Roar of pain from the leopard reborn

Bophuthatswana's sole university is struggling to adapt to a role away from its homeland past. Carolyn Dempster reports from Mmabatho. A large bronze leopard stands guard outside the impressive edifice of the University of Bophuthatswana's Great Hall, the symbol of the defunct apartheid homeland in which the university was born. Maybe it was deliberate, or too difficult to sculpt, but the leopard has no spots. "Of course you know what that means - no spots to change," one lecturer says.

But even if the university has no spots to shed, it is trying desperately hard to adapt to the political and educational realities of the new South Africa. And the transformation is proving to be an extremely painful process.

Unibo, soon to be rechristened the University of the North West in line with the province it now finds itself in, is unique in the landscape of historically black universities in South Africa. It was a creation of deposed president Lucas Mangope in 1977 but with its roots firmly in the community - R100,000 (Pounds 18,000 pounds) was scraped together to contribute towards building the homeland's own higher education institution before it opened its doors to its first 159 students in 1980.

This year, queues of prospective students were still lining the corridors outside the administration block well into February while the university authorities negotiated with the student representative council over an acceptable cut-off point on admissions. It was indicative both of an earnest endeavour to meet the needs of the community and the shift in power which has occured on campus since the revolution exactly one year ago when the Mangope regime was toppled.

Primarily as a result of student pressure, an additional 2,000 students were enrolled, bringing the total population close to 5,700 - more than the university can realistically cope with. Admission requirements were also lowered for the first time to facilitate entry based on age and experience.

Zac Chuenyane, the acting vice chancellor, admits this is likely to cause a potential slide in academic standards leading to a possible drop in the quality of graduate output. "It is not a bad thing to admit more students. Now the university is a national asset we have to look at the needs of South Africa as a whole, rather than just the former Bophuthatswana."

As a small generously-funded homeland institution, Unibo might have suffered an image problem in the eyes of the outside world, but students benefited from the smaller classes and individual tuition.

Liberal academics were attracted to the young university because they saw the potential for a new forum of academic freedom and debate outside the confines of an increasingly oppressive and racist South Africa.

Yvonne Mokgoro, recently appointed South Africa's first black woman judge, and now a member of the Constitutional Court, completed her first law degree at Unibo in the early 1980s and progressed to become an associate professor in the faculty. "I think Unibo was probably academically the best university among the historically black universities then," she says. "You found such a diverse academic experience there, people from all over the world, and you had the privilege of few students and wonderful facilities. It felt like a private university."

But the claustrophobic political climate choked off open discussion on campus. Outspoken lecturers were deported without reason. Unruly students were detained or publicly beaten. Unibo was closed down when events got out of control.

But the president lavished money on the university - floodlit tennis courts, an Olympic size swimming pool and a central lecture block costing R25 million equipped with air conditioning, fluorescent lighting and the latest in education technology, not to mention the imported Italian tiles which plaster virtually the entire structure. This in a region where the majority of pupils drop out before they reach secondary school, starvation is rife, and electricity surges in the main power supply can cripple high-tech installations.

By contrast, the one feature central to any thriving university, its library, was completely overlooked. It was planned for, but never built and the current facility is described by the majority of lecturers as "woefully inadequate".

The university council was perceived as being "under Mangope's thumb" and the university survived through patronage and the generosity of private donors who did business with the regime. At the end of each financial year, the Bophuthatswana authorities clawed back whatever monies the university had not spent, with the net result that the council couldn't build up any capital reserves.

"We kicked off into the new South Africa without a cent,"says Professor Chuenyane. So far the central education authorities have looked sympathetically on the plight of Unibo and have allocated the university R95 million for 1995.

This represents a subsidy of 160 per cent compared with the 62.8 per cent allocated to other tertiary institutions in line with the government funding formula.

During the bloody March 1994 uprising which led to the overthrow of Mangope and the re-incorporation of Bophuthatswana into South Africa, the university was the focus for dissent.

Student activists played a key role in devising the strategy of civil service strikes which pitched the capital Mmabatho into a state of anarchy. And when Mangope's security forces surrended, they came to campus to lay down their arms to the students.

One of the most divisive rows which is still simmering centres on the statues of expatriate staff. There are only 110 foreigners out of a staff complement of 1,158 at Unibo. Many are highly qualified academics who were lured to Unibo with the promise of tenure, even though they were never granted permanent residence or work permits in the former homeland.

Just before last Christmas the South African-dominated staff association demanded the immediate expulsion of specific expatriate staff. It then put pressure on Professor Chuenyane to withdraw letters of recommendation to the Department of Home Affairs requesting the renewal of residence and work permits for all the "aliens", so that their posts could be advertised as soon as possible, and filled by suitably qualified South Africans. The expatriates were forced to wait in a state of limbo, in spite of the fact that they all have legally binding contracts.

"It's not as if we came in under the fence", says Melvin Mbao, a Zambian and a senior lecturer in constitutional law. "All of us expatriates accept that the South African government has a duty to its nationals, like any other government in the world, but in the case of professionals like myself I certainly didn't expect this kind of hostile treatment.

"What is doubly hurtful is that the people who are perpetrating this xenophobia and racial hatred were themselves the victims of the worst form of racist oppression. When my black brothers refer to me as an alien it is worse than humiliating. And to consider that countries like mine gave moral, economic and material support to their struggle.

"We're not asking for special treatment, just the respect and dignity which we deserve" Wilfred Legotlo, newly elected president of the staff association, denies that it wants to drive out the expatriates.

The university has decided to honour its contracts with expatriates and freeze expatriate appointments until a specially appointed committee delivers its recommendations.

The new vice chancellor is to be Moteane Melamu, a South African by birth who is currently deputy vice chancellor at the university: "It is important the university locates itself firmly within the community it is intended to serve. It cannot adequately serve this community if it adopts the ivory tower stance and distances itself from the people."