Abstract
For the better part of the last century the University of the Free State (UFS) – as the “most prestigious” higher education institution in the province – has been a key site for institutional language politics in the province. This brand of institutional language politics has been characterised by several contestations and permutations which can symbolically be described as a struggle for the soul of the UFS because of its far-reaching implications on UFS’s “curriculum as institution” and linguistic culture. Four critical junctures have defined UFS’s language politics over the last century. After a detailed characterisation of these critical junctures, the article argues and demonstrates that the contestations and permutations that have characterised institutional language politics at the UFS are a microcosm of the socio-political and economic struggles in the Free State Province through time, because of the centrality of the UFS in socio-political and economic discourses and dynamics of the province.
Highlights
The article interrogates two least-researched areas in educational and social sciences
For the better part of the last century the University of the Free State (UFS) – as the “most prestigious” higher education institution in the province – has been a key site for institutional language politics in the province. This brand of institutional language politics has been characterised by several contestations and permutations which can symbolically be described as a struggle for the soul of the UFS because of its far-reaching implications on UFS’s “curriculum as institution” and linguistic culture
The chequered history of the UFS as a microcosm of the socio-political and economic struggles in the Free State Province through time notwithstanding, it is probably befitting to characterise the history of the University of the Free State as, “one of faith, hope, struggle and determination”;79 faith in the promise of world-class progressive education for all citizens of the province, the country, the continent and beyond
Summary
The article interrogates two least-researched areas in educational and social sciences. By the early 1970s universities were established in the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, and Venda Bantustans.”[21] In an insight that directly relates to the current discussion, Reddy notes that, “these institutions were expected to legitimate, reproduce, and constitute, especially among the elites, identities and social relations of race and ethnicity If successful, this project would divide the black majority into many minorities, weakening both the physical majority and the political, moral argument for democratic majority rule in an undivided South Africa.”[22] In what comes across as a stinging rebuke to neoliberal elites within the South African higher education sector – who often advance the false narrative of seamless integration of the black person into what is essentially a seriously differentiated system and who in the main are to be found in the so-called English universities – as well as a pointer to the role of language in universities in South Africa through time, Reddy documents that, “notwithstanding the verbal claims of administrators at the English language universities to have opposed Apartheid policies, the application of racially restrictive admissions criteria established by state policy and vigilantly policed at university level helped produce universities for Whites, Africans (divided into separate language groups), Indians, and Coloured.”[23].
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