Publish, publish, publishing publisher!

In my early career imaginations, I never really considered anything like a research or teaching profession - well, except perhaps the time when I wanted to become a biologist and environmentalist... hmm... or when I got that Chemistry kit with the microscope that just didn't work so well. From about the age of 12, I also realised that astronaut and catholic priest were for different reasons not viable - perhaps slightly childish career choices. Especially since my choice of catholic priest was mostly based on my admiration for Cardinal de Bricassart, and Switzerland didn't have a space programme to talk of.... I started to be interested in the writing professions. 

By the age of 18, being about to complete a certificate in public administration and commerce at the college of commerce and the municipality of Rohr, I finally settled on what appeared a fitting choice. I wanted to become a publishing editor. The only minor problem about that was that the typical career path of a publishing editor was not via a vocational matric in public administration and commerce but taking the academic high school route, after which the aspiring publishing editor would typically study language for a few years at a local university along with subjects in fields of future publishing interest. Eventually they would add professional development courses and experience and on-the-job developed skills to their expertise. 

So I ended up going back to school - evening school for adults - to get a general matric and gain access to the university to study German, literature, and possibly philosophy or so. Four years later I ended up in South Africa and came to study an undergrad subject combination which could well make an African Studies degree: African language and literature/isiXhosa; Historical Studies (mostly about Southern Africa); Political Studies (in a manner that elsewhere would be called 'political anthropology'), as well as the famed (and immediately discontinued) introductory course to Africa in the Humanities taught at the time by Prof Mahmood Mamdani. 

Years have gone by and I have become a researcher, professor, and author of scholarly works... but one thing I still enjoy greatly: I love helping others realising their research and publishing projects. In the past year I have done so with two books, two journal issues, and several individual book chapters and articles that I have guided and co-written. Moreover, in 2020 two my PhD students completed and excelled in examination. 

What happened for the first time in 2020 and which I was so happy when I saw it is that my first publication reached over 100 citations. For someone who is in a small, peripheral field, straddling Political Studies and Higher Education, and who writes often based on ethnographic work on matters that is not that 'sexy', like student politics, this was such a happy news.   

Student Affairs in a traumatic year - 2020 in retrospective

JSAA Vol. 8 Issue 2 "Deepening scholarship on the first-year experience" was published in December 2020 with the following Editorial by Prof. Teboho Moja, Dr Birgit Schreiber, and I: 

"The year 2020 is a year that we will remember globally in higher education as having been most unusual, indeed, traumatic. If at the beginning of 2020 the year had a hopeful ring with plenty; as it comes to an end it is hard to just try and make sense of the extent that the experience of higher education has been changed so incisively within a short time for both staff and students. And the signs are already there that the post-COVID‑19 period will not be short of new challenges either. Challenges like addressing the increased mental health issues students suffer due to the crisis, illness, loss of loved ones and more. Moreover, there are many student groups whose ability to learn has been severely impacted by the pandemic and lockdown, including students from poor households, rural students, and students with special needs. As we noted in our last editorial, for these students, the campus environment and the services offered by Student Affairs departments is normally able to level the ‘playing field’ of learning. It will require yet another extra effort by student affairs professionals, academics, administrators, fellow students and the communities and families to ensure that these students can catch up and have access to the same quality and quantity of learning opportunities within supportive contexts over the course of their studies as others who have been less impacted.

The first-year experience (FYE) holds for many student affairs professionals a special place. One group of students that has been particularly impacted by the campus and national lockdowns imposed by the global COVID‑19 pandemic have been first-years. For much of the year, COVID‑19 has robbed this cohort of first‑year students of the thrills and fears, joys and cries, of a ‘normal’ first year. In those universities that start their academic year the second half of the year, the impact has been less profound. But in higher education systems like South Africa’s, where the academic year starts in the course of February, first‑year students experienced just a few weeks of induction into university life on campus.

