UCT is the oldest university in Southern Africa, established as the South African College (SACS) in 1829. She was colonialist, racist, sexist and patriarchal, even on the drawing board. So, four strikes and you’re out! Major land donor CJ Rhodes’ vision for a national university was to use tertiary education to reconcile ‘white’ Afrikaner men with British uitlander counterparts through the cultural assimilation of the former. Like its early incarnation, SACS, UCT adopted a Western Christian Civilization, ‘universalist’, ’enlightened’ approach to education and research. Its leaders embraced a policy of broad ‘white’ South Africanism, while retaining a British character and orientation. General JC Smuts and SACS Prof. John Carruthers ‘Jock’ Beattie brokered the ‘deal’ to locate the university in Cape Town and not Johannesburg and persuaded major colonialist Randlords Sir Otto Beit and Sir Julius Wernher to fund its construction. They were devoted to promulgating the values of Western European Christian Civilization and espoused paternalistic white supremacy.
Smuts was a venerable political leader, nation builder, philosopher, world statesman and UCT’s second Chancellor. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill valued him highly: “Jan Smuts was a man who transcended nationality earning the trust of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers.” Sadly, like most leaders at the time, Smuts viewed human ‘races’ as fundamentally different, with ‘whites’ being “advanced people”.
However, in the twilight of his career, Smuts was a key architect of the United Nations Charter and insisted that the phrase “fundamental human rights” be included in its preamble and, though no enemy of segregation, still found the idea of complete separation of the races extreme and unwise. In 1948, Smuts began to depart from his previous views on segregation favouring a pragmatic, realpolitik approach, arguing that racial integration was inevitable and the government should relax enforced segregation gradually, reforming the political system so that black South Africans could eventually be more politically integrated within a ‘true’ Union of South Africa. He supported the recommendations of the Fagan Commission – which he established – that Africans should be recognised as permanent residents of South Africa, and not merely as temporary workers who belonged in the reserves. In a widely advertised speech he said: “The idea that the Natives must all be removed and confined in their own kraals is in my opinion the greatest nonsense I have ever heard.” Perhaps because of this ‘re-thought’ politics, later that year his career as prime minister ended controversially with the arguably rigged victory of the reconstituted National Party (NP) in the ‘whites-only’ 1948 general election, setting the stage for the Apartheid Era.
UCT hatches
On her ‘birthday’ (2 April 1918) all of UCT’s 659 students were ‘whites’ (mostly males) and most of her professors were British men (especially Aberdonian Scots), including Her first VC, Jock Beattie. Beattie had, since 1897, been Professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics at UCT’s precursor, the South African College. Beattie considered “Natives” as “uncivilised people” and his policy at that time was: “it would not be in the best interests of the university to admit native or coloured students in any number, if at all”. Socially, ‘nie-blanke’ [people of colour – PoC in today’s parlance] were generally treated as ‘outsiders’, barred from official social/sporting activities by custom and, for a time, even by Students’ Representatives Council (SRC) edict. For example, the annual campus ball was a strictly ‘white’, exclusive affair. Within nascent UCT, women academics were confined largely to the Humanities, paid less, expected to resign if they married and were required to retire at 55 (five years earlier than for men).
Nevertheless, Beattie was a wise and lovable man with a vast knowledge of human nature. To meet him and have a talk with him was “a real tonic”. He had a great sympathy with and an understanding of the human nature in students. To them “he was just and conciliatory”. “He spoke in persuasive accents with a gentle humour, which robbed his rebukes of their sting, but not of their power”. During the ‘decolonial movement’ between the two world wars, he called for UCT to have a “more indigenous orientation in teaching, research and staffing” … “to forge an appropriate identity for itself and its students in a society bitterly divided on class and ethnic lines”. This language used a century ago is remarkably reminiscent of UCT’s Strategic Planning Framework 2016-2020.
Beattie was also a phenomenal fundraiser. In his own words, he referred to himself as a ‘professional beggar’. He placed a high priority on scholarships for students in financial need: “What provisions are we making in South Africa for using the intellectual ability of our people to the best advantage? For all we know, there might be a genius hidden away in District Six. What chances has he got today? Just now the best thing he can do is sell newspapers.”
But, for Beattie, the reputation of the university was paramount. Anyone or anything that brought UCT into disrepute was dealt with quickly and decisively, but with justice. For example, during the 1930s, he expelled student Marius Diemont for organizing an unsanctioned meeting. On reflection, Beattie reversed his decision saying: “Be sure you do the same when you are in my position.” Diemont went on to become a Supreme Court Justice and deputy chairperson of UCT’s Council.
