WITS UNIVERSITY EXECUTIVE STATEMENT ON ACCELERATING TRANSFORMATION
Wits recognises the need to accelerate Transformation at the University. Despite professed institutional and individual commitments, the pace of Transformation at the University has been slow, and there have been ongoing complaints of racism. In response, the Vice-Chancellor convened a number of stakeholder conversations on Wits’ successes and failures with regard to Transformation. These engagements, which were accelerated in recent months as a result of the campaigns within the broader higher education sector, have informed the rethinking of the University’s Transformation project, and the development of a strategic plan, which is based on three important premises.
Firstly, a broad definition of Transformation is necessary at Wits. It must include, among others, dramatically increased African and Coloured representation in the academy; curriculum reform to include African contexts and theorists; a diverse and cosmopolitan student cohort across campuses and residences; enhanced access for talented students from poor and marginalised communities; an institutional culture that makes Black staff and students feel comfortable; an institutional naming policy that reflects the full diversity of our traditions; a language policy that enhances our understanding of one another and prepares students for the workplace; and an end to the exploitative practice of outsourcing. Within this holistic definition of Transformation, the single biggest issue is the need to increase the African and Coloured representation in the academy and professoriate, and this must receive special attention.
Secondly, although there are unacceptable cases of overt racism which must be dealt with firmly and expeditiously, the deeper problem lies in colour blind interactions. Some see these as proof of our institutional progress, but others view them as being insufficiently appreciative of the burdens of our history. They would argue that you cannot switch from a racialised past to a colour blind present without continuous racialised outcomes. However, legitimate criticisms of the colour blind approach cannot be allowed to morph into an illegitimate racism. An advance on Transformation cannot be premised on the philosophical impulses of a racial and ethnic essentialism. Responsiveness to Transformation has to proactively confront our racial legacies and affirm the victims of apartheid. But it need not, and should not, translate into a racial chauvinism.
Thirdly, it is necessary to remain cognisant of the constraints and trade-offs involved in driving a Transformation agenda. Any initiatives must be compatible with the University’s fundamental mandate to be a globally competitive, research intensive institution that is responsive to local development imperatives. They must also be cognisant of the University’s finances and should not jeopardise the fiscal health of the institution.
With this in mind, this executive statement presents a strategic plan comprising eight key action areas and identifies the relevant executives who will be responsible for implementing each action area. The plan will be disaggregated into annual targets and measures that will be written into both the institutional scorecard and the performance contracts of the executives. All of the initiatives will be overseen by a Transformation Committee that will be chaired by the Vice-Chancellor. The daily management will be coordinated by the Head of the Transformation Office, and stewarded by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Advancement, HR and Transformation. It is our intention for this plan to pick up the pace of Transformation at Wits and move us quickly towards an inclusive and competitive institution.
1. Diversifying the Wits Academy
The single biggest transformative issue at Wits currently is the need to increase the African and Coloured representation in the academy and professoriate. There has been dispute on whether this initiative should be limited to African and Coloured colleagues, or whether we should use a broader definition of Black to include Indian colleagues. However, the demographic breakdown of our academic staff clearly demonstrates that the real challenge in this regard lies at the level of African and Coloured representation. Given this, the diversification initiative will be primarily targeted at African and Coloured staff.
There are currently a number of initiatives underway to increase the representation of African and Coloured persons in the Wits academy. The New Generation of Academics Programme with the Department of Higher Education and Training has provided us with six posts, and the Teaching and Development Grant has provided us with a further 15 temporary posts at Associate Lecturer level. Yet clearly this is not going to make a significant enough dent in the racial diversity of the Wits academy.
As a result, the University will mobilise a minimum of R45 million from our own resources to underwrite two initiatives in this regard. Firstly, R35 million will be dedicated to underwriting the costs of appointing between 25 and 35 new African and Coloured academics, taking into account our commitment to gender diversity. These will be tenure track positions and may require a mandatory period of service for a limited time. For the first two years, the salaries of these academics will be paid for from this central fund and subsequently, they will be incorporated into Faculty budgets through processes of retirement and resignation. Secondly, R10 million will be dedicated to a special programme to advance 30 to 35 African and Coloured academics who are currently within the system towards promotion to the professoriate over two to five years. It must be stressed that the promotion criteria for the candidates will not change. Rather, we will create an enabling environment for them to achieve the existing promotion requirements. This will involve smaller teaching and marking loads through buyouts and the appointment of teaching assistants, a structured programme of research and research support, mentorships, etc. Deans will be required to have monthly meetings with all of the candidates who are identified for advancement and personally oversee their academic progress.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Advancement, HR and Transformation will coordinate this programme, even though it may be managed on a daily basis by the Head of the Transformation Office. In addition, the Development and Fundraising Office will aim to mobilise a further R45 million from international foundations and local sources to expand this programme both in terms of its longevity and the number of scholars to be supported.
