Black studies for UCT

© Serge Bertasius – 123RF.com

Deputy vice-chancellor Sandra Klopper says the university has made inroads with curriculum reform in faculties.

"For example, some time ago the health sciences faculty took a decision to shift the focus of the curriculum fundamentally by addressing the issue of primary healthcare.

"The humanities faculty is engaged in a project to decolonise - rather than simply Africanise - the curriculum.

"Informed teaching has led to the strengthening of South-South relations with academics in Brazil, India and other African countries," Klopper said.

However, associate professor in sociology Xolela Mangcu said the establishment of black studies as a discipline in their own right was the key.

He said the call by the Rhodes Must Fall movement for more black academics, more black students and a revised curriculum was "very similar to the demands made at Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s" that resulted in the development of a highly successful discipline known as black studies.

He said UCT's approach of holding "rational discussions was not the way to deal with it" and that race, rather than the notion of disadvantage, should be dealt with more explicitly.

Tom Moultrie, president of the UCT academics' union, said there was "a clear need to revisit the curriculum in the humanities and social sciences to ensure students engage with African and South African issues, knowledge and epistemology".

"But the question of curricular reform in the natural, physical and biological sciences is probably more complex and requires careful engagement," he said.

UCT Academic Jacques Rousseau said with the Rhodes statue at UCT had "demonstrated the value that can be found in respectful weighing of options".