By the end of the 1920s, things were ‘better’ at Beattie’s UCT. Women students nearly reached demographic parity with males. But, they were mainly confined to music and the arts and in non-degree programmes. There were only five PoC – all ‘coloured’ – graduates, almost all with art or teaching degrees. Noteworthy further is a quote from Sir Jock’s ‘centennial’ message in 1929: “The University must, like the old South African College, be a place where all South Africans irrespective of creed or race can meet and get to know each other.”
Education and research
Beattie oversaw: the creation of 10 faculties at the new UCT, the Scottish three-year (rather than the normal four) Bachelor’s degree, the move to Groote Schuur campus and the purchase of the VC’s residence, Glenara, in 1924. He fostered the growth of UCT’s student population from about 600 in 1918 to 2200 in 1938 and created a strong research ethos. A respected researcher and scholar himself, he believed that the task of UCT was not only to train the nascent country’s new cadre of professionals, but also to extend the boundaries of global knowledge through cutting edge research.
Initially, teaching at Beattie’s UCT was an “essentially ego-centrifugal”, “sage on the stage” process. There was little contact between lecturers and students outside the formal, scheduled teaching environment. Students had to ‘swim or sink’ academically. Departmental research was strongly influenced by the preferences and dictates of generally aloof (condescending?), all-powerful professors/heads-of-department, some of whom ruled for decades. When they were promoted ‘ad hominem’ or replaced, the ‘new guys’ were selected by a small, oligarchical ‘Old Boys’ network. The major Afrocentric institutional development at Beattie’s UCT was the establishment of the world’s first School of African Life and Languages in 1920. Over the decades, it evolved into the Centre for African Studies.
Noteworthy graduates who studied at UCT during the Beattie Era are: Keppel Barnard (zoologist and museum director), future VC Sir Richard Luyt, future Deputy Chairman of UCT’s Council Justice Marius Diemont and N.P. van Wyk Louw (Afrikaans-language poet, playwright and scholar).
One exception to UCT’s professorial norm was Zoology Prof. Lancelot Hogben, a brilliant physiologist, anti-eugenicist, medical-genetic-statistician with a fascination for linguistics. His major scientific achievement while at UCT was the discovery that a female Xenopus frog, when injected with urine from a pregnant woman, ovulated within hours, resulting in the Hogben Pregnancy Test. During his time at UCT (1927-1930), he:
- described his predecessor, marine biologist John Gilchrist, as “a dedicated necrophilist”;
- jettisoned Gilchrist’s specimen collection, describing his research as “not zoology”;
- forced students to pay for his lecture notes; and
- escorted a beautiful ‘coloured’ woman to the UCT Annual Ball.
To correct the impression that hooliganism and challenges to hegemony are confined to UCT’s recent history, some students disliked the “arrogant, supercilious and caustic” Hogben so intensely that they rolled his car down the embankment where the RW James Physics Building now stands and burned his effigy outside the Zoology Department Building! Although he enjoyed his time at UCT, Hogben resigned in protest against the South African government’s abhorrent racial policies.
A line of decency
Perhaps Beattie’s signal praiseworthy principle was drawing a firm line at what he regarded as less than “decent behaviour”. During the mid-1930s, the right-wing, National-Party-linked, racist, anti-Semitic, ‘white’-nationalist Afrikaner Nasionale Studentebond (ASB) defamed, intimidated and assaulted people of colour and Jewish students (from whence the name ‘Ikeys’ is derived). Sir Jock unilaterally threw the ASB off-campus for this less-than-decent behaviour. These events mark the end of any overt attempt by UCT to implement Rhodes’ dream of reconciling with, yet alone assimilating, Afrikaners. Thereafter, the significant minority of Afrikaans-speaking students dropped from a high of 40% in the early 1930s to just over 9% on Beattie’s retirement.
Administration
During the Beattie Administration, UCT’s administrative department was small, decidedly supportive and decentralized. According to UCT’s first Registrar Wilfred Murray:
“The administrative staff must justify its existence by setting standards and methods of procedure of high order. As a department it has no claim to existence in a university unless it can relieve the teaching departments of the responsibility for those duties which can be carried out more efficiently through a central office”.
In summary, although Sir Jock was, by today’s standards, colonialist, ‘paternalistic’, racist and sexist, he was a moderate in comparison with VCs at the time, locally and internationally. He, literally, laid the foundations of what was to become Africa’s foremost university.