The University of Cape Town (UCT) is set to host Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fort
Hare (UFH), Professor Sakhela Buhlungu, who will present the 57th annual TB Davie
Memorial Lecture.
Professor Buhlungu, a former Dean of Humanities at UCT, will deliver the lecture organised
by the UCT Academic Freedom Committee on Wednesday, 23 August 2023 in the New
Lecture Theatre, Upper Campus at 18:00. It is titled “Academic Freedom and Institutional
Autonomy: A View from the Thyume Valley”.
The late 1950s marked a negative turning point for higher education in South Africa. The
Extension of University Act 45 of 1959 set the country on a path of ethnic segregation of
university education whose effects remain more than 60 years later and after almost
30 years of democracy.
From 1959 eminent academics and activists were invited to present the TB Davie Memorial
Lecture. Significantly for Buhlungu, Professor ZK Matthews – who graduated at UFH in 1924
and was an academic and political activist – gave the third lecture in 1961. Titled “African
Awakening and the Universities”, Professor Matthews’ lecture made a link between academic
freedom and the quest for liberation in South Africa and the continent.
UCT Vice-Chancellor (interim) Emeritus Professor Daya Reddy explained: “Professor
Buhlungu, in this lecture, will identify four moments that marked the introduction of ethnic
education and assault on academic freedom at UFH – the Extension of University Act
of 1959, the appointment of Broederbonder Professor JM De Wet in 1968, the closure and
subsequent annexation of the Federal Theological Seminary to UFH in 1974/5, and the
handing over of the university to the Ciskei Bantustan in 1981.
“These developments had a debilitating effect on the university, which the current
administration still has to contend with today.”
Buhlungu will present four propositions about academic freedom and institutional autonomy
in the current conjuncture in South Africa. He will, among others, argue that academic
freedom and institutional autonomy is contextual in that it means different things to
different institutions because of our different histories, and that in the current period striving
for academic freedom and institutional autonomy in one university is a futile exercise.
“Through the lecture, Professor Buhlungu will challenge people in the sector – staff,
academics and administrators – to rethink the notions of academic freedom and institutional
autonomy in the modern age,” said Reddy.
