Teresa Barnes. Uprooting University Apartheid in South Africa

The Fees Must Fall movement of 2015–2017 brought sharply into focus the myriad challenges faced by South African universities, especially in their uneven commitments to transformation and decolonization. Although the most visible aspect of this movement was the demand for free education, its politics were also constantly animated by debates about the meanings of decolonization as well as the position of universities in relation to the status quo. Teresa Barnes’s book Uprooting University Apartheid in South Africa: From Liberalism to Decolonization brings her extensive academic-activist experience at various higher-education institutions in southern Africa and the United States to bear on these debates. As a radical black feminist and historian, she offers timely and important insights into the relationship of the University of Cape Town (UCT), and by extension the other English-speaking universities (Witwatersrand, Rhodes, and Natal), to the state during the apartheid era. Tertiary institutions were then organized in parallel with the National Party’s racist logic, with the express objectives to promote white supremacy and foster the development of ethnic and racial elites. In this system, English-speaking universities were regarded as redoubts of liberalism against the segregationist imperatives of Verwoerdian education. Barnes subjects this widespread perception to critical scrutiny.

Decolonization · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Scrutiny · Sociology · Status quo · White (mutation) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Public Administration · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies