In 1982, the University of the Western Cape officially opposed the use of racial criteria guiding admissions to tertiary education in South Africa. By introducing the country's first non-racial, open admissions policy, the once segregated "bush" college--designated under apartheid for the education of Coloureds or people of mixed descent--was transformed into an important site for political mobilization and pedagogical reform in South Africa.
This dissertation is dedicated to telling the story of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) before and after the fall of apartheid. Viewing UWC as a microcosm of the country's efforts to free itself from the shackles of apartheid, the thesis explores the political dynamics and racial and ideological tensions surrounding the demand for access to post-secondary education in South Africa. An important aspect of this research involves examining the role of national-liberation ideology in shaping the direction of democratic reform within South African institutions of civil society.
Also pivotal to the dissertation is a critical discussion of the racial effects of segregation on the language development of Black students, and the extent to which apartheid has inhibited the acquisition of critical, abstract and conceptual reasoning skills. The university developed an innovative compensatory program intended to overcome these language disadvantages. The dissertation therefore examines an example of open admissions and compensatory reform in its institutional, pedagogical, and political context.
My field research focused primarily on capturing and reporting on the various perspectives of participants, and the kind of experiences which took place in the university's classes on an everyday basis. But I also went beyond this, digging to discover the pedagogical, ideological and philosophical ideas informing UWC's transformation, as well as the institutional constraints and opposition to the compensatory changes undertaken at the university. Thus, although my approach focused on pedagogical issues, I have not neglected the important influence of funding shortages, institutional and national-liberation politics, and the dynamics of class, ethnicity, and race as they affected who participated in compensatory courses and how students responded.
