Employment Equity: A South African Case Study

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore what substantive measures have been adopted by one institution in the tertiary education sector, namely the University of Stellenbosch, with what results and with what broader implications for transformation. The importance of tertiary education, access to which was minimal for disadvantaged groups under apartheid, is in providing economic and social empowerment. It therefore plays a pivotal role in the process of transformation. The primary reason for selecting the University of Stellenbosch for this pilot study2 was that, given its close links to the government during the apartheid era, the University had to demonstrate considerable change in attitudes and practice, including those affecting employment. Its profile of staff, both academic and non-academic, at the time of the passage of the Employment Equity Act in 1998, made clear that the opportunities for those from disadvantaged groups had been restricted in various ways. Significant change was therefore necessary and expected.3

This paper also seeks to test a particular transformation hypothesis, that the guardians of the dominant institutional culture-the power elite - will frustrate change where it is felt that such change will either threaten perceived core values or the power base of those guardians. Part of the study is to explore what these core values might comprise, but it was felt that perceptions of quality, of high standards and of the close association between cultural continuity and the Afrikaans language would be seen as important by the University. In exploring this aspect of cultural identity, and what had clearly been cultural racism under apartheid,4 the assumption is that explanations would be explicit, implicit and ‘dormant’.