Universities and race
From Mr R. W. Johnson
Sir: I would like to say that I am shocked by the dishonesty of Professor Kader Asmal's reply (Letters, 28 April) to my article on South Africa's universities (Pride becomes prejudice', 31 March), but I am not. In it I asked why, alone in all the world, those universities should have racial quotas forced on them, but on this he, the minister responsible, is tellingly silent. Instead, in time-honoured fashion, he plays the race card and tries to pretend that I don't believe African academics can be any good, and that I don't allow for the harm done by apartheid. In fact, I lamented precisely the departure of such a leading African academic as Mampela Ramphaele (to the World Bank), and what could be a more faithful echo of the apartheid past than Asmal's own enthusiasm for racial quotas?
Asmal asks why other countries are so keen to recruit South African teachers. If he was honest, he'd admit he's talking mainly of teachers trained under the ancien regime but stupidly made redundant in their thousands by the ANC government. If he's happy with what he's now getting out of South African universities, why is he so keen to recruit Cuban teachers despite their lack of any local language? And why is it 'spurious' to ask him to point out even a single university which has been successfully 'transformed'? If, after seven years of effort in that direction, there is no single example of success but many examples of failure, most reasonable men would conclude that there was something wrong with the objective.
R.W Johnson
Johannesburg, South Africa
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