Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Map of the north-eastern Bantustans showing the location of Limpopo
- Introduction
- 1 Turfloop, Crucible of Change
- 2 Centre of the Storm
- 3 Africanization: The New Face of Turfloop
- 4 Black Consciousness in Decline
- 5 Congresses and Comrades
- 6 Populism and the New Youth League
- 7 Julius Malema and Youth Politics in the New Limpopo
- Epilogue: Legacies of Limpopo
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Africanization: The New Face of Turfloop
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 July 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Map of the north-eastern Bantustans showing the location of Limpopo
- Introduction
- 1 Turfloop, Crucible of Change
- 2 Centre of the Storm
- 3 Africanization: The New Face of Turfloop
- 4 Black Consciousness in Decline
- 5 Congresses and Comrades
- 6 Populism and the New Youth League
- 7 Julius Malema and Youth Politics in the New Limpopo
- Epilogue: Legacies of Limpopo
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The violent confrontations between students and police during the Viva- Frelimo rally attracted national attention to Turfloop in the middle of the 1970s. They also caused a great deal of concern within the government about the future of Bantustan universities. Increasingly even the Department of Bantu Education was confronted with the fact that Turfloop was far from the paragon of Bantustan civilization it had been founded to become. In response to student unrest, the government commissioned two inquiries – one, the Jackson Commission, was commissioned in the wake of Tiro's speech and the subsequent protests, but its report was initially withheld and eventually tabled in parliament at the same time as the second, more substantial, Snyman Commission report. Justice Snyman was tasked with reporting on the factors at Turfloop that had led to the political showdown with police in September 1974. The reports of both the Snyman and Jackson Commissions, and the collective submission to the Snyman Commission by Turfloop's Black Academic Staff Association (BASA), act as both source and subject for this chapter. The reports and their reception, both at Turfloop and more broadly, and the later controversy over the publication and distribution of BASA's submission, illuminate the disagreements about running the university that arose between the university administration, the staff, the students, and the government. Previous scholarship on black student activism has suggested that Turfloop's significance waned after the Viva- Frelimo rally of 1974. But I argue that contestation at the university contained the seeds of changes that were significant both on campus and more widely during and beyond the mid-1970s.
It was certainly at the forefront of Africanization – the move to put Africans in positions of authority, in this case, at universities. As a result of pressure from both the Jackson and Snyman Commission Reports, Africanization at its highest level was achieved at Turfloop in 1977, when Professor William Kgware was installed as the first black rector of any university in South Africa. However, the appointment of Kgware did not result in the political shifts that some students and activists had envisioned. These unmet expectations, and the frequent conflicts with both students and staff that dogged Kgware's administration, are a primary focus of this chapter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Limpopo's LegacyStudent Politics & Democracy in South Africa, pp. 111 - 126Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019