PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa “”mdash; Going to college in South
Africa is not all that different from going to college in the
United States.
Like many college campuses, the University of KwaZulu-Natal in
Pietermaritzburg ““ a city of 300,000 ““ is a blend of
tradition and modernity.
The cornerstone of the Old Main Building proclaims it was laid
in 1910, the year of the union of South Africa, while two buildings
down, Dell hard drives hum in one of the campus’s three main
computer labs.
Here, over 8,000 students spend their weekdays on a campus
nestled against the rolling foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains.
The summer weather is hot, humid and sometimes broken up by
dramatic thunder storms.
Students gripe about finding parking, cram for exams, and hang
out in each others’ dorm rooms. On sunny days you can find
them on the lawns or playing cricket on the soccer field, and
almost every night the campus bar bumps hip-hop and house music,
even when it isn’t crowded.
It might not be apparent at first, but this university is
““ as are almost all universities in South Africa ““ a
key institution in the effort to reverse the oppression of
apartheid.
Apartheid, a policy of racial segregation imposed by a white
Afrikaner regime, was designed to keep blacks inferior to whites in
almost every way. It left the country’s black majority poor
and uneducated and was enforced by police violence and
state-sponsored terrorism.
It was only after years of inner turmoil that at times bordered
on civil war that the Afrikaner government rescinded apartheid
policies and held open elections in 1994. Since then, the
“New South Africa” has undergone reforms to try to
balance wealth and power between the white minority and black
majority, with mixed success.
Universities have played a vital part in the 10 years of
transition.
Previously dominated by white students, the UKZN campus in
Pietermaritzburg now has a student body that is 52 percent black
and 25 percent white ““ though these statistics are still a
far cry from reflecting the make-up of South Africa’s
population, which is 75 percent black and 14 percent white.
Having a university education opens doors to students who, under
apartheid, would have had their futures dictated to them.
Having an education is important in a country where half the
population is below the poverty line and where estimates of
unemployment range from 31 percent to 42 percent.
“Universities certainly make it more likely you will get
employed,” said Liz Gunner, the acting director of the
campus’ new Center for African Literary Studies, who
estimated unemployment in the Pietermaritzburg area could be as
high as 60 percent. “The university’s seen as a way
up.”
And a way out. The end of apartheid created avenues for escape
from suburban township life for millions of young blacks. Many of
these townships consist of shacks that can house anywhere from 5 to
10 people in a single room, and sometimes they seem held together
with nothing more than cardboard and faith.
Compared to life in the townships, where crime, AIDS and
unemployment are rampant, the chance to pursue a college degree is
alluring, to say the least.
But education does not come easy. For every disadvantaged
student who makes it, countless others do not.
The biggest problem may be the grade school system. Many of the
public schools open to poor, primarily black youths, even after 10
years of reform, are still shoddy by any standards. Classes are
overcrowded, many of the teachers unmotivated, and they lack basic
supplies such as books and even chalk.
“You’ve got a shell of a building, one who anyone
from a civilized country would not even consider a school,”
said Linelle Irvine, the coordinator of the Human Sciences
Alternative Access Program, which seeks to aid disadvantaged
students.
“So there are thousands of students out there who have
hardly what could be called an education. They’ve had
schooling, but not an education. These are students who, through no
fault of their own, will not meet entrance requirements to a
university.”
Those few students who are able to enroll know one thing above
all ““education is golden.
Sanele Nene, a third-year political science student in
Pietermaritzburg, is one of those few.
A resident of the Newtown township near Durban ““ a port
city on the Indian Ocean ““ Nene grew up in the schools Irvine
described. And now he is one semester from graduation.
Nene calls himself “hard hearted,” and he does not
display much emotion when he talks. But he has facts at his
fingertips, and he can speak just as knowledgeably about the
inner-workings of the South African government as he can about
violence in the townships.
“I could kill you for your sandals if I wanted to,”
he said of the crime in rural areas without batting an eyelid.