The FYE provides the central theme of this issue of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa. It is the mission of JSAA to contribute to the professionalisation of student affairs inter alia through the development of partnerships with professional organisations in the field. In this spirit we are pleased to host for the third time an issue guest edited by Annsilla Nyar of the South African National Research Centre of the First‑Year Experience at the University of Johannesburg. Her first guest-edited issue titled “The first-year experience, student transitions and institutional transformation” was published as JSAA 4(1) in 2016 and the second issue “First-year experience in perspective” in 2018 as JSAA 6(1).

Indeed, JSAA has been proudly associated with a number of guest editors over the years, starting with “Student power in African higher education”, JSAA 3(1) of 2015, which was jointly guest edited by Thierry Luescher, Manja Klemenčič and James Otieno Jowi. This was followed by “Tutoring and mentoring”, guest edited by Nelia Frade in 2017 and published as JSAA 5(2), and most recently JSAA 7(1) on “Space, language, identity and the student movement” guest edited by Philippa Tumubweinee and Thierry Luescher. A guest-edited issue allows JSAA and the guest editor to focus attention on a specific theme and enables a particular kind of depth of scholarship. It mobilises a number of researchers, employing a range of research methodologies and frameworks to focus on that theme, thus advancing scholarship in this domain. This, too, is what Annsilla Nyar has done with this her third guest-edited issue, and JSAA is proud to be playing a part in developing the scholarship on the first-year experience (FYE).

In addition to the eight research articles and the reflective practice article on the FYE guest edited by Annsilla Nyar, this issue includes a campus report on the Stellenbosch University Experiential Education Conference which explored the intersection of experiential learning with student success. This was a particularly timeous and topical conference as we are moving into an era of distance- and online-learning which raises major concerns about the developmental experiences in the social and community domain of higher education.

As in every issue, we are happy to publish in this issue the review of a book relevant for student affairs professionals in universities in Africa and beyond. Birgit Schreiber reviews Engaging Students: Using Evidence to Promote Student Success, edited by Francois Strydom, George Kuh and Sonja Loots, which was published in 2017 by SunMedia Bloemfontein. With this book, the editors have been able to bring together an impressive set of contributions that illustrate in so many ways the importance of having good data to understand the student experience, enhance student engagement and ultimately improve student success. Schreiber argues: “It is a must-read for Student Affairs practitioners, not only in Africa, but in all contexts that seek to offer teaching and learning opportunities that advance equitable participation of the learning in the learning process.”

Surviving Covid-19

 

On 30 December 2020 I fell ill and on 4 January 2021 I went for Covid-19 testing at the public primary health care clinic in Claremont, Cape Town. A day later, the result came back positive. By then, my health was already quite strained.

Over the next 10 days I was getting very weak, tired, sore body, fever and headaches. Eventually, also coughing and sore lungs, but I was never 'out of breath' to the extent that I felt I needed extra-help. I sunned myself 30 min per day, took my vitamins BCD, Zinc, Selenium, Calcium and Magnesium, and other supplements, as well as Aspirin and at night flu-medicine. Most importantly perhaps was lots of rest, care, and faith. There were days that I slept 16 to 18 hours. 

Three weeks later I have restarted work - ironically one of the first projects I worked last week is the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa's Covid-19 Special Issue which is expected to be published in March 2021. 

 

Congratulations - Dr Keamo Morwe

Today I had the rare pleasure to attend a viva voce - an oral examination - of my PhD student, Ms Keamo Morwe, or rather, freshly baked Dr Keamo Morwe. Her grade according to the thesis examination committee: EXCELLENT! The viva voce was held, due to C-19, online.

The examination was done by the main university that Keamo was doing her PhD at, the University of Malaga in Spain. But she is in the fortunate position to have been co-registered at the University of the Free State in South Africa, and will therefore also have UFS co-confer the degree.

This wonderful outcome of yet another supervision process comes on the same day as I receive from Human Sciences Research Council the Award as the Best Mentor of the Year. This is in recognition of my work in capacity development, as formal and informal mentor, and as supervisor at universities. At the same award ceremony, two of my former mentees also received the top awards as junior researcher of the year, Nkululeko Makhubu, and as emerging, early career researcher of the year, Dr Angelina Wilson Fadiji, both of which co-published extensively with me in the last year. 

