| dc.description.abstract | Universities, in their multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, are
by their constitution expected to both symbolise and enact transformation. While institutions
of higher education in South Africa have been terrains of protest and reform – whether during
apartheid or post-apartheid – the intense multiplex roles which these institutions assume have
metaphorically come home to roost in the past 2 years. Not unlike the social-media-infused
rumblings, coined as the ‘Arab Spring’, the recent cascades of #mustfall campaigns have
brought to the fore the serious dearth of transformation in higher education and have raised
more critical questions about conceptions of transformation, and how these translate into, or
reflect, the social and political reform that continues to dangle out of the reach of the majority
of South Africans. What, then, does transformation mean and imply? How does an institution
reach a transformed state? How does one know when such a state is reached? These are a few
of the concerns this article seeks to address. But it hopes to do so by moving beyond the thus
far truncated parameters of transformation – which have largely been seeped in the oppositional
politics of historical advantage and disadvantage, and which, in turn, have ensured that
conceptions of transformation have remained trapped in discourses of race and racism.
Instead, this article argues that the real challenge facing higher education is not so much about
transformation, as it is about enacting democracy through equipping students to live and
think differently in a pluralist society. | en_US |
