Institutionalizing Free Inquiry in Universities during Regime Transitions: The South African Case

Abstract

André du Toit Institutionalizing Free Inquiry in Universities during Regime Transitions: The South African Case FOR SOUTH AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION AND INSTITUTIONALIZED research, the transition to a democratic “new South Africa” in the 1990s opened the way to different kinds of fundamental change. The transition also brought new risks and more insidious threats to free inquiry. Taken together these make for a complex and confusing over­ all picture that can be read in opposite ways. Some changes, espe­ cially those that signal the achievement of long social and political struggles, take center stage as dramatic manifestations of a new order of free inquiry. Other changes, especially those brought about by the unanticipated impact of global trends on the restructuring of South African higher education, were only remarked in retrospect. Perhaps the most difficult to assess are those the transition made conceiv­ able, but in the event did not take place. Thus South Africa’s demo­ cratic transition suggested that beyond the deracialization of the elite sector, inclusive access to higher education would enable free inquiry to draw on the intellectual resources of society as a whole. Regime change from apartheid to democracy promised the institutionaliza­ tion of a more robust and flourishing culture of free inquiry fit for a democratic society. (And if this was not realized, how should that lack be identified and assessed?) social research Vol 76 : No 2 : Summer 2009 627 The transition from apartheid to democracy manifestly changed the political context for free inquiry. Under apartheid the threats to free inquiry were overt and external, above all from the apartheid state: ► Some universities, effectively the older, predominantly white teaching institutions, were insulated islands of racial privilege while others, the homeland universities or “Bush Colleges,” were designed as instruments of racial ideology and state policy. The Extension of University Education Act of 1959 formally removed the institutional autonomy of universities in determining student admissions. ► All inquiry was subject to official “publication control,” including the annual prohibition o f thousands of “undesirable publications”; university and research libraries had to apply for permission to hold politically sensitive or ideologically and morally suspect publi­ cations under restrictive conditions; security legislation enabled the “banning,” restriction, and prosecution of political activists including academics and researchers. ► The majority of the population was excluded from access to a racially segregated system of higher education and research: in 1956 as few as 2,300 African students out of a total of some 10 million were enrolled at universities (Malherbe, 1956); while this increased to some 32,700 by 1983, participation rates for Africans by 1990 still stood at less than 9 percent, compared to 60 percent for whites (Bunting and Cloete, 2006). ► In obvious and less obvious ways, the local academic world in South Africa was isolated from major intellectual trends and institutional developments of higher education abroad (Mouton, 2008). In contrast, the position of free inquiry appeared quite different in the context of the transition to a new and democratic South Africa. The comprehensive postapartheid restructuring of higher education was premised on democratic principles and objectives: 628 social research ► Academic freedom was established as a constitutional right: section 16(1) of the new constitution provides that each citizen has the right to freedom of expression, including academic freedom and freedom of scientific research. ► Following on from the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) report of 1996 and the Department of Education’s white paper of 1997, the Higher Education Act of 1997 established a single integrated higher education system committed to equality of access. ► The official policy framework as eventually encapsulated in the National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE) in 2001 rejected direct state control and interference in higher education and instead opted for an approach of “co-operative governance” of higher educa­ tion, thus recognizing the institutional autonomy of universities and limiting the role of the state to “steering” (by such levers as those of systemic planning, funding and quality assurance). Following the end of apartheid, South African higher education and research rapidly caught up with major international trends, includ­ ing new forms of university management and increasing demands for public accountability (Bundy, 2006). A recent comprehensive three-year process initiated by the...