The current University of Cape Town Employment Equity Plan projects that by 2020 the African professor category will increase from 2% to 7% while only 16% of professionally qualified middle management will be African.[i] White professors will constitute 58% and white associate professors will make up 47%. Middle management will be 30% white – a higher…
The label “Hottentot Venus” continues to haunt our memory of Sara Baartman. This moniker, used in Jean Reaux’s posters to advertise the exhibit of Sara, may have been repudiated by renowned scholars such as Pumla Dineo Gqola, Zine Magubane, Yvette Abrahams, Patricia Hill Collins, Sander Gilman among others, but it has persisted as the lens…
In the midst of protests and suspension of lectures recently, the University of Cape Town’s leadership went on a search for a Deputy Vice Chancellor of Teaching and Learning. This was no ordinary search. Over the years, we have heard various iterations on how rare it is to find black South African womxn academics who…
21 October 2016 The UCT Black Academic Caucus believes that the current situation at our universities necessitates a national multi-stakeholder solution. The increasing securitisation and violence on our campuses has become untenable and cannot be resolved through negotiations between the executives and student groupings within individual institutions. The student movement that began at the University…
by Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi On Tuesday last I attended a meeting at which a well-meaning colleague seemingly complimented me on my hair. It was in a two-day old flat-twistout and as such looked somewhat more like a stretched ‘fro. “I like your hair,” he began. Not bad, I thought, then came, “ … especially in…
By Shose Kessi Real and lasting social change does not take place without theory. Theory crafts, guides, sustains and legitimises social systems. In order to dismantle the social systems we live in, which are characterised by racism and other forms of oppression, we need to advance our theories. These theories should and must emerge from…
By Shobane A wave of condemnations and outrage hit the media after University of Cape Town artworks were burnt on campus. Even those academics, who from the rooftops declared their support for the fees must fall movement were very quick to distance themselves from what they saw as a particularly “senseless” act. This violence, it…
By Barbara Boswell Violence is never acceptable. In a democracy, where legal instruments exist as a remedy to injustice, the use of brute force to seek and maintain power or settle scores is abhorrent and unacceptable. Yet we live in a country saturated with violence. Violence is in sharp focus as it spills over into…
By Vissého Adjiwanou It started as a “mood swing” from some black academics at UCT, questioning the lack of transformation within their institution and challenging the inadequate responses from the administration. In their statement and later engagement with UCT, they called for the dismantling of any institutional discrimination, the recognition of the contribution of black…
By Shose Kessi It is interesting how bodily and affective experiences are often weaved out of what is deemed “rational” theorising of current events and political talk. How can my mind operate separately from the rest of my being? Where does the separation occur? At the eyes? The nose? The mouth? The belly? The waist?…