I am very happy to be able to play a constructive role in so many students, interns and emerging research staff members. While I often miss the formal work in learning facilitation that I had as a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Western Cape, there are opportunities even in the context of a science council and by my secondary affiliation with the University of the Free State. 

My association with Keamo is far from past. She is a co-PI with me on the "Violence and Wellbeing" project of which the previous post about the "Aftermath" exhibition is an outcome.

Aftermath: Violence and Wellbeing in the Context of the Student Movement

I would like to proudly present to you:

The exhibition, Aftermath: Violence and Wellbeing in the Context of the Student Movement, is a collection of 34 images taken and/or supplied by student leaders, which they reflect on as representations of their experiences of violence during the #FeesMustFall student movement - and their search for wellbeing after these experiences. 

The images have been selected and curated from more than 100 images that were produced as part of a photovoice research project hosted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in the course of 2019/20. The HSRC research team held photovoice workshops with 26 student leaders and activists on five campuses of universities which experienced high levels of violence during the 2015/16 #FeesMustFall student movement. Student participants were selected from University of the Western Cape (UWC), University of Venda (Univen), University of the Free State (UFS), University of Fort Hare (UFH) and Durban University of Technology (DUT) and participated in institution-specific, face-to-face photovoice workshops on their respective campuses. Among the criteria for participation were that they should have experienced violence as part of student protests on their campus - whether as observers, victims or perpetrators - during the 2015/16 student protests. In curating the exhibition, the themes that emerged were protest and violence, oppressive spaces, safe spaces, patriarchy (and the defiance of it), fear, escape, trauma, unity and wellbeing.

The aim of this exhibition is to raise awareness about the levels of violence on university campuses and the impact this has on student wellbeing. While trying to put pressure on often uncaring and unresponsive university leaders and policy makers, students end up being exposed to unacceptable levels of violence, either perpetrated by students themselves or as victims of the violent responses carried onto campuses by police and security services. 

The student leaders and activists, whose reflections are represented in these pictures and accompanying captions, have expressed the hope that by sharing their photos and stories, an awareness would be created in the public, in government and among higher education policy makers and university leaders. They hope that this awareness will ensure that student grievances are taken seriously without the need for protesting. They also hope that student counselling services are expanded to better support students who struggle with mental health issues.

This exhibition is available online at South African History Online at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/student-protests-democratic-south-africa and https://www.sahistory.org.za/exibition/aftermath  

Information about research outputs and the exhibition-related book can be found on the HSRC website at: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/ied/student-movement 

Research team members:
Prof Thierry M. Luescher, principal investigator - HSRC and University of the Free State
Dr Keamogetse G. Morwe, co-principal investigator - University of Venda
Dr Angelina Wilson Fadiji, project manager - Formerly HSRC; Currently senior lecturer, University of Pretoria
Ms Kulani Mlambo, NRF master’s scholar - University of Venda
Ms Tshireletso S. Letsoalo, NRF master’s scholar - University of Pretoria
Mr Antonio Erasmus, graphic designer and photographer - HSRC

Student leaders and activists who participated in this project: 
University of the Western Cape: Azania Simthandile Tyhali, Sphelele Khumalo, Ncedisa Bemnyama, Asandiswa Bomvana, Siyasanga Ndwayi. 
University of Venda: Bob Sandile Masango, Abednego Sam Mandhlazi, Mabore Machete, Blessing Mavhuru, Frans Sello Mokwele, Conry H. Chabalala, Tshepo Raseala, Anyway Mikioni, Mulaedza Mashapha, Dimakatso Ngobeni 
University of the Free State: Tshepang Mahlatsi, Tshiamo Malatji, Thabo Twala, Sonwabile Dwaba, Anonymous, Kamohelo Maphike, Bokang Fako, Xola Zatu
University of Fort Hare: Madoda Ludidi, Yolokazi Mfuto, Anonymous, Siphelele Mancobeni, Wandisile Sixoto, Akhona Manyenyeza 
Durban University of Technology: Khulekani Ngcobo, Robert Thema, Lesley Ngazire, Siphephelo (Shange) Mthembu, Nomfundo Zakwe, Thalente Hadebe. 