To further address the lack of Transformation in the academy, all senior academics will be required to mentor at least one African or Coloured South African. Representation on the Staffing and Promotions Committees will be expanded to include a member of the Faculty Transformation Committee, and Deputy Vice-Chancellors who chair Staffing and Promotions Committees will be rotated every two years to ensure continued responsiveness to Transformation within that Faculty.
Finally, in one of the many stakeholder discussions, a recommendation emerged for a moratorium on the appointment of White academic staff. However, such a decision will paralyse our implementation of the distinguished professorship and postdoctoral strategies, and our normal appointments processes in certain disciplines. The net effect of this would be to compromise our ability to retain and consolidate our research intensive character, a goal to which we have collectively subscribed and which is in the broader interests of South Africa’s inclusive development. We have to recognise that even as we transform, we must remain involved in the global struggle to attract the best academic and research talent. These are not mutually exclusive goals and with imagination, they can be pursued simultaneously. Moreover, a moratorium on White staff could also have the effect of fracturing the University community and compromising who we are in the long term. Given all of this, it is perhaps more prudent to pursue an affirmative agenda in enhancing the representation of African and Coloured scholars in the Wits academy and professoriate.
This programme will be governed by a committee that will be chaired by the Vice-Chancellor and comprise the Deputy Vice-Chancellors for Academic; Advancement, HR and Transformation; and Research and Postgraduate Affairs; the Deans; four staff representatives, two chosen by the Senate and a further two identified by African and Coloured staff; three student representatives; and a representative from ASAWU.
2. Curriculum Reform
To date, transformative curriculum reform at Wits has been sporadic and largely at the initiative of individual academics, some Schools and Departments, and students. This is no longer good enough. Clearly a more proactive strategy is required. Curriculum reform will of course take different forms in different disciplines. In some cases, it may require the inclusion of new subject matter and reference material, a greater heterodoxy, if you prefer, while in others it may require rethinking the teaching pedagogy by either contextualising the subject matter with the use of relevant local examples and/or using alternative technological instruments to transmit knowledge and enhance understanding. In relevant disciplines, this would of course be subject to the requirements of and engagements with industry players and appropriate professional and accrediting bodies.
It should be stressed that curriculum reform does not simply mean a retreat into the local and a focus on the teaching of Africa and its problems. While this is important and needs to become an essential component of our curriculum, we must continue to focus on the rest of the world, and absorb from their academic and scientific communities. In a sense, we must become an equal constituent part of a global scientific academy of commons. How to structure the balance between local responsiveness and global competitiveness in our curriculum will be determined at School and Departmental level, stewarded by institution-wide oversight. We will also consider the possibility of a mandatory course for all students that speaks to South Africa’s history, citizenship, civic service and a broader sense of ethics.
This programme will be formally stewarded through the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, and managed by the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Its governance will be organised through the Academic Planning and Development Committee reporting ultimately to the Senate. Practically, it will involve each School and Department being required to convene multiple curriculum reform workshops comprising representatives of the academic and research staff, and postgraduate and undergraduate students, and where appropriate, relevant external scholars. It is anticipated that this institution-wide curriculum reform will be completed within at least 24 months.
3. Student Admissions
Currently, the demographic profile of the Wits student body is about 75% Black and 25% White. From the perspective of achieving a balance between demographic diversity and cosmopolitanism, we believe that this demographic profile is about right, although we should be open to increasing the proportion of white students to about 28%, which constitutes their current proportion of the Gauteng student pool. Achieving this demographic and cosmopolitan balance is not only important from the perspective of addressing historical redress, but also for generating the soft skill sets – intercultural personal skills, cultural tolerance across racial, ethnic and religious boundaries – that are required for 21st century citizens and professionals who need to operate optimally in multicultural South African and global workplaces.
