1 AUTHOR: UNFULFILLED POTENTIAL: Luvuyo Wotshela1, CONFINED DESTINY OF AFFILIATION: 1Professor and Head at HISTORICAL STUDIES AT THE National Heritage and UNIVERSITY OF FORT HARE, Cultural Studies Centre (NAHECS), University of 1960 -2015 Fort Hare EMAIL: ABSTRACT
[email protected] Recently, there are growing countrywide dialogues within several universities, and certainly at the University of Fort DOI: https://dx.doi. Hare about curricula review and realignment of academic org/10.18820/24150509/ departments. History is central to such discussions, and SJCH45.v2.1 in this institution, it is not simply as a scholarly discipline, linked to teaching and research. Indeed, the identity of ISSN 0258-2422 (Print) Fort Hare, as the first African institution of higher learning ISSN 2415-0509 (Online) in the sub-Sahara makes its legacy even gripping. Southern Journal for Almost every epoch of the evolution of Fort Hare had generational imprint: from the first half of the twentieth Contemporary History century whereby it surpassed its mission origin, to an 2020 45(2):1-32 institution with several individuals entwined to continental developments, and national political movements in PUBLISHED: the later decades. When it became a conventional case of National Party (NP) government control and 30 December 2020 influence, albeit with resistance from 1960, it forged another character, reflected by Afrikaner domination of academia and the rerouting thereof, for social and political control, whilst being aligned to apartheid policy. The remodelling of the institution in the era of democratic South Africa, germinated other facets, on various fronts as the institution had to reposition itself to new realities that continue to test centres of higher education, whilst still demanding clearer academic vision.