Curator of the exhibition: Carl Collison

This project was funded by the National Research Foundation grant no. 118522 and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant no. 1802-05403. 

The impossibility of separating learning and development: What Covid-19 teaches us

This article was first published by University World News, 05 September 2020, 

By Birgit Schreiber, Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo, Brett Perozzi and Thierry M Luescher   

The impossibility of separating learning and development

The coronavirus pandemic has compelled universities around the world to send their students home – some with little more than a laptop or mobile phone, data and Wi-Fi access codes, some with more and most with less. In the switch to remote teaching, universities initially issued well-intended yet often insufficient guidance.

Over a remarkably short time, much of this has been improved upon. However, what could not be fixed in the remote teaching and learning model were the persistent infrastructure and network holes, glaring social-cultural inequities and social-community environments that are not conducive to learning.

It is these that have made remote learning extremely hard for some students, typically those from the most disadvantaged sections of society, for whom university offers an upward social-economic mobility pathway.

The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the inequities in the global higher education system. While we confidently hoped that education might be the road to upward social-economic mobility, the great social equaliser, we are now seeing the major potholes that lie in the way.

University campuses have been able to level the playing field to some extent – between the Global North and South, between the developed and underdeveloped, between rich and poor, privileged and disadvantaged and the connected and unconnected. However, in stepping off campus and into congested urban apartment blocks, shanty towns, small town peripheries and rural hinterlands, we can see how fragile this developmental model is.

The importance of the learning environment
Student Affairs and Services’ overarching function in higher education across the globe is to level the playing field through a developmental model of higher education which supports a global social justice agenda.

By promoting engagement; enabling compatible living and learning contexts; providing healthcare and counselling; offering housing and residence programmes; facilitating social, learning and personal safe spaces; implementing co-curricular programmes for students to learn beyond their discipline to develop as complex, healthy, whole people; by mapping learning and career pathways and supporting students to overcome their unique challenges along the way, Student Affairs and Services ensures a measure of equity and fairness on the campuses of institutions in our massified higher education systems.

The environmental impact theorists of student success, from Vince Tinto to Ernest Pascarella and George Kuh, all emphasise the interplay of at least four influences that impact on a meaningful educational experience: 1) the personal-cognitive resources of the students, 2) institutional-teaching-learning inputs, 3) familial-social influences, and 4) the macro-infrastructure factors in which the institution is embedded. These four need to converge to support the success of higher education, and Student Affairs and Services is essential to this.

When students are on campuses a supportive environment is possible, but when students study on sporadically working laptops in unstable Wi-Fi hotspots, with power outages and in congested, noisy home environments, then higher education cannot be the socially mobile pathway that so many students seek.

Basic needs – safe homes, clean water, reliable electricity, healthcare and social support – are also key foundational aspects of successful learning and development.

Local, tailored responses
How then should we respond? Again, we see too many divisions and tensions, fundamentally between collaboration and solidarity versus authority and competition. Tensions between the power of institution-level knowledge versus the authority of national regulatory bodies; between the scramble for political control and imposition of crude uniformity versus trust in the sophistication of local responses and the power of diversity.

And all of these tensions derail the more appropriate institutional and community-based flexible, context-relevant, autonomous, adaptive and innovative responses.

Despite the reality of inequality, learning must forge ahead in the myriad of ways that our diverse student body requires. We need indigenised responses that are designed at a local level for each unique situation.

In some regions this means that the best response may be to open universities just for some students for now – for those who need the campus environment and infrastructure for learning.

For other institutions it may mean that only PhD students can continue on campus, or only the science labs can open, or indeed only first-year students can attend who can be accommodated in low-density living arrangements.

A granular approach is needed, and for this it is essential that local decision-making endogenous to institutions – within the boundaries of outside scrutiny and accountability – is accelerated and supported. This should have primacy over uber-zealous regulatory bodies, attempts at control by central governments (such as China’s position on Hong Kong) or by national unions (as in South Africa) or blunt and short-sighted national political decisions (as in the case of the USA).

In Malawi, Kenya, Bangladesh and several other countries we have seen national decisions to temporarily close universities down. This is not only a huge setback for a country’s social and economic development, but also for social justice in these countries. Education is an avenue of social mobility that enables disadvantaged groups, particularly women, working-class and poor students, to leap ahead and beyond.

