Chapter Seven
7.4 Hell is only a State of Mind!
learning curve at that school, and these children and their community were my finest teachers!
I resigned from teaching in I987 and took up a contract post of associate lecturer in the Faculty of Education at UDW in January 1988. I taught courses in Sociology of Education, Philosophy of Education, Science Education, Gender and Education and Research Methodology at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
autocratically assigned an unreasonably heavy teaching load with large class numbers that was physically and mentally exhausting, especially since my teaching style is and has always been highly interactive. It was not unusual for me to see my name appear on the timetable next to new courses, without my being consulted on the matter. Our student numbers were extremely high at the time. For many years I was lecturing to over 1000 students in total, all of whom would be beating a path to my office for some query or the other. I found all my spare time being taken up with marking of assignments, tests and research reports and attending to student queries. The pattern was consistently similar throughout my years in academia. I would be lecturing throughout the year with absolutely no space for any kind of research activity. This meant that I was marking assignments from term one to term four. No sooner had the marking ended, than the processing of all the year marks had to be carried out. Again because I was lecturing at all levels, this task was an onerous one for me in particular. Once this was accomplished the final examination would begin. I would be required to invigilate as well as mark all my scripts and process all these marks in time for the results to be released. Co-ordinating some of the papers came with the territory as there was never any assistance in the form of support staff. They had clearly defined briefs, I was often told, such as typing which in my opinion was a waste of time. I have always done all the work that the secretarial support staff was employed to carry out. It was just faster that way. But I gradually came to the realisation that my work was not being supported in ways that would have given me time to attend to my academic work.
I was also expected to participate in all the administrative tasks that faculty required of me. Back then we had no faculty officer, teaching practice co-ordinator, curriculum officer, research officer, staff that would have relieved lecturers from a number of routine tasks to a large extent.
I was involved in course co-ordination, chairing the faculty Restructuring Task Group, departmental secretarial duties from time to time and area co-ordinator for our school- based teaching practice programme.
My passion for research saw my being nominated as the faculty representative on the UDW Research Ethics Committee. My role here was to grant ethical clearance to research proposals that came before this committee. Although I must admit that I found
the task highly stimulating and a wondeiful learning experience, it was exhausting. I pick up discussion on my activities on this committee later on.
I was to fit my research into all of this. All in a faculty within a university that was an important terrain for political activity in those turbulent apartheid days.
I recall the humiliation at one meeting when a fellow member of staff was being congratulated on having a paper accepted for presentation at an international conference.
My head of department looked at me with an air of condescension saying that maybe some day I 'might' have a paper accepted for presentation at a conference. It was a tone that was meant to make me know my place in the institution.
My particular department was characterised by deep divisions between some members of staff. These divisions always played themselves out in personal vendettas, whatever the occasion. It was not a climate in which one could ever begin to work constructively. No sooner had you made progress on one matter, than another altercation arose. This was so prevalent that it came to be accepted as the norm in our department. To this day those tensions still play themselves out in the form offactions. If a person is perceivedto support a particular individual, she or he would be targeted by the opposing group. Then there was also the issue of preferential treatment for those who 'toed the line' and didn't rock the boat. Well that certainly left me out in the cold. I have watched, with disdain, some women in my department use manipulative tactics to get on in academia, so much for furthering the rights of women.
The dawn of the post-apartheid era coincided with the most turbulent period that the university was going through trying to find an identity, trying to map out its role in the new South Africa. Student uprisings and unrest on campus, staff struggles with senior management, allIed to a very unstable, highly volatile university climate within which we valiantly tried to carry out 'normal' activities.
I tried desperately to stay 'non-aligned' but this did not turn out the way I anticipated.
Each 'camp' saw me as identifying with the other, not understanding my need for impartiality at certain stages of the political upheavals on the campus. Because of the nature of my work I was forced to liase with individuals that I did not personally agree
with or support. But this was often perceived as my 'collaborating' with the enemies. I couldn't believe the immaturity that existed in the reactions of people on the campus. In retrospect, it is understandable since we had no culture of democracy - apartheid had ensured this. We didn't know how to agree to disagree; it was all or nothing, you were either friend or foe. It was difficult because my confidence had eroded considerably.
Even if I felt strongly about certain issues I was just too exhausted to care or fight anymore. Everyday was a new battle. We developed a culture of working from one crisis to another!
My own pathway was not untouched by the turmoil and internal and external strife on campus as indicated above. The larger political issues spilled over into the Faculty and the Department and manifested itself in debates about curriculum development to staff development to academic development. All debates had a subtext.
I don't remember exactly when it was that I came to the realisation that I had fallen into an insidious trap. I was unaware that I was playing the game by exactly the rules the 'enemy' expected me to play. I became so despondent that I remained unfocused and hence could not make any progress. It took me a while to realise that no matter how much I tried I would never be able to change the ways in which some individuals viewed me. So I grew up! Life was not a bed of roses. You cannot expect to go through life having everyone like you: welcome to the real world!
As a result I went through what I would describe as a highly spiritual phase. I began to do a lot of reflecting and introspection, searching for meaning, for purpose, and realised that I had to break the cycle of events that now characterised my life as an academic.
I recall once talking to a colleague 'in the corridor' where most of the critical issues were discussed, constructed, de constructed and packaged. I described my life to him as a fishing line that had gotten so horribly tangled that I didn't know where and how to begin to unravel it. And then I said the strangest thing that was to mark a turning point in my whole engagement with my life in academia. I didn't really want to unravel it. I just wanted to snip the tangled mess and cast a new line into the water! This was the psychological breakthrough that I had waited for all those years. But I would not have come to this point without the help of a few key individuals whose presence, interventions
and involvement at strategic moments in my life provided the impetus I needed to finally 'cut loose'. I make mention of them where appropriate but one such individual was Professor Christine Keitel, a high profile academic and researcher from the Free University in Berlin, Germany.