Yet this demographic and cosmopolitan success is not equally spread across the institution. There are programmes that are still largely dominated by either White and Indian or African students. This is problematic in terms of our institutional and pedagogical goals, and clearly needs to be addressed. In a similar vein, our attempt to increase the number of talented students from rural schools and quintile one and two urban schools in our MBBCh programme has recorded some significant progress, although we have not achieved all of our targets. Clearly we need to identify the challenges in this regard and fashion solutions for them. This agenda to address our demographic and class diversity, and cosmopolitanism, across all programmes will be managed by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic in conjunction with the relevant Dean.
4. Promoting Diverse and Cosmopolitan Residence Life Experience
Over 97% of the students in our residences are Black (this includes 4.78% Indian and 1.80% Coloured). Currently only 2.26% of students in residences are White. This violates our goal to promote a diverse and cosmopolitan environment. Moreover, we cannot hold that we want to create a diverse and cosmopolitan environment in the University when we do not do so in our residences. Attempts to address this issue last year were met with opposition from some sections of the residence students who believed that they were not sufficiently consulted. But criticism of the strategy also went beyond our clumsy process of engagement and the technicalities of the residence admissions processes to include the fact that poor students would be disadvantaged and that White students were receiving special attention. The former criticism is a valid one, and a strategy needs to be developed to mitigate this. The latter criticism needs to be challenged. While special attention cannot be accorded to White students, increasing their representation in our residences should be a strategic priority on the grounds of both pedagogy and our institutional goals. Moreover, we should not allow our deliberative engagement on this strategy to be compromised by opportunistic racialised labelling of any kind. But cosmopolitanism means more than an enhanced representation of White students. It must also involve establishing an environment in which persons from multiple religious backgrounds – Christian, Hindu, Muslim, traditional African, Jewish, atheist – and cultural experiences have significant presence within our residences.
Currently we have a special task team comprising staff and student representatives deliberating on our diversity and cosmopolitanism in residences. We will enable this task team to conclude its deliberations and provide us with strategic advice in this regard. We will also consider mitigating any adverse effects on poor students by developing additional residences in Braamfontein and growing the number of beds available to the University. These initiatives will continue to be coordinated by the Dean of Student Affairs.
5. Institutional Culture
It is important to note that many Black students continue to feel marginalised at Wits even though they constitute the majority of students. This should be of concern and needs to be urgently addressed. Equally important are the many allegations of racism that are continuously received from both staff and students. It goes without saying that racism has no place at Wits and needs to be decisively dealt with whenever it rears its head, lest it destroy our ability to achieve the goal of establishing a diverse and cosmopolitan university. Addressing both challenges requires an advocacy and disciplinary capability similar to that established in the Gender Equity Office in the aftermath of our sexual harassment scandals.
These responsibilities will therefore become the primary responsibility of our Transformation Office. The Office will establish an advocacy campaign that identifies the sources of friction between various groups and develops strategies to create a more socially inclusive institutional environment for academic and professional and administrative staff. It will also establish an efficient and expeditious investigative and disciplinary process for racism allegations at the University. Such allegations will not be allowed to go unresolved for months as this contaminates the institutional atmosphere with devastating consequences for all. We will also consider the enhanced representation of African and Coloured staff on strategic committees of the University.
Ultimately, transforming our institutional culture requires the effort of every single person at Wits. As scholars of social inclusion have so often argued, it requires from White staff a sensitivity that they do not act or operate in ways that can be read as alienating or discriminatory. But it also requires from Black staff and students a consciousness not to read every act as racist and exclusionary. Building a new inclusive institutional culture requires every one of us to proactively participate in developing new forms of engagement that enhance social interaction, teaching, research and service befitting a leading institution. In a sense, every one of us must feel that we own the corridors and spaces of Wits University.
There have been some colleagues who have called for the merger of the Transformation and Gender Equity Offices on the grounds that the various types of discrimination tend to overlap. While this is a legitimate observation, it is perhaps prudent to allow the respective offices to continue focussing on gender and racial discrimination for now. Once some institutional track record has been established in addressing these scourges, we may want to consider merging these offices.
These initiatives around institutional culture will be jointly managed by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Advancement, HR and Transformation, and the Dean of Student Affairs.