More than a Wi-Fi hotspot
Student Affairs and Services across the globe has an overarching ideal, whether or not explicitly stated: a deeply meaningful social justice mission. The current crisis shows how essential the overall provision of a (personal, social and physical) micro and macro environment conducive to learning and student engagement is, particularly for those who cannot count on that at home. Student Affairs and Services bridges that gap.

On the one hand, the COVID-19 responses have shown us the immense readiness of universities to adapt and innovate to enable learning in remote ways. On the other hand, remote learning has been a setback for social justice.

Universities are more than Wi-Fi hotspots for students. Universities are complex spaces that reduce systemic-social barriers to advancement, and Student Affairs and Services plays a critical role in this. To advance social justice for all, we need especially vulnerable groups to access universities and return to university campuses.

Birgit Schreiber(corresponding author) is a member of the Africa Centre for Transregional Research at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, and vice president of the International Association of Student Affairs and Services and co-founder and editorial executive for the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa. She is the co-editor of the recently published Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education: Global foundations, issues, and best practices, third edition, a 600-page volume in which 200 authors collaborated to provide a global overview of Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education. Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo is vice provost for student life at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and the secretary general for the International Association of Student Affairs and Services. She is on the editorial team of the global overview of Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education. Brett Perozzi is vice president for student affairs at Weber State University in the United States and serves on the global division executive for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. He has published three books, more than three dozen scholarly works and is an author for the global overview of Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education. Thierry M Luescher is research director for post-schooling and work in the Human Sciences Research Council and associate professor of higher education at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He is a founding member of the editorial executive of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa and an associate editor of the global overview of Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education.

University World News - Special Report - Higher Education Student Affairs and Services

University World News has started a Special Report on the newly published 3rd edition of the global Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education handbook. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was responsible for the section on "Student governance and activism", and I also co-wrote two additional entries one on "The student governance function" (with Birgit Schreiber) and the other about "Student Affairs and Services in South Africa" (with Angelina Wilson Fadiji). 

In the UWN Special Report I am writing about the Student Governance and Activism section. It is not normally my style to write personalised academic (or semi-academic) works - except of course in this blog - but in this article I went very personal, almost intimate, lol. 🙊

Again, for anyone who wants to access the handbook, it is fully open access as e-book: Ludeman, R. B., et al. 2020. Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education: Global Foundations, Issues, and Best Practices, 3rd ed, pp. 1-629.

JSAA publishes two book reviews on the "Student Leaders' Reflections" book

The latest issue of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (Vol. 8 Issue 1) is out and it deals with various aspects of the student experience in Africa. Centring the student experience is therefore its central theme. In the introduction, Birgit Schreiber, Teboho Moja and I also reflect on the current context of the student experience globally and in Africa, which we talk about in terms of two viruses affecting higher education and the student experience: Corona and Racism.

What I am also excited about is that my book "Reflections of South African Student Leaders, 1994 to 2017" was reviewed by two scholars and Birgit, who is the book review editor, prepared the reviews to publish in this issue. They are great reviews, insofar as they are not just 'praise' for the book but they also give some good ideas of where one needs to be more critical still.

Overall, it is amazing to see student affairs and student politics related research in and on Africa to be gaining much exposure and traction, and I am extremely grateful to be able to play some role in this. It is rewarding to see the work of colleagues, especially young and emerging scholars as well as established scholars, black and women scholars, and professionals who have not previously thought of their work in scholarly or academic terms, to be researching, writing and getting published.

The Global Handbook of Student Affairs has just been published - free online!

With 250 authors and editors from over 125 countries world wide, the 3rd edition of the global Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education  handbook is a truly global collaborative effort to capture the global picture of student affairs. 

With over 600 pages, the handbook covers the principles, values, theories and frameworks underpinning and informing Student Affairs; professionalization, research and scholarship; social justice, equality and gender issues; engagement, internationalization, retention and graduate competencies; governance and student participation, leadership and migration; and so forth. It includes a discussion of over 42 functional areas and almost 100 country reports. 

