Dr Jonathan Mark HoskinsIn the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) quest to reignite its transformation agenda as a “champion of equality and transformation”, there are antecedents that can be drawn on to guide this process. There is a rich history that UWC can draw on, and one such forgotten history is of the Marxist Theory Seminar of the late 80s and early 90s. It was a forum dedicated to robust debate and critique around the efficacy of capitalism, generally, using Marx’s scholarship as a method of critique.
UWC’s humble beginnings
In the year that UWC celebrates its 65th anniversary, UWC Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Robert Balfour, at a Student Centre gathering, spoke about UWC’s journey - from its “humble beginnings during the apartheid” era to its current role as “a champion of equality and transformation.”
The place of its ‘humble beginnings’ in 1959, a primary school building in Bellville South, was a project of classical Verwoerdian apartheid thinking, where the original members of staff were often not of the highest academic quality, and, in most cases, were supporters of apartheid.
About the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Stellenbosch (US), the reference to UWC as a Bush College, a second-rate institution, was considered to be appropriate.
Despite these “humble beginnings” the driving force behind UWC’s transformation was “renegade” Afrikaner academic and Dutch reformed Church minister, Prof Jaap Durand, UWC’s vice rector; and, Prof Jakes Gerwel, the Rector. At his 1987 inauguration as Vice-Chancellor of this ‘Bush College’, Prof Gerwel unequivocally enunciated his transformation agenda when he declared UWC the “home of the intellectual left”.
The Marxist Theory Seminar is the epitome of the “home of the intellectual left”
It is in this historical context that, a year later in 1988, the Marxist Theory Seminar (MTS) was established. Andrew Nash, one of its founding members, remembers that it began as a small group in the Anthropology Lab at UWC Arts Faculty, with some funding provided by Prof Gerwel to cover modest costs of photocopying papers, so that people could read beforehand.
Key individuals and thinkers who formed the core of the MTS were Jack Lewis (Economics), Fred Hendricks (Sociology), and Andrew Nash (Philosophy), who were committed thinkers of Marxist scholarship. Lewis taught a course for first-year students that surveyed the history of the rise of the capitalist mode of production, Hendricks introduced third-year students to Marxist thinkers like Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas, and Nash introduced philosophy students to the thought of Hegel and his influence on Karl Marx’s thought in respect of dialectics.
This, one could say without a doubt, laid the foundations for what characterised Prof Gerwel’s “Home of the Intellectual Left”. The MTS gathered weekly, packed to capacity with students, lecturers, workers, and even academics from UCT and Stellenbosch University. Debbie Budlender, from UCT, authored a paper on women’s oppression for the MTS seminar series publication, Martin Legassick (Centre for African Studies, UCT and later the History Department at UWC) presented a paper titled, “The Necessity of Socialism”, and, so too, Philip Nel from Stellenbosch wrote a paper for presentation titled, “Smashing the State or Changing the Regime: Leninism and Transformation Politics”.
Legassick and David Hemson are the acknowledged thinkers of the racial capitalism theory, of which Cedric Robinson developed a version quite different from Legassick and Hemson, which he popularised in his book, ‘Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition’. Prof Gerwel himself attended whenever he could and revelled in the robust, barred debate that ensued amongst participants in the quest to sharpen thinking about the life and death questions that enthralled apartheid South Africa at the time.
In short, the Marxist Theory Seminar’s primary objective was to introduce Marxist thinking to the broader UWC community. If UWC was the ‘Home of the intellectual left’, then MTS most certainly was the ‘home of Marxist debate’. It set out to instill in the UWC community the need to be robustly critical about what the fundamental problem was that beset South Africa historically, namely, capitalism, and Marx’s thought was the foundation of this robust critique. It demanded that the University be the pivot of critique as Karl Marx emphasised in a letter to Arnold Ruge in which he stated, “… the proclamation of ready-made solutions for all time is not our affair … we realise all the more clearly what we have to accomplish (is) a ruthless criticism of everything existing”.
Marx’s thought is a basis for transformation
It is this vein, in a paper prepared by Andrew Nash for the MTS on 14 October 1988, titled, “Marxism, Hegel and the Philosophical Foundations of Social Revolution”, where he posed the question, “Is Hegel really necessary?”, which implied a more general question, “Is philosophical debate really necessary?” These questions are posed within the context of apartheid capitalism and the quest to find methods to guide the struggle to destroy it. Can the reading of Hegel strengthen the philosophical foundations on which a theory of revolutionary class struggle, Marxism, could be built?
