The role of feminisms in building a transformation framework for institutions of higher learning in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The dawn of democracy in 1994 ushered in a period of radical change in the higher education sector of South Africa. This rupture represented an opportunity to avoid the replication of patriarchally informed, racially charged, neoliberal practices. More than twenty years later under the banner of Fees Must Fall, students, workers, and academics challenged the exclusionary, racist, exploitative and sexist nature of Higher Learning Institutions that have persisted since this transition from apartheid. In this paper, we reiterate a tested argument in (South) African feminist scholarship by proposing that to fulfil this goal towards transformation and change in and across HLIs, a critical starting point is to use feminist theories to deconstruct parochial, patriarchal ideologies. We review some of the key arguments that various feminists have put forth in relation to meaningfully transforming institutional cultures and pedagogies, ranging from anti-apartheid feminisms to more contemporary, intersectional feminisms and further argue that the neoliberalisation of HLIs, manifested in the capturing of private markets within the education sector, and practices of output-based productivity measurements that create bedrocks of racially charged epistemic exclusions, echo hierarchical patriarchal elements that are remnants of colonialism and apartheid.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher Learning Institutions
• patriarchy
• transformation
• feminisms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this article, Shabangu carefully braids an idea of suffocation and breathlessness perpetuated in HLIs through parochial and prejudiced language policies. His accounting is exemplary of the systemic ways in which oppressive ideologies remain in universities across South Africa.

2. Prior to the implementation of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, the majority of black South African schools were run by Christian missions that were in turn funded, albeit to a minimum, by the state. The roll-out of the Act meant that dominion and control would be handed entirely to the state, whose Native Affairs Department kept education for blacks separate and necessarily inferior as a matter of ideological principle. The Extension of University Education Act 45 of 1959 ended the enrolment of black students into so-called white universities (mainly targeting the University of Cape Town and the University of Witwatersrand). The institutionalisation of this law meant that so-called tribal colleges or “bush” universities such as UWC and the University of Fort Hare were established for black students. Undeniably, these institutions were starved of necessary resources and funding, further entrenching a future built on racial inequities (Ka Choeu 1991; Rosnes 2020; Christie and Collins 1982).

3. This marker highlights the Cartesian dualist perspective of the world structured into variations of binary-based patterns and the Hobbesian idea of the “state of nature” where the advent of order, rationality and science sets humanity free from their animalistic moorings. See Foster (1991) for a close and critical analysis of Cartesian dualism.

4. The term “womxn” has been used in recent black-led social movements, such as Fees Must Fall and Black Lives Matter, as a way to resist and problematise the “monolithic, white-dominant, cisgender man-centred understanding of womanhood” in order to move towards a more inclusive term (Ashlee, Zamora, and Karikari 2017, 102), denoting a multiplicity of racial, class and sexual identities and subjectivities. See Ndelu, Dlakavu, and Boswell (2017) for a reflection of the contributions of womxn and non-binary activists to Fees Must Fall in 2015 and 2016.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Efua Prah

Efua Prah is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Stellenbosch. Her research reflects her interests in anthropological theorisations in intercontinental African migration politics, refugee studies, adolescent and childhood studies and studies of the embodiment of sexuality, pregnancy, and birthing.

Terri Maggott

Terri Maggott is a Master of Arts graduate from the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Centre for Social Change. Her research interests include student protests and movements, feminist politics in social movements and political sociology. She is currently working as a research coordinator at UJ’s Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.