Barney Pityana:

Transformation, Black Consciousness

and African Renaissance

(Maandblad Zuid-Afrika, September 2015)

In his younger days, Barney Pityana was one of the leaders of the Black Consciousness Movement, working side by side with Steve Biko. Now, even though he is part of the establishment, he still has a keen eye for the pitfalls of colonialism and racism at South African institutions of higher education.

We meet at the offices of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, an NGO initiated by former President Mbeki ‘to be a catalyst for the achievement of an African Renaissance.’

‘For a long time now, I have been committed to Thabo Mbeki’s strivings to draw South Africa into a closer, more intimate relationship with Africa and what Africa stands for and, if necessary, to take the lead in all things African on the world stage,’ Pityana explains our meeting there. ‘To my mind that was Mr Mbeki’s greatest contribution as president. It is my pleasure to help translate his ideas into programmatic linkages with higher education institutions and research centres in Africa and establish a research centre at the Thabo Mbeki Foundation.’

‘There is a direct link between academic transformation and the idea of an African Renaissance. For three hundred years, higher education in South Africa was linked to European ideas, education, and science, and more recently, to those of North America as well. Especially during apartheid, for ideological and political reasons, South Africa grew increasingly isolated from the rest of the continent. After 1994, the new South Africa benefited from the long years of liberation struggle that was very much linked to Africa. Many South African leaders found refuge in African states, the liberation struggle was conducted from African states, and in Africa itself our struggle received much support.’

Massification first

‘When the new South Africa became a fact, our priority was to ensure that higher education was opened up to the masses to whom it had been shut. This first phase was also about visibility of African leadership – black managers and academics – in our institutions. This did mean, however, that many of us walked into a system that was not of our own making, even though most of us were products of that very system: either we had been educated here, or in Europe, or the USA. At the time, we made no claims to any prior knowledge different from what we had received. It was easier for us to simply walk into the system and to make it work as it had always worked.’

‘Gradually, it became clear, however, that this was not a viable proposition. South Africans became conscious of Africa and of being African – a consciousness relating to issues of culture, interpretations of history, and the ability of Africa to rise above its past. None of these issues were represented in the manner in which learning was taking place. There was, so to speak, a parallel world out there which was not represented at our universities.’

‘At the same time, it became evident that our students were not succeeding despite all the opportunities now available to them. We realized that we had to find out whether there were learning models which were hampering the way our students were learning.’

‘These insights only arose during the last ten years or so. By now, of course, it is becoming quite clear that in the eyes of the present generation of students and black academics we were too slow in dealing with these matters and, having been a university administrator at Unisa myself, I can’t deny it.  The main reason lay with our priorities, i.e. needing to make the universities work under our leadership and to increase representation as much as we could. This, I believe, has been achieved. Currently, African students at most of our universities number well beyond 60%. Our success rates are not as strong as they should be, and this remains a challenge. But the first important step was to stabilize the universities. This in itself was a component of the transformation process.’

What does Africanisation mean?

‘At this stage, other issues are coming to the fore, as I think they should. And these are not easy issues. One of them, of course, has to do with historical spaces. We received buildings with names, and statues, and plaques. We received an academic culture, and we received an entire set of qualities and standards from those who came before us.’

‘It’s no easy task to address these issues, because we don’t always agree about what should be done. We’re still experimenting, and no one knows what the outcome will be. Naturally, this frightens many people because, if we’re not careful, it’ll affect the standard, quality, and competitiveness of higher education in South Africa. Nevertheless, I think our present situation is ideal for pushing back boundaries a lot more than before, when our focus was still on student and staff equity.’

‘I agree with many who say that the starting point is to decolonize, to question the wisdom or authenticity of what we received, and to challenge its relevance for us today. Secondly, we must acknowledge the colonizing process. By and large, everything we have actually emanates from a whole range of histories and cultures we’ve become part of. It is unlikely that you are going to find anything today that can be called “African” in its purest sense. As Africans, of course we have views, ideas, histories, cultures, and languages of our own. But we have also taken from what we’ve learnt. What comes out in the end may well be called “African”, because the context will make it so.’

‘The same is true for legitimizing the previously marginalized African knowledge systems. None of them is so pure as to be free of any other form of learning. Rather, it’s a dialogue with other forms of learning, American, European, and Asian. What some of us are saying is that we want to be able to identify with any learning and any knowledge system, so that it doesn’t seem so foreign, so alienating so as to not speak to the inner core of who we are.’

