So it was with trepidation that I considered blogging about Transformation. It's one of those topics that both opens up and closes down debate - lots of people have lots to say about it, but somehow the real issues seldom get touched on in amongst the posturing, defensiveness and caution.
It's rare that someone feels safe enough to come out and say that they think transformation is a bad idea because a "critical mass" will be just that - critical - and will change the Institutional Culture in ways that are bad, not good... ways threatening to What It Is We're Proud To Be. Which generally means some kind of liberal notion of academic freedom and institutional autonomy and thank-god-we're-not-that-place-in-the-winelands-where-everyone-thinks-exactly-the-same relief. Part fear, part Afro-pessimism, part paranoia - and part observation as the culture of silence takes hold progressively. (Or retrogressively.)
It's equally rare that someone else feels safe enough to speak about transformation in a way that acknowledges complicity, without overdoing the self-flagellation and indulging in guilt trip. And this isn't only applicable to white staff - coloured labour preference policies in the Western Cape have led to "historic disadvantage" being far more nuanced than current corrective legislation provides for.
And, when it comes to those who were - and who remain - most disadvantaged, who speaks for them? Mostly, in seminars, meetings, public gatherings, it's the more erudite, more confident, more practised and more acculturated voices which are heard. Academics rather than staff on other conditions of employment; higher payclasses rather than lower; English first (or English-confident) rather than English second, third, or more, language speakers.
Black staff who speak up in such gatherings - whether with the confidence of their position, their Union or their education behind them - are often harshly critical of those who remain silent. They grumble about how much more vocal people were under Apartheid; how "lazy" they've become now that the discourse has moved from protest to reconstruction; how unwilling they are to engage and shift from their comfort zones.
So we all say less - even though some of us don't stop talking.
We say the same things again and again, even though the last several times we said them, nothing happened. Someone defined insanity as doing the same thing under the same conditions and expecting a different result. We're really good at that.
And so, before I repeat myself for the howmanyeth time, I'll stop.