Subtle superiority of English can devastate

It is a problem I could never quite grasp. The deep anger of many black academics at the University of Cape Town. The puzzle was that these were really accomplished scholars in fields from psychology to medicine to engineering. What exactly are you seething about, I would often ask.

This was the other intrigue – nobody could quite put their finger on the problem.

But they were, and still are, furious about the institution.

So I set out to understand why. Now, after more than 60 informal discussions with black staff, I am beginning to get some grip on the rage of black academics inside white English institutions.

There is some truth to the observation that white Afrikaner racism is crude and explicit. Ek hou nie van kaffirs of hotnots nie is without mystery. From the so-called Blackface to the notorious Reitz incidents, white Afrikaans speakers wear their racism on their sleeves.

Not the English. It’s more subtle but equally devastating in the lives of black staff at a place like UCT. But what is it that drives otherwise pleasant and productive black scholars to such a rage?

It’s the way they make you feel, a former transformation officer at UCT tells me.

I was sceptical. How can somebody make a top academic or administrator “feel” inadequate? That can only happen if you allow them to, I would counter.

Maybe, said a celebrated Oxford PhD who left UCT in a fury, but you don’t have to live with this reality day after day.

It is true that my last three postings were at Afrikaans universities – Pretoria, Free State and now Stellenbosch.

You see bigotry a mile away and you can deal with it.

This was different. For years, says the author of a stunning new book on race, I used to avoid going through the front entrance of the department building for fear of seeing (two prominent white academics); I used the back entrance.

Having since climbed the academic ladder with much success, I asked if she would go back to UCT and make a difference. Her response was pure and painful poetry: how do I return to the place of my woundedness?

So what are the spears that inflict this woundedness?

One is language and how it is used in this former British colony, the Cape, and its university. I know this – for some reason my body reacts to white folk in the Southern Suburbs who speak high English with a pronounced English accent as if they’re still in Nottingham or Salisbury.

I have the same emotional reaction when anchors on Classic FM speak English as they’ve just landed from Europe; there is a searing communication of the superiority of race and class.

My reaction is involuntary, a reminder of a bitter past.

But English does not require words to subject and subdue. It can make you feel small without uttering a word. It is that withering look, the nose up in the air, and that cold, disapproving stare. English is, if anything, ice cold.

A now retired senior UCT executive with Afrikaans roots told me how strange he felt – there was never a hug, a welcoming embrace. The English feel uncomfortable with such closeness. It is a retraction that, regardless of how good the teaching is, conveys to students an alienating sense of distance.

Spoken English is wielded as a devastating spear inside white institutions like UCT. if

I was on the receiving end of one attack. A senior white scholar at UCT challenged me on my position on the decline of the humanities at our universities. All perfectly normal, such differences and debate among academics. But what I will never forget is how she conveyed that difference.

In a withering attack on my position and with devastating use of English she continued for about three long minutes with a sharpness that cut deep. It was as if I was being scolded, talked down to, rubbished in front of everyone else in the room. I remember a brief moment of intense anger, and thought of how my father must have been diminished by the same language as he worked, at one stage, as a domestic in the nearby suburb of Rondebosch.

The way they use language, a senior UCT executive told me, is to keep people in their place. Now it is clear why decolonisation emerged as a strange and somewhat anachronistic slogan within UCT late in 2015. The call for decolonisation happened because the place feels colonial English, says SA’s leading higher education scholar. The Rhodes statue was a visible representation of those emotional and political discontents with the English; students “saw” him as such – the symbol was coming down.

No surprise then that decolonisation finds little purchase in historically black universities – they are more products of Bantustan ideology than projects of colonial insertion as is UCT.

One researcher recently looked into the seeming lack of interest in decolonisation at the University of Fort Hare and found that basic material needs and survival drove student protests more than any appeal to a colonial past that needs to be undone.

How is this problem of English prejudice and privilege resolved? With difficulty.

Those who wield the power of race privilege at UCT are clearly unaware of how the performance of their culture, language and presence alienates and angers black staff. The English are themselves products of a particular SA experience tinged with colonial expression. You can’t switch such behaviour on and off.

But being aware of it and how it becomes operationalised in the day-to- day lives of campus citizens should engender some sense of humility and enable deeper discussions about institutional transformation.

For black staff the challenge is to rediscover their sense of confidence, courage and voice.

This is the still remarkable contribution of Black Consciousness – to empower black people as human beings.

It is to claim the space, not in an angry, accusatory manner but through the sheer authority of one’s standing in the academic community. And more than that, through the simple yet profound claim to a shared African humanity.

Descending into angst or anger is self-destructive. As the saying goes, it’s like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.

Make no mistake, there is a collective trauma at UCT before and especially since the protests of 2015-2016 that levied untold damage on staff and students alike. This is the difficult conversation UCT should open up among its staff – how to recreate in the learning commons a more human and humane way of learning and living and loving together. And what holds for campus holds for country.