Growing our own scholarship

‘Given the circumstances, I do think 60% black students is very good. Moreover, I don’t believe that everybody who finishes school must go to university. That’s a fallacy. The big challenge we’re faced with today is how to move students, once they are accepted into university, to participate meaningfully, to benefit from the learning they are engaged in, and to show the appropriate outcomes. One part of the problem, of course, is the gap between school and university. Another is the socio-economic culture of this country where there is so much poverty. For many families and communities schooling is not a priority at all. Other issues directly relating to life and death need to be dealt with first.’

‘We have to be mindful of the fact that, by and large, we still depend on the same academic environment in place in 1980. The professoriate in most universities is still largely white, still male, and if there are any women, they’re likely to be white women. You can’t change that in only twenty years. In reality, it’ll take at least another twenty years. In this respect, the last ten years or more were wasted because most Africans attended university to complete their studies and then to get a job in order to support their families and extended families. At the same time, in the nation building project most Africans were being absorbed in civil service and business.’

‘At present, South African universities are drawing on talent from other African countries, like Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Nigeria.  We have to grow our own scholarship in South Africa, starting with those 60% who are going through university now. Even then, many of them will end up going to the United States or China, wherever there are opportunities…, which means that we have to be constantly developing and growing. At the moment we are nowhere near the minimum required to assure South Africa of a cadre of academic scholarship in twenty years time.’

What Steve Biko would have said

‘This whole discussion about the Rhodes statue at UCT – where I am President of Convocation – needs to be understood slightly differently. At the moment, people in South Africa are very angry, for a whole range of reasons. Part of this anger finds expression on the campuses. If it hadn’t been the Rhodes statue, it would have been something else. Over the last five years, the statue was never a matter of debate, there has never been a resolution to remove it, neither from the students, nor from the staff. There was no resistance from the university council either.’

‘In general, UCT has done very well on transformation. It has well over 60% African students, gives support to students, and produces some of the best graduates. Its success rate is probably the most successful of any South African university. But UCT is an “English” university, it’s kind of England in Africa, and for a long time they felt they could just carry on that way. The university hasn’t been sensitive enough to the fact that some kind of change was required, and that you don’t bring Africans into the university in order to change them to become like you.’

‘So the students are raising an important issue when they say that the institutional culture at UCT is alienating, European, English, and that matters like racism and sexism are not receiving enough attention. For an African student who has to live on that campus, day in and day out, attend lectures where you are a minority all the time, where you have to speak English 24 hours a day and write exams in perfect English, it is easy to feel alienated.’

‘There is a resurgence of interest in Steve Biko and Black Consciousness, at UCT especially, but at other universities as well. Part of this resurgence has to do with the extent to which young people are angry and disillusioned with the ANC as an organization and indeed as government. But you can never read Steve Biko out of context. Twenty-one years into democracy, you cannot maintain that we still live in the same South Africa Steve Biko was writing about. You cannot today pretend that white people and white ideas – white-ness – have no value or relevance. They have become part of our own knowledge systems. You have to accept that white people in our country are Africans. And, therefore, they have as legitimate a right to express themselves and to express their own Africanness as you have.’

‘What Steve was saying at that time – in an environment where African people were not in power, where African people were experiencing an amazing assault on their identity – was: if there is going to be change at all, it begins with you claiming your humanity and, if you can’t claim your humanity, you won’t actually be able to overcome. Today, each time we go to vote, we vote for the same government, and then we complain when government does things we don’t agree with. We don’t make government accountable. And although in many respects I do believe that twenty-one years on white people in this country still have a lot of power and racism is still a major factor, there are systems and processes in which we can deal with that, whereas previously there were not. You can be assertive today in a way you couldn’t be before.’

Barney Pityana: In the late sixties, Barney Pityana (Uitenhage, 1945), together with Steve Biko and others, co-founded the South African Students' Organization, the origins of the Black Consciousness Movement. During high school at Lovedale [Eastern Cape], Pityana was expelled for protesting against Bantu education. In 1976, he graduated from the University of South Africa (Unisa), but was barred from practicing law and banned from any public activity by the apartheid government. Pityana went into exile in 1978. He studied theology at King's College London and trained for Anglican ministry at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford. Subsequently, he served as curate in Milton Keynes and as vicar in Birmingham. From 1988 to 1992, he was director of the World Council of Churches’ Programme to Combat Racism in Geneva. Pityana returned to South Africa in 1993. He continued working in theology and human rights and obtained a PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1995. That same year he was appointed member of the South African Human Rights Commission, which he chaired from 1995 to 2001. He also served on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights at the Organization of African Unity in 1997. In 2001, Pityana became Vice Chancellor and Principal of Unisa, a position he held for nine years. From 2011 to 2014, he was rector of the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown. At present, although retired, Pityana is UCT’s President of Convocation.