The authors are of the highest caliber and greatest diversity and share their formidable knowledge and experience, all detailing the immense impact Student Affairs and Services have in Higher Education across the globe. 

Overall, the handbook has been edited by Roger B. Ludeman (editor-in-chief) and Birgit Schreiber. In addition there have been assistant editors for different section and country reports. It has been my pleasure to act as assistant editor for the country reports from the African continent, which include: Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 

Personally I have written three of the articles featured in the handbook: 

The entry on "Student governance and activism" available here. 

The entry on "The student governance function" (with Birgit Schreiber) available here.

The entry on "Student Affairs and Services in South Africa" (with Angelina Wilson Fadiji) get it here.

And the best is that the Handbook is fully open access as e-book: Ludeman, R. B., et al. 2020. Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education: Global Foundations, Issues, and Best Practices, 3rd ed, pp. 1-629.

URL:  https://iasas.global/student-affairs-services-in-higher-education-global-foundations-issues-and-best-practices/

Supporting students in the time of COVID-19

A message from the IASAS President:
The pandemic spread of the coronavirus around the world has dramatic consequences in higher education and student services. In so many places, institutions of higher educations are closed, many are sick or afraid of infection, and many might be worried about being at a heightened risk.

However, at the very same time, so many of us keep on supporting students and providing core services such as housing, counselling and advice or health care. The coronavirus has taught us – if anything – that the globe really is one single place, that borders are meaningless to its rapid spread, and that only a collective effort that respects and simultaneously engages everyone in society will bring it to a halt. It has also shown us that no individual, no group, no region or nation can fight this alone. We encourage all our colleagues in student services to join this effort, to keep on supporting each other and to continue their efforts for students in whatever situation they might be. And we appreciate all your efforts supporting students which currently need your assistance more than ever. Please continue the crucial work you are doing. We are all in this together.

Achim Meyer auf der Heyde
IASAS President

Global Research Study: Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Student Affairs

I am happy to announce that the following survey has just opened: the COVID-19 Impact on Global Student Affairs and Services - please participate!

The survey is available HERE. Please complete it (once) if you are a student affairs practitioner / professional in higher education. The survey is designed to be completed by those who work in student affairs and services roles and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

It is clear that this pandemic and its effects on higher education and student affairs and services has been vast and nuanced; please feel free to provide individualized context in the open ended responses. Please share this survey with other student affairs and services colleagues.

The results of the survey are meant to inform our practice for the good of students and higher education worldwide. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact any of the four professionals/researchers who developed it:

The survey was developed by:

• Dr Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo who is in the United Arab Emirates at the University of Sharjah
• Dr Brett Perozzi, USA, who is at Weber University
• Dr Birgit Schreiber at Germany's Albert Ludwigs University, and
• Prof Thierry Luescher, at HSRC in South Africa.

The contact details are:  
Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo, UAE, lmoscaritolo[@]aus.edu
Brett Perozzi, USA, brettperozzi[@]weber.edu
Birgit Schreiber, Germany, birgitdewes[@]gmail.com
Thierry M Luescher, South Africa, tluescher[@]hsrc.ac.za

Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Student Affairs in Africa - Part 1

For the first time in the eight year history of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa has JSAA put an advert into University World News (Africa Edition). The occasion is its call for papers on the Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student affairs and services across the continent. The advert runs until the end of May 2020, by when the abstracts and expressions of interest must be submitted to the coordinating team for the special issue i.e. Prof Luescher, Prof Moja, Dr Mandew and Dr Schreiber. The details of the call are available on the JSAA website.

Get your free copy - Reflections of SA Student Leaders - published!

I am immensely proud of this book. It is innovative in its approach and method; it is fascinating in the life stories that it covers. Narend Baijnath, the current CEO of the Council on Higher Education calls it a 'must read' for university leaders and student leaders. 

Indeed, it is extremely gripping to read the narratives about their student leadership experience of people as diverse as Honourable Hlomela Bucwa, who was until the 2019 election the youngest MP in the National Assembly, Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane (the lead counsel in former President Zuma's current trial), Jerome September (who is the Wits Dean of Students), or social media personality Mpho Khati. 

