The University of Cape Town: a place where “You can fool some of the people all of the time.”
The community of UCT, my alma mater and employer for 40+ years, has collapsed from a pulsating, educationally panmictic population of 26 000+ occupying a vibrant institution into small clusters of fearful academic and student ‘prisoners’ barricaded within beautiful (but defaced) buildings straddling the foothills of a World Heritage Site.
Connecting them are re-named roadways strewn with the rubble of destruction and uncollected refuse, and populated by small, unfettered gangs of hooded, would-be anarchists or just plain thugs, some of whom have no formal association with UCT.
The limited security personnel and government-employed police deployed to ‘deal’ with them seem incapable of detaining law-breaking miscreants of known identity (certainly apparent on widely viewed videos).
When they catch the odd one red-handed, the ‘protester’ is quickly released without being charged, or bailed out (opposed by the State) with the UCT Executive’s approval to migrate back to campus. This allows them to re-offend or, bizarrely, to participate in ‘negotiations’ about UCT’s future with its vice chancellor and his ‘right-side-of-history’ acolytes.
Even in the unlikely event that de facto, ‘non-negotiating’ protesters’ immediate demands for more pardons and no fees are met or resolved, they will undoubtedly be replaced. Next in the queue are ‘decolonization’ of staff and curricula and, ultimately ‘improved’ student ‘success’. Just what these demands might mean in reality is still far from clear.
Extreme pessimists envisage a Nazi-Apartheid-like system that imposes ‘demographic’ quotas for staff, purges internationally respected ideas based on their ‘offensive’ provenance and renders diplomas as – at best – certificates of mediocrity. For a scary and scanty vision, have a look Joel Modiri’s recent piece.
Now to the connection with the Lincoln quote.
It seems that, at UCT, the “some of the people” comprise its Senate. Fooled by the VC and fearful of anarchist protesters and ‘militarized’ (hospitalized?) security personnel, the latest ‘final straw’ in this tragic history was a ‘resolution’ of the emergency meeting of Senate held on 24 October 2016.
The meeting was described by a long- and well-serving UCT colleague as a “vortex of well-meaning but fuzzy ultraliberalism and in some cases semi-incomprehensible ultraleftism”. In the end, and despite much hand-wringing and apparent attempts to derail the vote, an abbreviated resolution was passed.
Read it and weep.
“The Senate resolves to request the VC (advised by the DVCs and after consultation with the Deans and other members of the Senior Leadership Group, and after listening to representation by students on this matter) to define clearly what the University leadership regards as the limits of legitimate protest.” [underlining mine]
So, before the endless ‘negotiations’ can resume, a bunch of people have to consult and reach a ‘consensus’ as to where to draw the ‘line of violence’ which the ‘protesters’ cannot cross.
But what is consensus? Although I disagree strongly with her politically, I share Margaret Thatcher’s views on consensus:
"Ah consensus … the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead.”
In short, “consensus is the negation of leadership”.
The remaining vast ‘silenced – not silent – unfooled majority’ of students and staff (regardless of how they ‘self-identify’) who simply want to educate and be educated remain held to ransom. The UCT executive and senatorial ‘leadership’, indeed many in the academic community, have failed them and many alumni and donors.
Can we expect anything different from the UCT Council?
