WITS

Mervyn Shear

Description

Mervyn Shear tells the story of how the University of the Witwatersrand adapted to the political and social developments in South Africa under apartheid.

The National Government moves to introduce segregated education galvanised the staff and students of the four ‘open universities’ to oppose any attempt to interfere with their autonomy and freedom to decide who should be admitted.



In subsequent years, as the regime adopted increasingly oppressive measures to prop up the apartheid state, opposition on the campuses, and in the country, increased and burgeoned into a Mass Democratic Movement intent on making the country ungovernable.



Protest escalated through successive states of emergency and clashes with police on campus became regular events. Residences were raided, student leaders were harassed by security police and many students and some staff were detained for lengthy periods without recourse to the courts.



First published in 1996, WITS: A University in the Apartheid Era by Mervyn Shear tells the story of how the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) adapted to the political and social developments in South Africa under apartheid. This new edition is published in the University’s centenary year with a preface by Firoz Cachalia, one of Wits’ student leaders in the 1980s. It serves as an invaluable historical resource on questions about the relationship between the University and the state, and on understanding the University’s place and identity in a constitutional democracy.

Foreword by Firoz Cachalia

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Racial Discrimination at Wits

Chapter 2 The Threat to the ‘Open’ Universities

Chapter 3 Activists Under Pressure

Chapter 4 Student Politics in Black and White

Chapter 5 The 1980s

Chapter 6 Wits and the First State of Emergency

Chapter 7 Resistance Escalates

Chapter 8 Challenge to the Government

Chapter 9 The Struggle Reaches a Climax

Chapter 10 Transition to Democracy

Chapter 11 Epilogue

Notes

Appendices

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• EDUCATION
• Histoire
• Johannesburgo
• África
• History of education
• University of the Witwatersrand
• General officer
• History of Africa
• General
• Africa
• Johannesburg

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776148073
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

