Rebels and Rage by Adam Habib

Author:Adam Habib [Habib, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Published: 2019-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

If there is one truism in the world of social transformation, it has to be that we are the agents of our own liberation. Of course, this agency has to be part of a collective if it is to have systemic effect, but it does require individuals’ full and active involvement. Many advocates of transformation do not seem to understand this. Indeed, as I suggested earlier, too many are focused at the level of critique and generality, polemic and rhetoric, divorced from detailed deliberations about specific proposals for transforming institutions. Their role in transformation is limited to protests, and to complaining about executive management, rather than actively contributing ideas about how to transform institutions. This is why there is such limited participation by these student activists and leaders in the forums where the minutiae of reforms are being fashioned and decided.

This circumscribed role is not limited to student activists. It also reflects the attitude of some senior black academics who profess to be committed to the transformation agenda, yet are almost completely divorced from day-to-day interactions about how to transform institutions. I stress that this does not apply to all black staff. Indeed, it does seem as if the burden of transformation – in the form of attending meetings, advancing its agenda and monitoring compliance – often falls on the shoulders of junior black academics to whom heads of schools and departments allocate these responsibilities. This impairs junior black staff members’ ability to perform on the research front and compromises their prospects for advancement and promotion.

But it is also true that some of the senior black academics, particularly those of a far-left ideological persuasion and, ironically, those who have benefited the most from the focus on transformation in institutions, are the ones who refuse to get involved in the daily fashioning and structuring of reforms and initiatives to advance this agenda. Their engagement with transformation remains in the sphere of the critique and complaints about what others have done. The response I have so often heard from them – ‘Wits has broken me’ – provokes a thought I never verbalise – ‘Where is your own agency in the transformation struggle?’ Transformation cannot be advanced by the university executive alone; all stakeholders have to be involved. (Many other senior black staff do, however, embroil themselves in the structures and deliberations about how to advance transformation.)

Some progressive white staff also need to be challenged. A narrative that has emerged in recent years, from progressive white and black scholars, demands of white citizens to develop a consciousness about the benefits of ‘whiteness’. This call is important: coded into the history and evolution of our social structure and the social architecture of our universities is an inherent advantage for those of white ancestry. Recognition of this is necessary for navigating the daily social interactions with all staff and students. It is precisely the absence of this consciousness about whiteness that enables implicit racism and the failure to understand the alienation that black staff and students experience.

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