Phakeng right choice to make hard policy changes at UCT
THE ANC Western Cape congratulates Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng on her new appointment as UCT vicechancellor.
Phakeng’s career has an extraordinary range; from an outstanding academic to long-standing leader in the higher education space to a fearless social activist, which makes her the best candidate to take the university into the next epoch.
Phakeng has already shown a clear understanding of what is at the core of UCT’s challenges, the tough balance between a commitment to create an elite African university while dealing squarely with perceptions of being elitist and an exclusive domain of a particular type of cultural capital.
The ANC knows the sentiment of pupils in the townships, unlike their counterparts in Rondebosch and Claremont high schools who feel a certain sense of birthright about going to UCT.
Those living in townships, largely black and coloured children, do not always feel UCT has a place for their kind, preferring even to apply to other universities.
The ANC also knows, through organisations including Sasco (the SA Students’ Congress) and other student representative organisations, that even black students within the university do not feel that the colonial-style architecture of the university and the Eurocentric approach to learning, which leave a black man feeling displaced, wanting, without their feet firm on the ground, could ever be a place they could fully call their own. These perceptions need to be addressed and we are confident that Professor Phakeng knows them all too well.
We are therefore confident that while at the helm of the university, Phakeng will ensure the university continues its rise in global rankings. She will ensure the quality of its professors and researchers continues to improve and its lecturers continue to be world class.
We are fully confident that she will further expand the university’s ability to raise funds for its aspirations and ensure it is not apologetic about its aspirations to be the best. Equally, we know she will ensure that the university makes hard policy changes without losing its academic standards and aspirations of being an elite African university.
Most importantly, we know as the ANC that Professor Phakeng alone will not be able to make these hard policy shifts at the university. She will need all our support and as the new dawn of the ANC government has inspired everyone to say #ThumaMina, we also call on all stakeholders at UCT to ask themselves what they can do to support the new vice-chancellor as she steers the ship to new horizons and better shores. Faiez Jacobs ANC Western Cape secretary