Universities in South Africa have tried to “grow their own timber” in a bid to diversify staff bodies. These programs haven’t been wildly successful. Why, and what can be done differently?
University students in South Africa have shown the potential of mass mobilisation to influence policy in advancing justice for their constitutional democratic rights.
Since the 1940s, it’s been common for political moderates to move to the fore in South Africa – then, intermittently, to the background. They are replaced by radicals or exclusivist nationalists.
A lot has changed for the better in South Africa’s education system - but inequality remains a thorn in the country’s side. How can we disrupt educational inequality?
Economic transformation of unequal societies in a democratising context is difficult. This requires a creative mix of policy options underpinned by a commitment to social justice.
The university should be the bastion of the right to free expression in the promotion of democracy, and has a moral and ethical obligation to provide spaces for fierce debate and critical engagement.
Vocational training is regarded as “low status” in South Africa. Much of the negativity around technical and vocational work seems to lie in the country’s history.
How can the higher education sector guard against proposed transformation measures being merely superficial quick fixes? At least part of the answer may lie in institutional governance.
Black youth are grappling with the question of the meaning of freedom in post-apartheid South Africa. They seek an antidote to their reality wherein blackness continues to be mocked and marginalised.
The impact that the system of conscription had on the roughly 600,000 white men who became both pawns and agents of the apartheid state has seldom been publicly acknowledged.
There are compelling educational reasons to employ more black academics in universities and to give them all the support they’ll need to become professors.
Evidence on the ability, or lack thereof, of children to rise above the economic status of their parents shines light on the continued persistence of inequality, including in South Africa.
Failed by the institutions meant to protect them from exploitation, South African Post Offices workers gave up on the legal system, resorting to illegal means.
After two decades of democracy, economic inequality in South Africa remains very high. Survey comparability issues make analysing trends tricky, but it is clear that overall income inequality has not fallen…
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State
South African Research Chair in Teacher Education; Director of Centre for International Teacher Education (CITE) & Professor of International Education and Development Policy (University of Sussex, UK), Cape Peninsula University of Technology