UCT staff transformation must be understood in context of history and complexity

By Alan Cliff, Floretta Boonzaier, Lebogang Ramma, Gillian Ferguson and Elelwani Ramugondo

1 Sep 2024

In the current context of academic staff development for higher education transformation, there is a clear need to prioritise demographic representation – particularly in senior academic ranks at historically white universities.

We are part of the current leadership of the Next Generation Professoriate programme at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and write in reference to the views of Dr Robert Morrell on academic staff development and transformation published in Daily Maverick on 25 June 2024.

While the piece quite appropriately points to the difficulties and challenges of transforming the demographic profile of academic staff in higher education institutions in South Africa broadly, we are concerned that transformation and staff development initiatives at UCT in particular, are partially, inaccurately or erroneously represented.

We are concerned especially about some of the misrepresentations of the Next Generation Professoriate programme at UCT, which we believe can contribute to disunity and a sense of exclusion.

Inclusive

The inclusive and cohort-building purposes of the programme are the cornerstone of its mission and purpose – and always have been. We wish therefore, firstly, to correct errors in the piece that state or imply that this purpose has been overturned or altered.

We also question the inferences that the fundamental purposes of the programme have been altered because of the change in the championing (under Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Transformation, Student Affairs and Social Responsiveness, Professor Elelwani Ramugondo) and leadership of the programme since the author stood down as convenor.

We affirm that academic staff who are current members of the the Next Generation Professoriate programme are constituted of black South African (as defined in employment equity legislation) and black academics from elsewhere on the continent employed at UCT at senior lecturer or associate professor levels.

It is not correct that cohort membership is exclusively black African, and it is not true that the intention is to focus only on black African academics in this staff development work.

It is also inaccurate that the current deputy vice-chancellor has changed the eligibility criteria for membership to be exclusively black African South African, and the imputation that she has a “racist” agenda in doing so is pernicious and highly offensive.

The work of transformation in the ranks of senior academic staff (including the professoriate) remains focused on inclusive representation, while remaining mindful of the low representation of black South African academics in the professoriate at UCT despite the existence of several staff development transformation initiatives over the past two decades.

Inaccurate

Furthermore, it is inaccurate that the current programme leadership subscribes to an approach of “throwing money at the problem” to correct imbalances, or views transformation as “a matter of optics” which will be corrected solely by greater representation of black people in the professoriate.

To insinuate this, as the opinion piece does, is to diminish or belittle the current thought leadership of the Next Generation Professoriate programme. This also has the potential to create disunity and division among the cohort and possible future members.

The clear goal of the programme remains to contribute to creating enabling conditions systemically, and for members of the cohort to achieve promotion to professorship, but not in a mechanistic sense of making up the numbers. This is a programme whose aim is the building of a cohort and a network for participants to take their rightful place in the senior academic ranks at this university and elsewhere in higher education.

Misleading impression

We are also concerned that the opinion piece creates the misleading impression that the current Next Generation Professoriate programme leadership has somehow taken the programme in a problematic direction, or failed to stay true to the founding principles of the programme as a contribution to transformation.

While it is true that the leadership of the programme is now a team of five, including a coordinator, the fundamentals of the programme remain in place: the scholarship of academic staff development and transformation; demographic transformation through strengthening representation in the professoriate; mentoring, operational and funding support to the cohort; cohort-building through inclusive leadership; and systemic transformation that asks: what will it take to enable greater representation and inclusion of black South African academics in the university professoriate at a historically white university such as UCT?

The new and different model of inclusive leadership introduces a diversity of strengths and capacities.

In the current context of academic staff development for higher education transformation, there is a clear need to prioritise demographic representation – particularly in senior academic ranks at historically white universities.

To view this priority as a threat to inclusivity and unity among academics is to trivialise the history of black academics’ exclusion in higher education, and to undermine the agency of all academics by portraying as “victims” those who are cast as excluded.

Demographic transformation

To portray demographic transformation as a threat to unity, inclusivity and collegiality suggests that academics in general are unable to appreciate that unity, diversity and collegiality are fundamentally a function of demographic inclusion. It also frames black academics as a “disuniting” and “divisive” influence that threatens the perceived harmony of historical and existing academic workplaces that are dominated by white academics.

It creates the impression of a binary: to prioritise the demographic transformation of the professoriate automatically excludes the participation of all academics in processes of transformation.

Furthermore, it assumes that only white academics must continue to hold the future agenda for transformation, even as post-retirees and in perpetuity, framing them as indispensable “saviours”, and black academics as perpetually dependent.

We argue for a nuanced approach which appreciates the complexity of academic staff development for transformation. We appeal for such an approach to be understood as ongoing and evolving.

Centrally, we believe that debating the histories, merits, perceived shortfalls and misdirection of the work in the media risks affecting the very colleagues and groups among whom the work is designed to build support networks and create the conditions for individual and systemic transformation in higher education. DM

Prof Alan Cliff, Prof Floretta Boonzaier, Prof Lebogang Ramma, Associate Prof Gillian Ferguson and Prof Elelwani Ramugondo are part of the current leadership of the Next Generation Professoriate (NGP) programme at the University of Cape Town.

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