What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

This past week in my Culture, Identity, and Globalisation class (yes, they spell it with an s. It’s really frustrating. I’m spelling labour with a u, too.) we learned about UCTs grim history. I can now say I now far more about UCT than about Pomona – kind of sad, but the history of this place is fascinating. I view the whole UCT campus in a totally different way after learning what I did this past week.

The South African College was founded in 1829, and accepted only whites. In 1916, a huge donation by two mining magnates, along with an act of Parliament, led to the official establishment of the University of Cape Town. The first president of the university, John Caruthers Beattie, wanted to “spread civilization” in Africa. He stressed the need to “unite the two races of South Africa – English and Afrikaans people”. Think about the absurdity of that statement for just a second.

(Still thinking…)

(Still in disbelief…)

Ok, moving on. Black South Africans simply didn’t exist in Beattie’s mind. He noted, “There is a strong colour prejudice in South Africa, and we have to pay attention to that.” In 1923, the UCT council, the governing board of the university, made an admission that said it was against the university’s interest to admit blacks at all. Despite this, a very small number of blacks were allowed in the university, but they weren’t allowed to take medicine or fine arts. The UCT council found the idea of a black person medically examining a white person repugnant.

UCT moved to it’s current location in 1929 as a result of a huge donation by Cecil Rhodes – then prime minister of the Cape. Rhodes envisioned UCT as an “Oxford in Africa”, and sent his architect, Solomon, on a tour of Europe and America to gather architectural ideas. The very center of upper campus, Jameson Hall, was meant to be an exact copy of the Jefferson Library at the University of Virginia, but the project ran out of money and thus they had to install a slanted roof instead of a huge dome.

Rhodes’ whole vision of UCT was for it to be a sight of prospect. The institution self-consciously exists apart from society and is placed on a hill overlooking Cape Town and the Cape Flats so people on UCT can look down on everyone else. It was almost as if Rhodes wanted people to think, “Here I am. And there you all are. And I can look down at you, like God. But here I am, in the sight of perfect prospect.” UCT may be in Africa, but it’s not quite Africa – it’s a carefully crafted site that deliberately exists apart from the rest of Africa. The world of the university is a make believe world of anywhere and nowhere. When you walk on UCT campus you’re supposed to feel entitled and aloof. You’re supposed to understand that you are in a place of prospect, a place for furthering education and looking down on those who can’t get that same education. The last truly Rhodesian site in the entire world that still is regularly used. The entirety of UCT is a sign of the power of the British empire and colonialism – a history of dominance over the native South Africans. Not just racial dominance, but mental dominance.

The university has existed as three “different” universities: the colonial university, the apartheid university, and the global university. Though it now exists as the global university, there is a simultaneous existence on some level of the two previous universities. You cannot walk on UCTs campus and simply ignore the past history of the institution, there is a co-presence of all three today.

The colonial university is pretty much described above, and was the dominant form of the university up until the Group Areas Act of 1949, which officially started apartheid. In 1937 there were only 40 black / Indian / coloured students at the university. The same year, there was a debate on campus about whether or not non-Europeans should be admitted conditionally to the university. Of 90 students voting, only 20 were for it – 30 abstained and 40 were against it. Over time, though, the university started allowing more blacks. Still, the numbers were always incredibly small and almost insignificant. Black students felt so out of place on campus that they ate in the basement of the zoology department instead of in the campus food court.

The campus became very politically active during the 1970s and 1980s, going in line with the student uprisings in Soweto (1976) and the township revolts around Cape Town (1985 and 1986). Protests were held on the steps to Jameson Hall (called the Jammy Steps) where both blacks and whites joined together. However, outside of these protests, blacks and whites pretty much had no interaction on campus. That was up until the end of apartheid, and starting after the democratic elections in 1994, the university started allowing more and more black students. The problem? Many of them were from foreign countries – hence the “global university”. Today, 20% of the student body is non-South African, with 10% of the student body coming from Southern African countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Rwanda, and Namibia. This signifies a problem with primary and secondary schooling in South Africa – but that’s for another post, in which I’ll talk about how the labour market here is so fucked because of poor education systems.

Two more notes, and then I’m done rambling. First, it’s important to note that the people who founded UCT and who the buildings are named after (Rhodes, Jameson, etc.) are WAR CRIMINALS in the mind of South Africans. Their colonialism was almost equivalent to slavery to the South Africans, and they’re universally hated amongst the black community. Jameson Hall and the Jammy Steps are equivalent to having Hitler Hall and the Hitler steps at the University of Berlin.

I’ll leave you with a story. In the late 1960s, a black man named Arthur Mafeje saw a position advertised in social anthropology at UCT. He had earned is PHD in London in social anthropology and was the strongest candidate for the job. In fact, the university offered him the job. He stood to be the first black lecturer at UCT, no doubt a huge deal, especially in the 1960s in the heart of apartheid. Upon hearing this, the Minister of Education contacted the UCT president and said something along the lines of “we view these developments with displeasure”. Needless to say, the Vice Chancellor rescinded Mafeje’s job offer.

This is the university I walk every day. What does it mean to inhabit apartheid spaces in a post-apartheid present? I’m not sure, but I’m starting to find out.