Does Apartheid Still Exist at UCT?

Definitely not my best work ever (papers in South Africa aren't supposed to be eloquently written, they're supposed to get your point across), but still an interesting subject nonetheless. The video was part of my non-standard submission, and is of me walking from the bottom of Lover's Walk (close to the bottom of Lower Campus) up to Upper Campus. Think about how the mountain serves as a reference for much of the campus, and think about how gaining elevation creates a sense of aloofness and removal from the rest of Cape Town. And that song - I'm gonna make it blow up all over the US once I get back.
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Being a white, American student at a university located in a city still overcoming the atrocities of apartheid gives me a perspective different than most. Not feeling connected to either the past or to a certain subgroup of society allows me to look objectively at how people behave. The city of Cape Town itself still is rooted in apartheid: the way in which it is spatially constructed, with rich white communities located at the foot of Table Mountain and poorer black townships sprawled across the Cape Flats, makes it difficult for Capetonians to escape the legacy of apartheid in their day-to-day lives. As a result of forced removals, it is tough for those living in Cape Town to achieve true integration. If you were to talk to the higher-ups at the University of Cape Town, I bet they would have you believe that this wasn’t the case at UCT; that UCT was a race-neutral space in which everyone was truly equal. However, after spending a semester at UCT and observing the way in which people behave here, I firmly believe that this institution still has remnants of apartheid engrained into it. As a result, I argue that, to some palpable extent, apartheid, in its literal sense of the word (separateness), still exists at the University of Cape Town.

The motivation for this study doesn’t require much explaining. It’s important to understand the dynamics of the space you are occupying, especially if it is an unfamiliar space. I go to a small school of 1400 in the United States, and being part of a student body of upwards of 20,000 gives you a totally different perspective. I wanted to get a firm grasp on student life at the University of Cape Town, and saw no better way to do it than to conduct a study examining how narratives of the past are (or are not) still present today. Universities are heralded as spaces of progressiveness and of forward thinking, and I wanted to see if this was the case at UCT, an especially interesting task in post-apartheid South Africa.

To examine the question of whether or not apartheid still exists at the University of Cape Town, our group took a three-fold approach. First, we did a study of the architecture and spatial makeup of the campus. It is certain that the way a space is constructed dictates the way people behave in that space, either knowingly or subconsciously, and so understanding the structural design of UCT was crucial. Next, we looked at student behavior on campus. We were looking to see if black students sat only with other black students on the Jammie steps, or if white students walked to class only with other white students, or if coloured students ate only with other coloured students, etc. If this was the case, it could be argued that segregation was still prevalent at UCT. We also examined enrollment in different faculties based on race: was one faculty relatively dominated by black students, while another relatively dominated by whites? If so, it would indicate institutional segregation. Lastly, we asked several students if they thought that apartheid still existed at the University of Cape Town. We left the question intentionally broad so that it was open to individual interpretation. Analyzing these three different dynamics allowed us to better evaluate to what extent apartheid still exists at the University of Cape Town.

Originally founded by an act of Parliament in 1916, the University of Cape Town moved to its current location in Rondebosch in 1929. The institution was constructed as a site of prospect; it self-consciously exists apart from society and is placed on a hill so that students may “look down” on the rest of Cape Town (Shepherd). When you walk the campus of the University, you’re supposed to feel in awe of the space you’re walking. Many of the buildings exhibit Rhodesian architecture, displaying symmetrical windows and columns that create a sense of order and rigidity. The campus is organized around the Summer House, the little white building right by the freeway (Shepherd). Originally, the highway didn’t exist, and you could continue walking from the Summer House straight up to the steps of Jameson Hall. You were supposed to start your walk to campus from the bottom of Lover’s Walk and walk in a straight line all the way to the very top of campus, gaining elevation the entire time. Walking this very path, you notice that the entire campus is constructed in reference to Devil’s Peak – the Summer House is perfectly lined up with it, as is the statue of Cecil Rhodes that sits at the top of the rugby field, as is Jameson Hall, the center of Upper Campus. Jameson Hall was constructed as a “temple on a hill”, and was modeled to be an exact copy of the Jefferson Library at the University of Virginia (Shepherd). All of these factors give the campus an air of aloofness and strict order. If we accept the argument that the way a space is constructed dictates the way people behave in that space, it is hard for students to escape the colonial implications of the University of Cape Town.

Nick Shepherd speaks about the University of Cape Town as three universities in one: the colonial University (from its founding until 1948), the apartheid University (from 1948 – 1994), and today’s University. He notes that today, there is a sense of simultaneity or co-presence of the “old” Universities with the “new” one (Shepherd). He doesn’t even have a name for today’s University, as he cannot distinguish how the University has fundamentally changed as the result of the end of apartheid. Combining this idea with the above idea about people’s behavior, we arrive at the bleak reality that there are still structural remnants of apartheid at today’s University.