“Actually, I could kill you for nothing. I would put a gun to
your head and kill you. It’s not about respect anymore.
It’s about people wanting to be feared.”
Nene should know: He grew up during the years of violence when
the African National Congress ““ now the dominant political
party in South Africa ““ and the Inkatha Freedom Party fought
over the direction they felt post-apartheid South Africa should
take. They turned townships into war zones, and many believe it was
at the instigation of the waning Afrikaner apartheid
government.
At the time, Nene lived with his aunt and uncle and seven other
family members in a house in Newtown. He remembers having to spend
three days and nights living near a river because the fighting had
made his neighborhood unlivable.
During the day, he and the other kids would play in the water,
but they were always alert to a warning whistle or shout.
“Sometimes we would wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. just to run
because we knew we were being attacked,” he said.
He remembers enjoying school ““when it wasn’t
interrupted by violence. He always wanted to attend a university,
but the quality of his local high school made that dream unlikely.
There were no college guidance counselors, and many of the teachers
were under-qualified and over-worked.
Some classrooms had no windows, doors or even ceilings.
“Sometimes when it was raining the teachers wouldn’t
come, and when it was too hot, classes were canceled,” Nene
remembers.
He scored too low on his high school exams to qualify for a shot
at a university. And even if Nene had qualified, it was doubtful
his family, who made less than 60,000 rand a year ““ about
$10,000 ““ could pay for him to go to a university. Tuition at
UKZN ranges from $2,000 to $2,500 a year, depending on the
school.
“At first they used to say, “˜Hey, take your
applications, and if you’re accepted, great, but how are you
going to pay for it?'” he said of his family.
Undaunted, he started looking around at different universities,
willing to go almost anywhere for an education.
He might never have gone anywhere had he not stumbled across
Irvine and the Alternative Access Program in Pietermaritzburg.
The access program, pioneered and run by Irvine, seeks to bridge
the gap between students who are well prepared to handle a
university education and students like Nene.
Students who enter the access program ““ often on financial
aid ““ take an extra year’s worth of classes to learn
basic computer, reading and writing skills, and also a year of
English instruction.
The program also seeks to build students’ self-confidence
and encourages them to question each other and their teachers
““ something that Irvine calls an “enormous step”
for black students coming from a rural community.
Irvine and other access program staff essentially face the
monumental task of reversing decades of apartheid-era restrictions
on black education.
“These students need more support than they can get in a
one-year program,” Irvine acknowledged.
Nene heard about the program when he visited the
Pietermaritzburg campus.
He was told to come the next week to take a test and have an
interview, and he did. Two days later, he received a phone call
saying he was accepted.
The best part: The admittance came with the necessary financial
aid.
“At first no one could believe it when I received
financial aid,” he remembers. “They only believed it
when I was signing the forms.”
Now, four years and a lifetime later, Nene will be part of the
first access program class to graduate from the university. He is
considering taking another year to do post-graduate work before
looking for a career in diplomacy, possibly with the African Union,
to give something back to his continent.
For someone who professes to have a hard heart, he seems to have
a soft spot for his fellow Africans. “I don’t like
seeing people suffer,” he said.
As for the access program, it has grown over the past four years
““ this year they accepted 62 students and next year are
aiming for 80 ““ and some of the five other campuses in the
UKZN system are adopting similar programs.
But Irvine said the program’s growth has been restricted
by funding, and the program has to turn away far more people than
they accept.
“You start starry-eyed and thinking you’ll perform
miracles, and the miracles have not been performed,” she
said.
Nevertheless, Irvine said it’s been an experience she
won’t soon forget. She still recalls with fondness the
different students she has met and taught ““ from the
goat-herder who wanted to get an education to the gas station
attendant who decided she wanted more from life.
And she remembers one “breakthrough” moment she had
with Nene when, in class, he challenged another student in a
debate, something the access program staff had been trying to get
its students to do all along.
“I thought: “˜Yes! He’s got it!'”
Irvine exclaimed as she related the story, raising her fist
triumphantly and grinning as if it had just happened yesterday.