In my vorige skrywe (SêNet 25 deser) het ek Robert Paul Wolff se akademiese loopbaan tot 1992 gedek. Aan die hand van sy boek, A Life in the Academy (2013), gaan ek in hierdie skrywe aandag skenk aan sy Suid-Afrikaanse bedrywighede en sy betrokkenheid by African-American Studies.
In 1986 het Wolff se Suid-Afrikaanse konneksie begin toe 'n kollega, Debra Nails, se man, Berendt Kolk, 'n pos as professor in fisika aan die Universiteit van die Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg aanvaar het. Nails sou daar filosofie doseer. Die departementshoof aan Wits was Jonathan Suzman, "nephew of the famous anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman ... Debra asked me whether I would have any interest in coming out to South Africa to lecture on Marx" (K 8316). Wolff het ingestem om ses weke hier deur te bring. "The trip would tansform the rest of my life" (K 8423).
Op pad na Johannesburg het Wolff "a little game viewing" in Kenia gedoen (K 8423). In die teks is daar geen negatiewe opmerkings oor Kenia nie. Daarna kom hy met sy eerstehandse waarneming van Suid-Afrika. Op pad na Melville van die Johannesburgse lughawe af "I looked carefully, behind the fences that lined the highway I could see acre after acre of hovels. These were shack settlements, 'informal communities,' not even up to the level of the dismal organised townships like Soweto to which much of the non-White five sixths of the South African population had been consigned" (K 8451).
"Melville is a lovely suburb ... marred only by the ubiquitous razor wire atop the walls" (K 8454). "White homes had a little rondoval in the back yard, physically separated from the main house, where the servant lived" (K 8458). "On the High Veldt ... we even had a braii" (K 8581). "A braai ... is an Afrikaner institution, not at all English, and one of the Boer's greatest contributions to world culture. To an Afrikaner, a balanced meal is four different kinds of roast meat" (K 8585). "Africans, Coloureds, and Indians collectively are referred to as Blacks, although the contemptuous term kaffir is sometimes used by Afrikaners, always to refer to Africans. In a country whose entire raison d'etre was race, these terms were heavily laden with meaning" (K 8465). "In 1949 the Nationalist Party came to power in South Africa" (K 9020).
"The Wits Philosophy Department, I very quickly discovered, was dominated by men" (K 8475). Ook in die departement ekonomie: "men (all White, of course)" (K 8493). "The strongest universities in South Africa can plausibly be compared with second tier State Universities in the United States" (K 9020). "Inasmuch as the entire South African governmental system was a vast works project for otherwise idle White South Africans, not surprisingly the Homelands university system became a place to locate politically connected Whites with marginal claims to academic qualifications" (K 9057). "South African higher education appeared to me utterly medieval" (K 9088).
"It is quite unusual for a student to complete a BA at one university and do an Honours Year at another, and it is even very unusual for a student to transfer at the Master's or Doctoral level" (K 9071). "The South African educational system seemed hopelessly rigid and inflexible" (K 9075). "Transferring from one university to another was unheard of" (K 9078). "Taking time off from one's studies was unheard of ... It ... is impossible to transfer from a Technikon to a University, let alone from a Teachers College to either a Technikon or a University ... accumulating partial credits toward a degree was unknown" (K 9082). "There was almost no room of choice of courses in the South African curriculum" (K 9078). Wolff beweer: "Cape Technikon was an historically White Afrikaans language institution" (K 9381).
"Typical of colonial educational systems ... the faculty and administration I met were obsessed with maintaining standards, a goal that they sought to achieve by means of an extremely high failure rate" (K 9088). Om universiteitstoelating te verkry, word matrikulasievrystelling vereis. Studente "must achieve a certain level of performance" (K 9113). Wolff noem dit 'n "draconian rule" (K 9119). Hy loof Jakes Gerwel vir "adopting a policy of Open Admissions" aan die UWK (K 9134). "The results were exactly as I had expected. There was no discernible difference between the academic performance of students entering with a Matric Exemption" en dié daarsonder nie (K 9137). Wolff wil hê dat "formal educational credit for life experiences" aan studente gegee moet word (K 9428).