What they all have in common - they were all once leaders in their university's SRC, and they all chose to tell their story in this book.... from the days when Mandela was President and established the first National Commission on Higher Education, to the years of university mergers under Minister Kader Asmal and President Mbeki, to the Zuma years with Dr Blade Nzimande as Minister and the large-scale #FeesMustFall protests. 

The e-book can be downloaded free of charge here. It can also be bought from African Minds Publisher as a print book for R 300. 

Here is a summary of the twelve chapters in the book that each present the story of one of the the student leaders:

The accounts of Muzi Sikhakhane, Prishani Naidoo and Jerome September start the chronologically arranged reflections’ chapters. Having been involved in student leadership from the early to the late 1990s means that they tend to reflect more deeply on their apartheid-era upbringing and the way this shaped their views on and experience of higher education, governance and student representation. Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane SC begins his reflections by recalling his upbringing in rural KwaZulu-Natal, his involvement in struggle politics in the mid to late 1980s, his memories of the violence between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), and eventually, how he got to Wits and was roped into student politics and became president of the Wits SRC.

The reflections in chapter 3 also come from Wits, which is where Dr Prishani Naidoo ended up becoming SRC vice-president in 1995, and eventually president of the South African Universities SRC in 1996, after she had a first experience of university life and student politics at the University of Durban-Westville (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal) in the early 1990s. Naidoo’s chapter is a reminder of how deeply involved student leaders were in transformation initiatives in their institutions and at national level in the mid-1990s. Fast-forwarding 20 years to a time when Naidoo is back at Wits as an academic, her insights into the start of the #EndOutsourcing, #October6 and #FeesMustFall campaigns at Wits in 2015 are equally invaluable.

Jerome September recalls the alienation he experienced when arriving at UCT and settling into his residence in the mid-1990s. During his two SRC terms, student representatives returned to the University Council and Senate in 1998 after the proclamation of the HE Act (after years of having boycotted them as ‘illegitimate structures’). He remembers the hopes that student leaders had for co-operative governance to work and the consternation he felt when his SRC lost the battle about outsourcing with the university management under Vice- Chancellor Dr Mamphela Ramphele. This battle, which would be taken up again and again over the next 20 years by students, eventually led to the #EndOutsourcing campaign of 2015/16. Since his years in student leadership, September has made a career in Student Affairs at UCT, Sol Plaatje University and Wits University. His professional experience adds greatly to the richness of insights he gives into the relationship between student representation and protests.

Kenny Bafo’s chapter provides the bridge between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Bafo had a first stint at UWC from 1997 until he was excluded at the end of 1998. He returned to UWC in 2000 and his chapter provides a lesson on how to build a student political organisation from the ground up in less than three years. With the SRC election victory of Bafo as presidential candidate in 2002, PASMA came to run the SRC of UWC for the first time – taking it from SASCO. Bafo tells in his inimitable way how his SRC struggled to catch up with the load of expectation and responsibilities placed upon them, while they had very little support and almost no institutional memory to draw on at all. Bafo remained at UWC as an associate lecturer until his election to the Council of the City of Cape Town in 2016 and thus was able to observe (and comment on) the emergence of #FeesWillFall at UWC. 

In chapter 6, David Maimela tells his story of arriving at UP in 2001 and encountering a strange and oppressive residence culture on campus. Having been involved in the Congress of South African Students at high-school level already, he became a leader of SASCO at UP and was eventually deployed into the SRC where he soon realised that black students’ concerns could not be addressed by an SRC that had a majority of Freedom Front members. Reminiscent of student politics at historically English-tuition white universities in the 1980s, Maimela ended up having to represent black student interests outside the SRC, thus illustrating that the SRC model of student representation might fail to represent the broad range of student experiences and interests in large and diverse institutions like UP. Maimela’s reflections also draw on his experience as SASCO president nationally, and his involvement in ANC political structures during those years. Xolani Zuma spent his first year in the SRC in 2005/06 and became SRC president for 2006/07 at UZ. In his chapter, he reflects on partisanship in student politics and particularly the rivalry between ANC- and IFP-aligned student organisations. His chapter further stands out by his reflections on the many lessons he learnt: on personal and political ethics, managing resources and corruption, and on the importance of understanding the distinction between politics and real life. 16 / Reflections of South African Student Leaders

Zukiswa Mqolomba reflects in chapter 8 on her SRC presidency at UCT in 2006/07, drawing frequent comparison between the issues her SRC dealt with and what was taken up almost a decade later by #RhodesMustFall. In the final part of her chapter, Mqolomba reflects on the huge impact the experience of student leadership at UCT has had on her professional career and others who served with her in the SRC.