6. Institutional Naming
While Wits does not have any statues that could create political controversy, it does need a proactive strategy on the naming of buildings and other sites. Some of this has been done in recent years, especially on the Education Campus. However, we clearly need to be more proactive in this regard. Two considerations require reflection. Firstly, we need to strike a balance between names derived from sponsorships and donations, and those that emanate from strategic considerations such as the establishment of an institutional identity. Secondly, our naming strategy should be informed by both Western and indigenous traditions. The former follows the convention of naming after individuals while the latter tends to do so through evocative descriptions. This is often not understood by many politicians and activists engaged in naming who often erroneously think that they following indigenous traditions by replacing the names of White apartheid politicians with those of Black politicians and liberation heroes.
We should guard against this becoming a widespread practice for not only is it important in an educational institution to name after scholars, artists, poets and students, but it is also too soon to determine the legacy of most contemporary politicians. This does not mean that we should not name buildings after noted celebrated figures of our liberation, including Biko, Mandela, Sisulu, Sobukwe and Tambo, among others. We should definitely do so. But we should also remember to name beyond celebrated politicians and heroes to also include other categories relevant to our mandate. Moreover, we must be consistent with our indigenous tradition and also name through evocative descriptions. We will also consider commissioning a statue or piece of work that reflects our vision of Transformation and commemorates our commitment to it.
This will be managed by the current Naming Committee under the chairpersonship of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Advancement, HR and Transformation. The membership of this Committee will be revised to include all stakeholders within the University community. This Committee will then call for an audit of all buildings and institutional sites, and will determine which should be targeted for naming or renaming in the coming months and years. It will then call for nominations from the University community and establish a process of naming that unites our University community and creates an institutional identity that speaks to who we are and what we aspire to be.
7. Language
Learning multiple languages, in particular the indigenous languages of South Africa, is an important means of enhancing our mutual understanding of one another. Multilingual graduates are also more capacitated and effective in the workplace. In this context, multilingualism is particularly important for Wits given that we strive to be a cosmopolitan institution and are situated at the economic nerve centre of the continent. However, we must also recognise the primacy of English in global economic and political interactions. This is why it is important to keep English as a primary language of instruction. However, we will create the resources and instruments to enable staff and students to develop competence in one of at least two African languages located within the two major language clusters of Nguni and Sotho. In addition, our language policy suggests that we adopt South African Sign Language as part of our linguistic repertoire. One mechanism to do this would be to develop online courses for these languages so that undergraduate and postgraduate students can complete them at any point during their course of their study.
The initiative on language and multilingualism will be managed by the Academic Planning and Development Committee and overseen by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic.
8. Insourcing of all Outsourced Activities
There have been increasing calls by students, staff and external stakeholders such as unions for all services that were outsourced over the past two decades to be insourced by the current management. This has been motivated on the grounds that the workers who service Wits from these outsourced companies tend to be grossly exploited and in some cases even abused. It is hard to argue against this advocacy when the salaries of workers are considered and their stories are heard. However, the challenge is that Wits does not have the resources required to insource these services and put the workers directly onto our payroll. If we were to do this without throwing the institution into financial crisis, we would be required to increase student fees by an additional 15% above the normal annual increase, or get an equivalent increase in the subsidy from the state. The former is difficult given the current economic plight of our students and their families, and the latter is unlikely to happen in the near future.
We have established stopgap measures by writing into our existing contracts clauses that require companies to abide by certain minimum salary thresholds and observe labour relation requirements. If they fail to do this, we are entitled to cancel our contracts. But the dilemma of activating this leverage is that it effectively leads to workers losing their jobs. We will improve on our existing provisions by hosting regular meetings with employers and relevant unions so that we do not find out about abuses at a crisis point. We will also assist workers to establish cooperatives so that they can bid competitively for contracts. However, these will also be stopgap measures and are unlikely to address the core concerns of workers and their supporters. After all, the entire outsourcing industry is premised on the super-exploitation of vulnerable workers who are at the lowest levels of the labour hierarchy.
Given all of this, Wits will look at partnering with civil society organisations, unions and other universities to launch a national campaign, the goal of which would be to increase subsidies to universities with a view to insourcing all outsourced services that involve vulnerable workers. Until we are successful in realising this outcome, however, we are going to have to manage the challenge using the stopgap measures identified above.
