Abstract:
This article presents a wide range of factors that arguably underwrite South Africa’s
higher education institutions’ governance crisis. It highlights overcrowding,
infrastructure deficiencies in the form of inadequate accommodation, shortfalls in
knowledge resources such as libraries as well as Information and Communication
Technology, inequitable access, racial inequality and weak funding mechanisms
as the primary causes of violent student protests. Since 1994 attempts towards
transformation of the South African education system within the developmental
state approach continued under complex socio-economic, political and legal
contexts. In spite of the ambitious new policy framework that espouses progressive
quality education for all citizens, evidence shows that the state has demonstrated
its limitations in mobilising requisite operational resources and creating the
conducive settings to fulfil this mandate in higher education. Currently, universities
are experiencing violent and disruptive student protests, reminiscent of the predemocratic
student uprisings of the 1970s and 1980s. This trend has the potential to
erode institutional viability due to vandalism and related forms of insurgencies in the
affected universities. Elitist commentaries have highlighted the contradistinction of
government’s grand transformational intentions against the material conditions that
obtain at the various campuses in South African universities. This article argues that,
while there could be several major limitations towards effective transformation,
the absence of a comprehensive and sustainable systems-level policy framework is
paramount. This has led to piece-meal isolationist implementation of institutional
strategic initiatives that, in most instances, have continued to harbour remnants
of an inequitable apartheid education system. The article concedes that recurrent
collapsed stakeholder negotiations have legitimised untenable circumstances of heavy-handedness on the part of security agents and student violence.
Notwithstanding its starting point, it turns to corroborate the notion of stakeholder
mandates and façade transformation as the primary governance conundrums for
South Africa’s higher education institutions.
