soon after becoming VC, Ramphele encouraged AC Jordan Professor and Director of the Centre for African Studies (CAS) Mahmood Mamdani’s efforts to challenge what he called “South African exceptionalism”. Mamdani had been appointed during the Saunders Administration – instead of a bitter Archie Mafeje.

Mamdani solely developed a radically novel, controversial and broadly Afrocentric foundation course for first-year students. Its challenging name, “Problematizing Africa”, was supposed to fit within UCT’s African Studies and Humanities/Social Sciences curricula. However, several colleagues in the Social Sciences objected to aspects of its syllabus, challenging its content and structure pedagogically. Some (including powerful ‘Old Boy’ Martin Hall) developed an alternative course. Although Ramphele attempted to mediate the dispute, ultimately the alternative, arguably Eurocentric, course was implemented. However, it was not a success and was abandoned after a couple of years.

Regardless of one’s perspective on it, the manner in which the Mamdani ‘Affair’ was handled does no credit to Mamdani, the academics who opposed him and the history of academic freedom and academic excellence at UCT. Sadly, because of bitterness stemming from the undermining actions of ‘Old Boys’, Mamdani left UCT, ultimately taking up an arguably more prestigious chair at USA’s Columbia University that allowed him to reconnect his fractious academic relationship with Makerere University in Uganda. In the end, it was the students at UCT who were deprived of desperately needed education, and UCT lost another Afro-relevant academic ‘catalyst’. Lungisile Ntsebeza (AC Jordan Professor and past CAS director) summarized the consequences of the Affair: “From there on, the Centre for African Studies was never the same and, for reasons best suited for another discussion, gradually ‘deteriorated to a point where by 2009 there was a distinct possibility that it would be ‘disestablished’.”

In 2000, Ramphele left UCT to take up a managing director role at the World Bank in Washington. This was a massive loss to UCT – especially to young academics and ‘black’ women students. Despite their ‘downsides’, if TB Davie gave ‘heart and soul’ and Saunders ‘spine and muscles’ to UCT,

Ramphele gave Her guts and brains.