Harsh lessons of integrating students from diverse cultures

A few weeks after a storm erupted over the renaming of a campus residence, a book is published about race relations at the University of the Free State. After the Reitz video became public in 2008, American journalist DONNA BRYSON went to investigate, ret

the lessons he learnt the hard way at university. When he sees his staff separating into black and white camps, he takes people aside and tells them he wants to see black and white employees working together. He is able to share his personal history, and tells his team that segregation “did not work at my university, and it cannot work here. We don’t have two goals, to say we want white officials to achieve one goal and we want black officials to achieve another goal. It’s one goal”.

He says he used to view Afrikaans as the language of the enemy when he was younger, and regrets he didn’t take advantage of his days at UFS to become more fluent in the language. “I think Afrikaans is a very important language. To have learned it would have benefited me.”

Khetha’s a frequent visitor to his old rez, Khayalami, which remains predominantly black. There, he urges students to get to know their white counterparts. He also counsels them not to expect to get ahead on the colour of their skin. Affirmative action, he tells them, should and will fade away as the country moves toward Mandela’s dream of a society where race does not matter.

“One day, it’s going to expire,” he says of affirmative action. “There’s no better life for people who are lazy. Those are the things that we should talk about. Even at work.”

He doesn’t just visit his alma mater to give motivational talks. Since completing his first degree at UFS, he has gone back to study for degrees in cultural anthropology, history, public administration and political science. Now he’s working on a Master’s in environmental management.

If he fails an exam now, he says, he knows it’s because he didn’t do enough work. In the old days, he would worry that poor grades reflected a racist professor’s preconceptions, or perhaps his own difficulty following lectures in Afrikaans.

In a decade, when his eldest child will be ready for university, he expects her to go to UFS. By then, everything will be in place, he says. “We will have achieved real transformation. Development is a process. The biggest mistake is that we want things to be done now.”

Bryson is a American journalist who lived in South Africa for several years. She was Joburg bureau chief for Associated Press (AP) from 2008 to 2012. This book was shortlisted for the City Press Tafelberg Non-fiction Award.