VC Installation 2008
The Mafeje Affair
Lessons of the Mafeje Affair - 40 years on
The occasion of the Vice-Chancellor's installation afforded the university a chance to recognise opportunities lost in the past and the painful memories that have remained with many.
One such opportunity came about as a result of the relationship between UCT and Professor Archie Mafeje, a significant African scholar who never "came home" to his alma mater.
In May 1968, UCT Council unanimously approved the appointment of Archie Mafeje as a senior lecturer in Social Anthropology. A month later, after pressure from the apartheid government, Council withdrew the appointment, and made known "its future inability to appoint non-white persons to academic posts, unless allowed to do so in special circumstances."
The UCT Council decision was met by vehement protest from UCT student leaders and a number of UCT academic staff. In August 1968, about 600 UCT students began an occupation of Bremner Building, which lasted for nine days, demanding that the UCT Council reconsider its decision to withdraw Mafeje's appointment. Instead, UCT Council agreed to establish an Academic Freedom Research Award in honour of Mafeje and placed a plaque in the library recording that the government had taken away its right to appoint lecturers at its own discretion.
After the withdrawal of his appointment at UCT, Mafeje's overseas studies became political exile. He taught at the University of Dar-es-Salaam and later at the American University in Cairo, and held visiting positions in England, America and the Netherlands. He was an outspoken supporter of the liberation struggle in southern Africa and his analytical work was consistently aimed at clarifying its tasks.
After the return of exiles in 1990, nothing prevented UCT from honouring its 1968 decision to appoint Mafeje. Apparently Mafeje wished to return to Cape Town and sympathetic colleagues at UCT urged the university to create a position for him. In 1991, UCT made Prof Mafeje an offer of a one year senior research fellowship. This did not reflect Prof Mafeje's academic seniority and he declined to take it up.
In 1994, Mafeje applied for an advertised chair. He was unsuccessful but there remain concerns about whether he was fairly treated.
Mafeje returned to South Africa in 2000 to take up a post at the University of South Africa. He died in March 2007.
The Mafeje affair was a turning point for UCT, which bowed to pressure from the apartheid government, rather than standing up for the values essential to an authentic and thriving intellectual community. UCT did not make another black academic appointment until the 1980s.
The Academic Freedom Committee believes it is only by reflecting constantly on our history that we can learn its lessons for our own time. Even if no-one at UCT today would defend the withdrawal of Mafeje's appointment forty years ago, the threat of the university compromising its essential values in deference to power still remains.