Wamkelekile, Welkom
Where to from here?
04 November 2022
The four pathways to transformation
Conclusion
The first three years of implementing the transformation benchmarks were challenging. At first there was the challenge of developing and rolling out benchmarks for an immensely diverse university. Secondly, there was the challenge of securing buy-in from transformation stakeholders, who initially viewed the exercise with suspicion. Thirdly, there was the challenge of creating and later updating the templates for collecting data on the benchmarks. Lastly, there is the challenge of collating a vast data set into manageable and useful takeaways for transformation stakeholders.
Even with these challenges, the benchmark exercise has been extremely useful. Over the first three years of implementing benchmarks, patterns are starting to emerge. While these patterns do not tell a simple story of progress or regress, they do offer suggestions of where progress is occurring, where gaps are widening, or where small and tactical actions are present. All of this is useful in assisting UCT, and possibly other entities, to think through not only monitoring and evaluating transformation, but also using the outcomes of the monitoring exercise to generate evidence-based interventions.
Recommendations related to each benchmark
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A Strategic integration of transformation | In order for transformation work to be effective, transformation agents need the resources, time and expertise to conduct transformation actions. Without resources, time and expertise, transformation work will continue to be events-based rather than programmatic. |
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B Student access, support and success | To be effective, transformation efforts must change the material/economic, social or political realities of students. Otherwise efforts focus solely on the rhetoric of transformation, rather than action. |
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C Staff access, support and success | To meet the minimum standards, more work needs to be done to support, empower and enable marginalised staff members, especially those labelled as “unskilled” or “semi-skilled”, to be able to meaningfully shape the organisation and grow within it. |
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D Place and space: language, names, symbols, artworks and identityersity | Focus on this benchmark has waned in each year since 2019. While COVID-19 might account for some of the reasons why this benchmark has been deprioritised, it is also possible that there are insufficient resources or programming for this area of work. More resources, time and effort need to be put into this benchmark area in the future. |
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E Institutional responses to discrimination, harassment and violence | There are strong institutional actions through the OIC, which seeks to dismantle racism and respond to SGBV. These actions do not always connect with faculties and departments (beyond the occasional training sessions). For this benchmark to be achieved, institutional efforts need to better connect with, support and enable actions at a faculty and departmental level. Similarly, faculties and departments need to prioritise actions in this area in 2022. |
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F Community engagement: anchoring UCT in community | It’s important for community engagement actions to be connected and to talk to each other as much as possible. It is recommended that the Transformation Forum holds a special seminar inviting the leads of community engagement initiatives to speak on their work, and creates a platform for exchange of knowledge, interrogation of ideas and learning on how power dynamics play out in this work. |
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G Curriculum support: decolonisation, marginalisation and accessibility | More actions that employ activist pedagogies, that counter curricula and challenge capitalist approaches to education may be needed. These would allow for transforming curricula to move beyond integrating social justice content to shifting power dynamics between students and lecturers, and between the university and the participants (as opposed to their current construction as “consumers”) in the processes of producing knowledge. |
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H Owning UCTʼs Afrikan identity | Efforts that seek to centre UCT’s African identity need to do so in a critical manner. In order to better meet this benchmark, UCT’s own positionality needs to be acknowledged, so that its efforts to centre its African identity disturb rather than accept systems of power on the African continent. |
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I Innovations, alternative approaches and best practices | Social justice work is always an experiment in that approaches should always be based on evidence and always need to be tested for their efficacy. It would be beneficial to create an incubator for transformation innovations. The incubator could assist faculties and departments to think of new and more effective ways to further TDI. |
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Mama Thembi – one of the three Thembis of Phillippi by women sculptors Angela Mac Pherson, Jen Bam and Sean Mac Pherson. Commissioned by the UCT GSB, the concept is a celebration of women as holders and creators of safe spaces. The vision was for these sculptures to create areas in the open back area of Phillippi Village to seed the future garden, and to create places of safety for plants, birds and people to gather and grow in the harsh climate. Monwabisi Dasi did the welding work with the help of 36 other artists and artisans from Phillippi, Napier and Muizenberg.
An introduction to the 2021 Transformation Report
The UCT Transformation Report 2021 is titled “Fear, flame and metamorphosis: transformation, diversity and inclusion in uncertain times”. It is titled to reflect that in 2021, the UCT community was challenged with racism, queer- and transphobia, and socio-economic disparities. The fire in the Jagger Reading Room brought forward important questions about how coloniality and gatekeeping continue to frame UCT as an exclusive and inaccessible space. Yet even with these challenges the university, through transformation agents, was able to transform these difficult realities through tactical and innovative actions. Through cohesive inclusivity strategy initiations in faculties and departments; developments in succession planning, retention and recruitment; recognition of the voluntary work of transformation committees through the inclusion of key performance areas for transformation, inclusion and diversity work in job descriptions; dialogical spaces, seminars, capacity strengthening, training and other events-based interventions, campaigns and curated art interventions; and innovations in research, teaching and learning, current realities were metamorphosised into safer and more affirming spaces.
How to read the 2021 Transformation Report
Please click and slide/swipe to the left to see the next point:
An overview of transformation
Setting the scene for the 2021 Transformation Report.
Benchmark results for 2021
Introducing UCT’s transformation benchmarks.
Looking ahead
The conclusion and recommendations of the 2021 Transformation Report.
Transformation resources and references
Transformation, inclusivity, and diversity is based on continual growth and development. Listed below are the articles and poems referenced in this report, and some other useful texts to help make sense of 2021.