When you walk around campus, student segregation is almost immediately palpable. You’ll predominantly see whites walking to class only with other whites, or blacks eating lunch only with other blacks. Though the Jammie steps serve as a race-neutral meeting ground for all, you’ll often find that there are subgroups of uniform race scattered across the steps. Why does this happen? One likely explanation is that students feel more comfortable associating with other students of the same race. This isn’t the case only in South Africa; the same holds true at many American universities, but people are less willing to talk about it there. This may not be a reflection of white oppression of black and coloured students; students may simply feel like they have more in common with other students of their same race. However, it is hard to ignore years and years of oppression, and it is possible that students today still inhabit their parents’ views, contributing to racial segregation on campus.

Perhaps more notably, racial segregation is evident in enrollment in the different faculties. Humanities and Law tend to be dominated, relatively, by white students, while Commerce, Engineering, and Science have significantly higher relative percentages of black students. Though there are uniformly more white students than black students enrolled in every faculty, this reflects the fact that there are nearly twice as many white students as black students at the University of Cape Town. There are two different likely explanations for this discrepancy in enrollment. First, English is a second language for many black students. Humanities and Law classes tend to be more reading intensive than Commerce, Engineering, and Science classes, thus making these classes more inaccessible to black students. The language of math is universal, and is thus understood by all. Second, jobs associated with Commerce, Engineering, and Science majors are considered to be more professional than those associated with Humanities and Law. Many black students are coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, and want to chase higher paying, more secure jobs so they can provide for their families. White students, on the other hand, often come from more privileged backgrounds, and can afford to study subjects in which they have no intentions of making a career, as they will be supported by their families.

This institutional separation poses several problems. First, it makes it harder for students of different races to work together in the classroom, and hopefully foster relationships that linger outside the classroom. Second, primary and secondary schooling for black students is of substantially poorer quality than that of whites across South Africa, especially in maths and sciences. This makes it more difficult for blacks, as they want to enroll in faculties that they deem more professional, but they don’t have the necessary skills to succeed in that area. Overall, it is impossible to deny the institutional and spatial segregation observed at the University of Cape Town.

Perhaps the most important aspect of our study was student interviews. Even if the legacy of apartheid is engrained in the University through its architecture and institutional segregation, how students feel is the key marker for judging whether or not apartheid still exists at UCT. We are most concerned with how students feel, for if they believe that true integration and equality exists on campus, the institutional and architectural aspects of apartheid don’t carry as much weight. If, however, black students feel that they are awarded fewer opportunities than white students, it is an important indicator that apartheid still has holdovers on today’s University.

We interviewed both black and white students, both from inside South Africa and foreigners, and the results confirmed our beliefs: black students feel that the legacy of apartheid still plays a role in campus life today, while white students feel that the University is a space of equality for all. Several students noted that white students tend to hang out with only white students, black students hang out with only black students, etc., going as far as saying “segregation on this campus is definitely evident”. This carries into the classroom, too, where one student, Shanda, told us that whites tend to sit in the back of the classroom together, and that black students will sit in the front few rows since many of them are on bursaries and want to honor them to the fullest extent. Busi, from South Africa, suggested that campus disparities today are dictated more by class than by race, but that class is an extension of race. “People just need to get outside their comfort zones”, she told us, “and hang out with new people”. One white student, Colin, observed institutional segregation in the classroom. He said that there are almost no black kids in any of his humanities classes, and thought that black students tended to stick to sciences and engineering. Colin acknowledged that segregation is present to some extent on the campus of UCT, but noted that UCT is far more integrated than the University of Stellenbosch. He attributed the limited segregation to the fact that, “Black and white people have different cultures, so they function within their own groups.”

Considering that whites were (and still are) the beneficiaries of apartheid practices, it’s unsurprising to find that their opinions on whether or not apartheid still exists differ from those of the black students. This is especially troubling, given that those in a position to change the culture at the University of Cape Town (i.e. the executive board) are mostly white. Therefore, it’s unlikely that a fundamental change in campus culture towards equality will come from the top; it needs to come from shifting attitudes of the student body. One student echoed this sentiment, and said that it will take at least one more generation before we really see integration, since hopefully by then racism won’t be engrained into the minds of students.

The word “apartheid”, translated literally from Afrikaans, means “separateness”. In this sense, though apartheid isn’t legally instituted anymore, its legacy still has real effects on South Africa today, even at the University of Cape Town. Though students may not realize it, there is no doubt that they are subconsciously affected by the Rhodesian architecture of campus. Segregation of students, both socially and institutionally, is a reality of student life at UCT. Students of all color will acknowledge this fact, but white students will tend to attribute it to the existence of different, but equal, cultures. Black students, on the other hand, will mostly argue that segregation is a result of the institutionalization of the legacy of apartheid. Though it is hard to totally escape the past, given that the present reflects learned histories of the past, we hope that with time students will undergo a fundamental shift in attitude and start looking at everyone as truly being equal. Only then can we achieve true integration, both at the University of Cape Town, and throughout all of South Africa.