This is what Nash is burdened with and which he believes is necessary to confront the attendees of the Marxist Theory Seminar with as a basis for robust debate. Centrally for Nash is the question, whether the engagement with Hegel to strengthen Marxism in philosophical debate has a role to play in building the revolutionary resources with which to deal decisively with apartheid capital at the time.
The nature of UWC’s transformation questioned
Five years later, Andrew Nash presented a paper at UWC titled, “UWC: From ‘Intellectual Home of the Left’ to ‘Preparing to Govern” to the Marxist Theory Seminar, on 23 February 1993, to which Jakes Gerwel, then Rector and Vice-Chancellor of UWC, was the respondent, where the fundamental ethos of the University and its role in a transitioning capitalist South Africa was brought starkly into question. Andrew Nash raised a very fundamental question: Is UWC training its students to compete successfully in a capitalist economy, or to challenge the priorities of this form of economy and contribute to its overthrow?
A student who is taught to compete in the job market is not necessarily able to understand or criticise the capitalist system. One who has a critical understanding of capitalism is better equipped to understand the fundamental logic of the system and why it needs to be replaced. In the final analysis, how curriculum design is constructed is a political question. A curriculum aimed simply at improving pass rates and producing more employable graduates without a clear critical political approach leaves little reason to think that the curriculum can aim at anything else than producing students ready for the workplace. A great deal then depends on how UWC understands its broader role in transforming South African society.
Nash concludes, “What is necessary, above all, is that we at UWC regain our belief in ourselves, and our belief in the ideals which animated our struggles for so many years. South African intellectual life is in complete disarray; its institutions are fragmented, and its goals are infected with opportunism; there is no practice or tradition in it which is capable of interpreting truthfully the living ideals and aspirations of the vast majority of South Africans: the oppressed and exploited. He argues for a willingness to work patiently and without illusions at building the resources of an intellectual life worthy of a South Africa in which ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. And he presciently states, ‘The tale which I have told here is not over yet.’” These questions were posed 37 years ago, and they are still starkly all pervasive today.
Champion of equality and transformation
The important question is, presently, how does “the home of the intellectual left” reposition its transformation programme to once again craft a new vision for UWC? What was raised 37 years ago by Andrew Nash contextualises the importance of Vice- Chancellor Robert Balfour’s vision for UWC to once again assert itself as “a champion of equality and transformation”. In crafting this new vision, UWC has a rich history to draw on; and, the rich critique-based tradition of the Marxist Theory Seminar is just one such history that can be drawn on to reconceptualise the vision for UWC. It is a history where the power of Marx’s scholarship, which is imminently embedded in a critique of capitalist society, can once again play a role in creating a vision where ‘the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all’.
To undergird this, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Balfour’s inaugural address on 15 February 2025, emphasised that this legacy cannot simply be a point of historical pride; that the University’s commitments to this legacy be actively shaped in the present. He particularly made the point that universities do not function as businesses, and should not be viewed as such. He made plain that this calls for a deliberate effort to think beyond market-driven imperatives that globally have come to prevail upon the university. For him, the urgent task is to reaffirm the university’s role as a project of critical inquiry and social transformation, grounded in principles of the left, and driven by a profound vision of transformation deeply anchored in solidarity with the oppressed. Not only solidarity with the oppressed, but also, more importantly, driven by a praxis of Fanonian reach and depth, where mutual enrichment and enlightenment are its foundational pillars in the quest to find a common humanity.
To conclude, Prof Balfour’s inaugural vision for UWC reawakens once again the kind of ethos and critique-oriented atmosphere that pervaded UWC during the heady days of Prof Gerwel’s inaugural enunciation of UWC as “the home of the intellectual left” and the founding of the Marxist Theory Seminar. This is the collective task at hand.
* Dr Jonathan Mark Hoskins teaches Political Philosophy and South African Politics. He obtained his PhD thesis, which critically analyses black economic empowerment in South Africa. His research interests include the socio-economic construction of race, black economic empowerment, and theories of the developmental state. He holds BA, B Proc, LLB, and LLM degrees from the University of the Western Cape.