WITS
A University in the Apartheid Era
Wits Press RE/PRESENTS
Wits University Press celebrates its centenary in 2022. Since its inception, the Press has been curating and publishing innovative research that informs debate to drive impactful change in society. Drawing on an extensive backlist dating from 1922, Wits Press Re/Presents is a new series that makes important research accessible to readers once again. While much of the content demonstrates its historical provenance, it remains of interest to researchers and students, and is re-published in e-book and print-on-demand formats.
WITS
A University in the Apartheid Era
MERVYN SHEAR
Foreword by Firoz Cachalia
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright © Mervyn Shear 1996
Foreword © Firoz Cachalia 2022
Published edition © Wits University Press 2022
First published 1996
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12022088042
978-1-77614-804-2 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-805-9 (Hardback)
978-1-77614-806-6 (Web PDF)
978-1-77614-807-3 (EPUB)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Cover image: Protest by students at University of Witwatersrand, photographer: Gideon Mendel, courtesy of Gideon Mendel/SAHA
For Caryll and Keith and for all those courageous Wits students as well as those throughout South Africa who opposed apartheid tyranny in the face of harassment, intimidation and incarceration without trial
As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.
John Vorster, Prime Minister 1966-1978 Sayings of the Week, Observer , 9 November 1969
Universities should resist any attempt by the state to undermine their autonomy and academic freedom. The autonomy of tertiary institutions is enshrined in the interim constitution.
FW de Klerk, former State President Addressing students at the University of Pretoria, 15 May 1995
Contents
Foreword by Firoz Cachalia
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
1 Racial Discrimination at Wits
2 The Threat to the ‘Open’ Universities
3 Activists Under Pressure
4 Student Politics in Black and White
5 The 1980s
6 Wits and the First State of Emergency
7 Resistance Escalates
8 Challenge to the Government
9 The Struggle Reaches a Climax
10 Transition to Democracy
11 Epilogue
Notes
Appendices
Index
Foreword
The late Professor Mervyn Shear’s book, Wits: A University in the Apartheid Era , was first published in 1996. This was also the year in which the legal superstructure of the apartheid system was brought to an end and a new non-racial constitution for a democratic South Africa was adopted with great hopes for a more just future. I am honoured to write this preface to the republication of Professor Shear’s book, which was lovingly prepared through careful and rigorous research in the best traditions of truth-telling scholarship. I do so with a deep sense of responsibility to the Wits community, past and present.
The book begins with Shear’s tribute to ‘all those courageous students as well as those throughout South Africa who opposed apartheid tyranny in the face of harassment, intimidation and incarceration without trial’. It is appropriate that I begin this preface with a tribute to the author himself. Mervyn Shear became a courageous, clear-minded and principled opponent of apartheid tyranny, as well as an advocate of a negotiated transition to a constitutional democracy. As Deputy Vice-Chancellor with the portfolio of student affairs, he gave unstinting support to staff and students protesting against apartheid, and was indefatigable in his commitment to defending their rights and well-being in the face of assaults, banning orders and detention without trial. He is remembered with a great deal of affection and respect by the student leadership of the turbulent 1980s, the period of his service as a senior and distinguished administrator at one of South Africa’s leading academic institutions.
Although a reading of the book reveals much about Shear’s character and opinions, its historical method is essentially documentary in the sense that it provides a record of facts from the beginnings of the university in 1919, although focusing on the apartheid era. It provides an invaluable resource to the present Wits community, and for the wider South African public, for reflection and deliberation on many of the questions that continue to engage us. Was the relationship between the university and the apartheid state one of resistance or accommodation, or both? Does this have any bearing on how we might understand the university’s place and identity in a constitutional democracy committed to the freedoms of the people as well as the of the person and the intellect? Does Shear’s account of the history of the university’s opposition to encroachment on its autonomy by the apartheid state contribute to our ability to understand, articulate and defend of the values of academic freedom and freedom of expression in institutions of higher learning in South Africa today? Does the history of Wits in the era of colonialism and apartheid documented by Shear throw any light on the challenges of transformation of higher education in the post-colony? In the light on these questions of contemporary interest, I reflect critically on the content of the book.
Shear begins by confronting the university’s history of racial discrimination factually and truthfully. His record shows that despite J H Hofmeyr’s suggestion in his installation address as its first Principal that the university should ‘know no distinctions of class or wealth, race or creed’, in practice, ‘Wit’s admission policies reflected the prejudices of the society to which it belonged. While it never officially adopted a policy of excluding students on the grounds of race or colour, it was very hesitant to accept black students in substantial numbers’. In fact, before the National Party came to power in 1948, determined to implement its policy of apartheid rigorously, the university lobbied the government to introduce legislation to enable it to discriminate on the basis of race after being advised by its lawyers that it needed a legislative basis to do so. Shear notes, ‘It seems clear … that in the 1930s and 1940s the Council of the University was in advance of the state in its desire to implement university segregation’.
The Medical School and the School of Dentistry were particularly notorious. Both actively enforced an odious policy of crude and offensive discrimination at least until the end of the 1960s. Black students who were admitted to the medical school in small numbers were not to be ‘allowed access to white patients or even to autopsies conducted on white subjects’. And similarly, black dentistry students were not to be allowed access to white mouths. Shear’s factual record shows that the university’s governing bodies and administrators ‘at that time’ regarded the establishment of separate facilities as ‘progressive and liberal’. Throughout this period and through the early 1970s, the university also pursued a policy of social segregation, excluding black students from the swimming pool for instance, presumably because the pool water had to be kept pristine for white bodies. Student residences were for whites only. There were ‘very few black students on campus’ at that time, Shear observes, ‘and those who were there were not part of our lives’. So the conclusion is inescapable that at the University of the Witwatersrand, as elsewhere in South Africa ‘at that time’, the universalist commitments of ‘European liberalism’ yielded, from a mix of conviction and external ‘conservative pressure’, to the pervasive ‘common sense’ racial prejudices of the colonial order on the most basic questions of justice. Shear, to his credit, did not airbrush this shameful history from the historical record.
From the 1950s onwards, Wits University’s relationship to the apartheid state is not simply one of complicity, as it was in the pre-1948 era of segregation. It is also one of growing opposition and criticism of the National Party’s policies in higher education. This opposition was framed early on as a defence of its autonomy against interference by the state, and its right to exercise control over its admission policy as an ‘open university’. But in that period, the university was not unambiguously committed to the principles of non-racialism and non-discrimination. As Shear describes, a significant evolution occurs in the university’s understanding and articulation of the basis of its opposition to the plans of the National Party from the early 1950s onwards to introduce ‘total educational apartheid’.
On 12 June 1956, a special meeting of Convocation considers a motion opposing the ‘continuous threats by the Government’s spokesmen to introduce apartheid in open universities and urges Council to re-affirm the long established principle of academic non-segregation’, by which it meant segregation in lecture theatres, and nothing more. On April 1959, however, in response to the enactment of the Extension of University Education Act 45 of 1959, at the first General Assembly of the university in the Great Hall, the Council, Senate Staff, Convocation and the student body gathered to express their strong opposition to the Act and adopted a solemn affirmation in the following terms:
We affirm in the name of the University of the Witwatersrand that it is our duty to uphold the principle that a university is a place where men and women, without regard to race and colour, are welcome to join in the acquisition and advancement of knowledge; and to con