Having been SRC secretary-general in 2009/10, speaker of student parliament in 2012 and SRC president in 2012/13, and being the current chair of Convocation, Kwenza Madlala has vast amounts of insight into the governance of MUT. He starts his account by recalling how he was roped into the SRC in the midst of rivalry between SADESMO and SASCO at MUT. Madlala then shares his reflections on his SRC’s approach to student representation in committees. His chapter stands out for his condemnation of managements that first impede institutional progress when students raise an idea and then appropriate the same idea to take credit for it. Madlala is also among those student leaders who comment in detail on the differences of student politics at historically white and black universities in South Africa, and on the continuities and discontinuities in student politics leading up to the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall protests.

Lorne Hallendorff became SRC president of UCT for 2012/13, running as an independent candidate after he had spent a first term in the SRC in 2011/12. During his SRC presidency, he made a concerted effort to work through the university’s system of governance structures and committees – similar to Mqolomba – to address matters as diverse as financial exclusions, the academic timetable, and the divisive debate on UCT’s race-based admission policy. The latter is often cited as part of the ‘origin story’ of #RhodesMustFall. Thus, Hallendorff’s chapter is highly instructive for a better understanding of the emergence of #RhodesMustFall in terms of a longitudinal perspective of student politics at UCT. Like the other former student leaders in this book, he argues that 2015 did not take him by surprise at all: for too long had student leaders been frustrated on the same issues.

Chapter 11 tells the story of Hlomela Bucwa when she was first an SRC member and eventually became the SRC president (affiliated to DASO) at NMU. Bucwa recalls how she sought to pursue her organisation’s principles by putting students first and running a corruption-free SRC at NMU. She counts among her achievements that her SRC fundraised R9 million for students in the face of the inability of NSFAS to respond to students’ dire needs. In her reflections on #FeesMustFall, NSFAS features as one of the main sources of students’ frustration with an uncaring and unresponsive system.

An important story running through the first part of chapter 12 is the so-called battle of the two Brians at UWC. Vuyani Sokhaba was deputy secretary-general of the UWC SRC then. Sokhaba’s second term as SRC president extended into 2015 and the time when #RhodesMustFall and #OpenStellenbosch activists sought to inspire a similar decolonisation movement at UWC. Sokhaba critiques #RhodesMustFall from the UWC point of view, explaining why no decolonisation movement ever took off on a campus where students had fought apartheid and colonisation almost since it was founded as part of the extension of apartheid to the higher education sector in 1959.

 

Mpho Khati was also active for two terms in the SRC, in her case on the Bloemfontein campus of the UFS from 2014 to 2016. While her first term focused on improving the plight of black first-generation and first-year students, her second term was distinctly defined by the #FeesMustFall campaign at the UFS which, in the aftermath of the #ShimlaPark violence of February 2016, became increasingly consuming and eventually traumatic. Khati’s chapter also gives various examples of the way university governance processes fail students and how university leaders fail to understand student issues and student political culture.

Different readers will find the reflections of the former student leaders important for different reasons. In a book where every chapter can stand alone as an important insider reflection on leadership and governance in a specific institution and the sector at large, and where each chapter also represents an autobiographical excerpt from a young student leader’s life, it is impossible to do justice to each chapter in a few lines’ overview.

The final chapter of this book draws out a first set of findings from a crosschapter analysis, pointing out continuities and discontinuities over a quartercentury of student leadership, and concluding with a call to take student leaders more seriously and to collectively reimagine a new, democratic and responsive system of higher education governance in academic and support departments, faculties, institutions and at national level.