Aangrensend aan die tuisland Lebowa was daar na bewering 'n "irrigation system currently reserved for wealthy White farmers" (K 8522). "Ten quasi-independent nations were created, with puppet governments and ostensibly traditional lands carved out of the argicultural least valuable farmlands and rural areas" (K 9033). Wolff het Soweto een nag besoek. "The Boers constructed the township with an eye to controlling them like prisons. There were at most a handful of ways in and out, each of which could be guarded by South African soldiers in Casspirs, the armored vehicles the state used to police the Black population" (K 8536).
Wolff het die Voortrekkermonument besoek. "The monument is the angriest building I have ever seen. Waves of resentment flow from it as one walks up the entryway. It told me more about the Boer mindset than a dozen books could have" (K 8556). In Pretoria was 'n sinodesitting van een van die Afrikaanse gereformeerde kerke aan die gang. Oor die dominees: "Had they been a happier lot, they could easily have passed for Amish" (K 8560). Hy het met 'n Afrikaner aandete genuttig. Wolff noem hom "utterly evil. I imagined it was what it would have been like to dine with a sophisticated Nazi" (K 8563). Vergelyk dit met: "Over the years, Black men and women had acquired administrative skills at least as impressive as those that could be learned in the classroom while taking a degree in Public Administration at Wits or Cape Town or Rhodes ... the Black population ... had built the road I drove in on from the airport, and indeed the airport itself" (K 8570).
Na sy besoek aan Suid-Afrika het Wolff saam met een van sy Harvard-studente, Jean Anderson, betrokke geraak by "Harvard/Radcliffe Alumni and Alumnae Against Apartheid, or HRAAA, that was working to persuade Harvard to divest" (K 8610). In 1986 was Harvard University 350 jaar oud. Daar was 'n onthaal vir Harvard se grootste donateurs. Wolff het toe saam met hoofsaaklik studente die ingange van die gebou geblokkeer. Die onthaal is toe elders gehou. Later is 'n soortgelyke aandete gereël en Wolff het op die sypaadjie saam met 15 ander betogers met plakkate geprotesteer. Hulle is gearresteer omdat hulle die veiligheid van voetgangers in gevaar gestel het. Harry Bellefonte, Jesse Jackson en Mel King het ten gunste van die oproermakers getuig. Elkeen van die 16 is met $72.50 of tot gemeenskapsdiens gevonnis.
In 1987 is Wolff as 'n raadslid van die HRAAA deur Mark Orkin, 'n Johannesburgse sosioloog, genooi om in Harare, Zimbabwe, 'n konferensie oor sanksies teen Suid-Afrika toe te spreek. Verlof vir die konferensie is egter ter elfder ure teruggetrek. Wolff beweer die byeenkoms het toe in "the gambling resort, Sun City, in Gabarone, Botswana," plaasgevind (K 8764). Onder die mense teenwoordig was John Dugard, Alec Erwin, Hillary Joffe,Tom Lodge en Jakes Gerwel, "the first non-White Rector of a South African university" (K 8774). Maar Gerwel was in werklikheid die opvolger van Richard van der Ross. Tydens hierdie tweede besoek aan Suid-Afrika het Wolff ook 'n lesing aan die Universiteit Kaapstad gelewer.
Wolff het Desmond Tutu as die HRAAA se verteenwoordiger in die Harvard Board of Overseers voorgestel. Van 1989 af was Tutu as sanksiedrywer daar in sy element. Wolff het net lof vir die ANC se Freedom Charter, bv "the complete elimination of all dictinctions and disabilities based on race ... Land Reform and Nationalisation" (K 8928). "Land reform was a direct attack on the economic base of the Afrikaner population, because it was the Boers who had seized the good farmland and built their wealth on it. Nationalisation was a threat to the economic base of the English segment of the White elite, for all that a good many of the most important companies (such as the diamond giant, De Beers,) were in Afrikaner hands" (K 8932).
Nadat FW de Klerk in 1990 die verbod op die ANC opgehef en Nelson Mandela en sy mede-gevangenes vrygelaat het, het Wolff besef dat iets anders in die plek van die HRAAA nodig was. "Perhaps I could start a charitable organisation to offer scholarship aid to poor Black students going to historically Black universities in South Africa" (K 8966). Die naam van hierdie organisasie is "University Scholarships for South African Students (USSAS)" (K 8973). Om hierdie instansie van die grond te kry, het Wolff Johannesburg, Alice (Fort Hare), Umtata en Durban besoek. Prem Singh sou USSAS vanuit Durban bestuur. Spoedig was daar plaaslik jaarliks meer as 'n honderd USSAS-studente. Sheila Tyeku "has a long history in the struggle for liberation" en het Singh opgevolg (K 9398). Tania Vergnani aan UWK en Frida Rundell aan Technikon Durban was ook behulpsaam met USSAS. Oor 'n tydperk van twintig jaar het hierdie mense finansiële bystand aan sowat 1500 studente verskaf.
