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An Investigation Into Wits University's Public Roles and Responsibilities, 1922 Do not reference/cite without permission [email protected] Rehana Thembeka Odendaal WITS IMAGINED: AN INVESTIGATION INTO WITS UNIVERSITY’S PUBLIC ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES, 1922 - 1994 Rehana Thembeka Odendaal / ODNREH001 A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in Historical Studies Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town University of2019 Cape Town COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: Date: 20 November 2019 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived fromTown it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive licenseof granted to UCT by the author. University Please notify the author of the use of this research for educational or publication purposes: [email protected] Abstract: This thesis examines the public roles and responsibilities of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in the period 1922-1994. It does this through a close investigation of four moments in the history of the University, namely the foundation of Wits (1910s and 1920s); early debates about the entry of Black staff and students (1930s and 1940s); the Academic Freedom protests (starting in the mid-1950s) and the formation of the Wits History Workshop (from 1977 to the early 1990s). In each of these moments, social roles and perceptions of public responsibility were actively asserted or challenged through engagements between internal-university constituencies and external communities. The thesis identifies three core roles for Wits University over this period: providing technical and professional training; generating and authenticating expert knowledge and shaping people’s ideas of citizenship. The practical and conceptual understandings of these three roles, however, have shifted over time as the University’s conceptualisation of the communities it serves has changed. These shifts have happened in conversation with different civic and state actors. The thesis has found that ideas of the public roles of Wits are informed by an institutional sense of self-referential authority accumulated through various moments and practices in the University’s history. This self-referential authority depends on a selective recalling of particular events and the ability of multiple narratives about the University’s identity to circulate simultaneously. This self-referential authority draws on Wits’ origins as an institution of late- Imperial modernity and its legacy as a so-called ‘open’ university. Understanding the practices and legacies that have created these narratives through an examination of the University’s history, is particularly important in the present moment when the future public responsibilities of South African universities are being vigorously questions and debated. I 1 Please notify the author of the use of this research for educational or publication purposes: [email protected] Table of Contents Abstract: ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 Acknowledgements:...................................................................................................................................... 4 List of Abbreviations & Acronyms ................................................................................................................. 5 A Note on Terminology ................................................................................................................................. 6 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 8 i. Rationale & Context .......................................................................................................................... 8 ii. Literature Review ............................................................................................................................ 12 1. Commissioned Institutional Histories ............................................................................................. 14 2. Critical Histories of the University .................................................................................................. 19 3. The University outside of the West ................................................................................................ 22 4. Publics and Publicness .................................................................................................................... 26 iii. Sources ............................................................................................................................................ 28 iv. Why Wits? ....................................................................................................................................... 32 v. Chapter Outline ............................................................................................................................... 33 2. Locating the University ....................................................................................................................... 37 i. The Prelude to the University, 1903-1922 ...................................................................................... 37 ii. “Our University”: broad definition but a narrow (racial) interpretation of Wits as a “University of the People”, 1922-1939 .......................................................................................................................... 44 iii. Place & Public Access: debates about the location of Wits ............................................................ 48 iv. Wits & its People ............................................................................................................................. 52 3. People on the Periphery of “Our University”: race at Wits 1920s-1940s ........................................... 59 i. Admission and Attitudes in the Inter-War Years ............................................................................ 60 ii. B.W. Vilakazi: Wits’ First Black Academic ....................................................................................... 69 iii. Black Authors & Subjects ................................................................................................................ 75 iv. Academic Integration with Social Segregation ............................................................................... 78 v. Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................... 79 4. Contesting Academic Freedom ........................................................................................................... 84 i. Contextualising the Academic Freedom Debates ........................................................................... 84 ii. Apartheid & Academic freedom: The Eiselen and Holloway Commissions, 1949-1953 ................ 89 iii. The Extension of Universities Act, 1959 ......................................................................................... 92 iv. Lessons from the Academic Freedom Campaign .......................................................................... 109 I 2 Please notify the author of the use of this research for educational or publication purposes: [email protected] 5. Continuing the Conversation on Academic Freedom ....................................................................... 117 i. Wits After 1959 ............................................................................................................................. 117 ii. Symbolic Protest Against the State & Academic Freedom ........................................................... 120 iii. The Van Wyk de Vries Commission of Enquiry ............................................................................. 123 1. The main report: ....................................................................................................................... 124 2. Bozzoli’s Minority Report. ......................................................................................................... 127 3. Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 129 iv. Legacy of Academic Freedom at Wits Post-1959 .......................................................................... 132 v. Warnings against Orthodoxy in Academic Freedom .................................................................... 133 6. Popular Voices in the 1970s and 1980s ............................................................................................ 138 i. Establishing the Wits History Workshop ....................................................................................... 139 1. Societal Context: 1970s and 1980s ........................................................................................... 141 ii. The Wits History Workshop Conferences. ...................................................................................
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