A report on racism at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University (SU) by retired constitutional court Judge Sisi Khampepe received wide media coverage.
Many of the reactions were predictable: On the one hand, this was presented as further evidence that SU is an apartheid institution of higher education that still exists; on the other hand, critics of the report argue, this is a barely disguised way to end Afrikaans as an academic and colloquial language on campus.
Khampepe’s report explains that SU is not just a relic of apartheid, and that the existing transformation efforts are sincere; who have drawn up advanced wisdom and make work implementing that wisdom – not only in senior management, but in the faculty and department, where work has been done to address historical injustice and inequalities.
To say that SU has not moved on from the 1980s is unfair. The problem with the narrative of the mythical Stellenbosch with the mythical Afrikaners is only stuck in the past, it makes it difficult to adequately understand the interests and contradictions that drive racism in the present.
There is certainly much to be said for the role of language in the decolonization of universities in South Africa, including at SU. To date, no higher education institution in South Africa has developed a language policy that is practical or means changing the colonial language order.
African languages like isiXhosa or isZulu are not their own languages, and it is disingenuous to pretend that English does not also use sociolinguistic markers that are subtly maneuvered to exclude people or make them feel that they are not “up. to. standards” enough.
Recently, one of my honor students, who is brown and English-speaking, wrote in an assignment about how he pronounces “r” – rolled “r” or alveolar tap – marks him and other students as sociolinguistically different. As a result, these students internalize the idea that they should change their language when they speak English so that it sounds sophisticated and is taken seriously academically.
In my own experience, it rarely happens that black staff and students are against Afrikaans and their use. What is opposed are the many explicit and subtle ways in which language, especially Afrikaans at SU, is mobilized as an institutional, academic and social barrier.
But SU, as it has yet to fully opt for English, ironically, all universities in South Africa, may now be in the best position to do something new and transformative in terms of creating a multilingual institutional and academic culture.
A lot of money is invested in the SU in the infrastructure that supports large-scale translation and interpretation, and although in practice classes are increasingly taught in English, and then interpreted in Afrikaans and isiXhosa, it will be really possible with the existing technology and help for lecturers to teach not only in Afrikaans, but in isiXhosa, with interpretation in English and Afrikaans. Just think how radical, how decolonizing, it would be if the module in SU would be in isXhosa.
Students will experience African languages as academic languages. The majority of white students will be placed in a position where they have to fit in and adapt to a situation and environment that is not just a mirror image of the world they come from.
It may be easier to make others happy if you sometimes have to be happy yourself; while the possibility for alienation is a little more evenly distributed.
But I don’t want to write here about language and the “language debate”. It is unacceptable that the discussion of racism is repeatedly subordinated to the discussion of language — and in particular the discussion of Afrikaans, with “multilingualism” being only a convenient rhetorical maneuver to stabilize the position of Afrikaans.
Reactions like those of the member of parliament from the Democratic Alliance Leon Schreiber only reinforce the idea that in the end a choice must be made between anti-racism and Afrikaans. This is morally unjustifiable, given the history of SU, and undermines any position that really wants to get serious about multilingualism and decolonization of our university.
If you want to negotiate a place for Afrikaans by denying or relativising racism, you will achieve nothing except to reinforce the perception that Afrikaans is part of the problem. What makes this relativization possible is the false assumption that racism today only exists in the form of cases of prejudice, discrimination, or hurtful language.
What Khampepe reports is clear, and what black staff and students have been reporting for years – informally as well as in research reports, in private conversations with white colleagues and on public platforms – is that SU is still an alienating place: one is black. staff and students often feel tolerated rather than part of the institution and can say without reservation: “This is my university, my campus.”
Here SU, and all white staff, deserve criticism. Why is it necessary for another racism scandal and a commission of inquiry for us to take into account the nature of racism at SU and in the town of Stellenbosch?
Not only from the “news” cases of blatant racism, not only incidents where white students urinated on black students or property, but hundreds of daily examples of humiliation and humiliation that black students and staff reports, and SU and especially the city of Stellenbosch, treat very lightly.
Or do our white friends and the university know, but we are only persuaded by the national exposure and damage to our reputation and “brand” to do something about it?
Of course, we know.
Racism at SU and in Stellenbosch is no secret. On a personal level, I know many people – black colleagues, former students and friends – who have had experiences with open racism at SU and in Stellenbosch. They can tell how K- and H-words are randomly hurled at them from passing cars.
For them, SU is a place that can give them a degree or a salary, but the town of Stellenbosch should avoid it as much as possible. Khampepe’s report confirms what we already know. SU, white staff and the city should do more to understand how this underbelly of intolerance and, even more often, overprivileged indifference, is maintained.
It should be said that by the word racism I do not mean only the conflict between, or prejudice or suspicion. I am referring, in particular, to white normativity, white supremacy and white resistance to the substantial changes that are taking place in SU.
The former can be easily handled by working on personal relationships across group boundaries and building cohesion and shared goals. This is important work, but not enough.
The second is more difficult to deal with and requires honesty, courage and political imagination. One of the main obstacles is that we tend to depoliticize and reduce social problems to interpersonal and even psychological ones; which unfortunately means that they are easily hijacked by political opportunists from all sides.
Racism is a political problem, and it is also a political problem for white people, and not just for those who are behind. Our racial reality is the primary ideological framework within which we, as white people, construct ourselves politically and construct our social and cultural world.
The future of SU, and Stellenbosch, does not depend on how much white people here can rise above our individual stereotypes and prejudices about others. That future will depend on the extent to which white people can articulate anti-racism as an authentic political position and, in line with it, fundamentally rethink ourselves, our environment and our relationship with the continent and the people we share.
It will take more than taking a stand against individual acts of racism. What is needed is a fundamental reimagining of who we are.
This is an edited version of an article originally published by Africa as a Countryadapted from University Seminar: SU, racism and the future (Litnet), and translated by Sean Jacobs.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.