Volgens Wolff was daar voor USSAS "in general nothing resembling financial aid" (K 9130). In werklikheid het die oorgrote meerderheid studente aan die universiteite vir nie-wittes studiebeurse van die "apartheidsregime" ontvang. Wolff verwys soos volg na diegene wat hy wou help: "Poor Black South African students who have been active in the struggle against apartheid" (K 9157). 'n Groot deel van Wolff se USSAS-taak was om donateurs te werf. "I managed to get hold of a Directory of Black Owned Businesses in America. I wrote a letter of appeal and actually got Archbishop Tutu's signature on it. Out went the letter to more than five hundred businesses, but not a single one made a donation" (K 9185).
Al die ingesamelde geld vir USSAS word egter nie vir studiebeurse aangewend nie. Wolff verlang "some money to help pay for my trips to South Africa" (K 9265). "I was making trips to South Africa at least once and often twice a year, and on several of them, Susie [sy vrou] flew out to meet me after my USSAS business was done so that we could go on safari" (K 11343).
In watter mate leef Wolff die ideaal van nie-rassigheid, soos vervat in die ANC se Vryheidsmanifes, uit? Die eerste beginsel waarvolgens besluit word wie USSAS-studiegeld ontvang, lui soos volg: "All recipients must be Black, which in South African terms means African, Indian, or Coloured" (K 9191). Tweedens: "We must strive for gender balance" (K 9195). Nog 'n beginsel: "We are not trying to identify the very best students. This is not a merit based programme" (K 9198). "The most important thing I have learned is that the students, scorned by the faculty as unprepared and even stupid, are in fact bright" (K 9216). "By intelligence, I mean an ironic, nuanced grasp of social reality" (K 9662). Hy maak melding van sy "long-standing conviction that virtually all of the students who make it to university are capable of doing well enough to earn their degrees" (K 9271).
"At times, it seemed that the regular business of the universities had been indefinitely set aside while everyone engaged in transformation" (K 9422). Ek dink dit is in groot mate waar van Russel Botman aan die Universiteit Stellenbosch. "The three transformation goals most often posited were first, increasing the number of Black students at universities, second, increasing the number of Black academics and administrators in universities, and third rationalising the overlapping, duplicating hodgepodge of institutions bequeathed to the new South Africa by the apartheid regime" (K 9422).
Die verligte voorbeeld wat Wolff met sy Suid-Afrikaanse bedrywighede gestel het en sy verlinkse politieke oriëntasie het meegebring dat hy in 1992 sy professoraat in filosofie aan die University of Massachusetts, Amherst, vir een in African-American Studies (AAS), steeds aan UMass, verruil het. "My new colleagues were smarter than my old colleagues" (K 9662). Hierdie AAS-departement het saam met die "Black Chancellor" gesorg dat UMass die tweede Amerikaanse universiteit was wat in Suid-Afrikaanse belange gedisinvesteer het (K 9589). Feitlik al die AAS-dosente het as agtergrond "radical Black activism" (K 9681). Hulle beskou hulleself as kamerade en as broers/susters.
Wolff is deur die swart AAS-dosente genader om 'n professoraat in ASS te vul. "They saw something in me that perhaps I did not even see in myself - something that persuaded this proud and accomplished group of scholar-activists that I deserved to be a member of the oldest free-standing Black Studies Department in America, and that I might be able to contribute something to their plans for a ground-breaking doctoral programme" (K 9585). Dit lyk asof die swart AAS-dosente nie geweet het hoe om so 'n doktorale program in te stel nie, want Wolff het, volgens sy vertelling, al die deurslaggewende werk daarvoor gedoen. Hy moes selfs notule van hulle vergaderings hou. Wolff het ook begin om beursgeld vir AAS-studente te werf; iets wat hy nooit voorheen vir bv sy filosofie-studente gedoen het nie. Die idee was "to increase the minority representation on a university campus" (K 9877).
