Siseko Kumalo is an associate professor of higher education studies at the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, University of Johannesburg. 

He recently published an opinion article that first appeared in the news24 on 11 January 2025.

The death of the country’s first democratic minister of education, Professor Sibusiso Bengu, invites us to reflect on the enduring legacy of a visionary leader who sought to redefine education in post-apartheid South Africa. Bengu’s legacy lies in his bold vision for education as a tool of social transformation.

His vision, rooted in Nelson Mandela’s belief that education is a powerful tool for social change, laid the foundation for much of our contemporary thinking about higher education. His foreword to the 1997 White Paper 3 remains a cornerstone for scholarship on the transformative role of universities.

However, the enduring racial and systemic inequalities in South Africa’s education system compel us to critically assess both Bengu’s successes and the structural barriers that limited his ambitions.

A socially transformative tool

Despite his aspirations for an equitable and integrated system, the stark racial and social divides of South Africa’s past continue to shape its higher education landscape.

Today, as universities increasingly orientate themselves towards northern benchmarks of “excellence”, they risk overlooking local realities and their obligations to the communities they serve.

This tension has driven my own scholarship. I advocate for a shift from vertical accountability, i.e., – answering to global rankings and external metrics – to horizontal accountability, where universities prioritise their responsibilities to the people and contexts in which they are embedded.

Of course, Bengu’s vision of higher education as a socially transformative tool was and continues to be a deeply contested claim. Some of us use(d) his ideas to argue for a locally responsive system that advances and contributes to developing global disciplinary orientations.

Conversely, others argued against such, pitting academic freedom as oppositional to state regulation. This frames state interference as objectionable.

To the extent that I can agree with this claim, I must consider one simple question, i.e., if academic freedom secures us negative freedom – echoing liberal philosopher Isiah Berlin’s conception of freedom in the book Two Concepts of Freedom – (freedom without limitations, essentially), why should the state continue to subsidise the sector?

Understandably, and as the South African sociologist Bongani Nyoka demonstrates in his intellectual ode to Archie Mafeje, however, state regulation under apartheid meant the state dictated institutional directionality, even in matters of academic appointments. The “Mafeje Affair” at the University of Cape Town (UCT) shows how wrong state regulation can go.

UCT, then, is often celebrated as a symbol of academic freedom, with its Academic Freedom Lectures representing the ideals of white liberalism in South African academia. However, it was not until 1993, when Mahmood Mamdani delivered the Academic Freedom Lecture at Rhodes University, that English universities began to seriously confront the issue of race in relation to their claims of independence from state control.

In practice, academic freedom was upheld only as long as it did not challenge the racial hierarchies of the time. English academics were willing to tolerate the racial oppression of black people while benefitting from the privileges of a segregated system.

Whether we regard Bengu as having successfully advanced sectoral transformation or failed in the endeavour, our assessment of his legacy cannot side-step this historical context.

Importantly, Bengu’s legacy as the first black vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Fort Hare should also be considered against the backdrop of this history. The apartheid state upended the autonomy of the University of Fort Hare in 1959. This action saw restrictions on academic freedom and spelt the doom of an institution that produced the greatest leaders of the liberation struggle – in all of Africa.

As the first black vice-chancellor (a title he held in succession of towering black intellectuals like ZK Matthews) who had acted but was never permanently appointed to the role), Bengu’s stint was short-lived.

A deeply divided system

His brief tenure at the institution was cut short when he was appointed as the first minister of education in democratic South Africa, leaving the university to face deepening challenges without his leadership. After his departure, the first financial aid crisis to define the sector played out at Fort Hare. The leadership of Professor Derrick Swartz stabilised an institution on the brink of financial collapse.

Working with and in a deeply divided system while tasked with developing a society that could claim a unitary identity, Bengu confronted an insurmountably – to this day – impossible challenge. The veracity of my claim is seen in the differentiated systems of education that exist in South Africa.

At the basic education level, two parallel systems often predetermine the life potentialities of our children. If you’re privileged enough to be born into a family that can afford a former Model C (or private) education, only then do you have the fighting chance to be an active member of the economy.

If, on the other hand, you’re born into a rural and poor family, your chances of drowning in a pit latrine are higher than earning a living wage and contributing to our society.

Furthermore, the desire for universal access to quality and free education – the fourth Sustainable Development Goal – comes at a racialised cost.

Historical imbalances in education funding continue to bedevil the democratic state and shape who has access to quality. These determinants differentiate (often racially) between a liveable life and those who exist in our country’s zone of non-being – to borrow from Fanon.

To the degree Bengu sought to radically redefine the social condition that defines freedom for those of us who were previously oppressed, he worked against innumerable social pressures that still rear their head today as objections to the wholesale implementation of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act.

Unfulfilled dreams

As we mourn the loss of an intellectual giant, a towering figure of the hopes that defined the anticipation of democracy in our land, we also mourn a dream deferred.

In our failure to radically reimagine the social conditions that define life for the majority of our people, it might be useful to consider a requiem for the mass emancipation of blackness.

Some would argue, however, that we exist under conditions of requiem inversion (hellish conditions of un-liveability), made manifest through opportunistic political actors that threaten the young democratic project called South Africa.

And yet, the soil is rich with the dead carcasses of hopes and unfulfilled dreams. May your return, Bengu, to the soil remind us of unrealised dreams. May your departure to the land of our ancestors nourish the trees of liberation and freedom so that our people can live.

As we lay to rest the first democratic minister of education, we honour his vision for education as a tool for liberation. Bengu’s legacy is both an inspiration and a challenge – a reminder of the dreams that defined our democratic transition and the unfulfilled promises of equity and justice.

While the weight of historical and systemic inequities persists, we owe it to his memory to recommit to building an education system that serves all South Africans. May his life and work continue to inspire us to imagine and fight for a future where education truly becomes the key to freedom and equality.

*The views expressed in this article are that of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect that of the University of Johannesburg.