Oor sy geldinsamelingspogings: "My first idea was to reach out to the hundreds of former [AAS] students who had come through our department's undergraduate programme ... I sent out hundreds of letters to our graduates, but the return was miniscule" (K 11014). "All of the UMass basketball players had studied in our department, and ['n swart kollega] was sure he could shake big bucks out of that tree, but there again, we got not a single dollar. We even had high hopes for Bill Cosby" maar "the family connection never brought in any money" (K 11025). Om die doktorale studente in AAS finansieel aan die gang te hou, is 'n stelsel ingestel waarvolgens hulle teen vergoeding as "Tutor/Mentors" van (swart of ander minority) studente optree. Mettertyd was daar "full support every year for every single one of our doctoral students" (K 11091). "This funding principle ... was our way of expressing our commitment to them in hard cash" (K 11101). "I think I am more proud of my success in funding our doctoral students than I am of anything else I accomplished during my half century career, with the possible exception of USSAS" (K 11095).
In Amerika was daar 'n struikelblok vir universiteitstoelating soortgelyk aan die vereiste van matrikulasievrystelling in Suid-Afrika: "Massachusetts, like many states, mandates certain course requirements that must be fulfilled," bv "satisfactory performance in two years of Mathematics" (K 9880). Wolff het geld ingesamel sodat nie-wit skoolkinders ekstra klasse in wiskunde kon volg. Maar: "We really did not make a noticeable change in the numbers of minority students attending UMass" (K 9904). "The Graduate Record Examination ... scores of our applicants were dismal" (K 10363). "I was convinced that so-called 'objective tests' like the Scholastic Aptitude Test are virtually worthless as indications of the ability of a young man or woman to do satisfactory work at college" (K 11060).
Die wesenlike eendersheid van alle mense word deesdae graag beklemtoon. Wolff verwys bv na sy "populist, egalitarian strain" (K 11185). Sy teks toon egter ook die andersheid. Dit word sonder meer aanvaar dat 'n AAS-departement uitsluitlik uit swart personeel mag bestaan. As ander studiedepartemente egter uit uitsluitlik wit personeel bestaan, sou beskuldigings van rassediskriminasie en rassisme seker nie lank agterweë bly nie. In Amherst op die UMass-kampus word die AAS-departement in 'n gebou bekend as New Africa House gehuisves. "The founding faculty were not simply establishing yet another academic department. Instead, they sought to create what can only be described as an entire counter-university in which the experiences, struggles, triumphs, and wisdom of Black Americans, and more broadly of all the peoples of the African Diaspora, would take their rightful place in the Academy" (K 9634).
Swart studente benodig "support, counselling, and legitimation" (K 9638). Daar is "the Committee for the Collegiate Education of Black and Other Minority Students" (CCEBMS), met as opdrag "overcoming the hostile and unwelcoming environment that routinely confronted Black students (and students of other minorities) when they came to UMass" (K 9641). "New Africa House quickly became not merely a classroom building or an office building but a world. In addition to the [AAS] department and CCEBMS, it soon housed a restaurant, a barbershop catering to Black customers, a radio station, and even a day care centre" (K 9648). In die gange weerklink die "chanting [of] revolutionary slogans" (K 9652) en "loud, unforced, hearty laughter ... big, healthy belly laughs" (K 9655).
Dit is Wolff wat die brosjure oor die doktorale program in AAS saamgestel het. Daar word van studente verwag om binne vyf of ses jaar hulle studie te voltooi. Die eerste jaar van die doktorale program bestaan uit seminare oor sowat 50 klassieke AAS-werke. "We devote half the list to history and politics and the other half to literature and culture" (K 9677). Let op hierdie vertolking: "The growth of British industry was funded by the profits from the slave trade and the sale of slave-produced Caribbean sugar" (K 10211). "I understood the structure of the triangular trade that circulated slaves, raw materials, and finished goods among Europe, West Africa and North America" (K 10268). Wolff het verplig gevoel om al 50 hierdie boeke vooraf te lees. Hy het saam met sy swart kollegas elke seminaar bygewoon en teen die volgende dag het hy kommentaar op elke student se voorlegging gelewer. Hy noem nie of sy mede-dosente dieselfde toewyding geopenbaar het nie.
Wolff het sy ervaring as AAS-dosent dermate verrykend gevind dat hy 'n boek, Autobiography of an Ex-White Man (2005), gepubliseer het. In 2008 het hy afgetree.
Johannes Comestor
Kommentaar
Wolff het paar dinge gesien wat mens nou laat dieper dink ...
Dankie. Geniet.