LITMIR.BIZ

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scarcity of colourful public-spirited students. I remember Chris Shongwe from Kimberley, who, some would say, was outrageously colourful in terms of both dress and disposition. Another Chris who comes to mind, this time from Phokeng outside Rustenburg, had an exuberant disposition and a razor-sharp intellect. I learnt a great deal from my participation in debates in closed SRC meetings as well as at open student mass meetings.

      To make headway with someone as shrewd as our rector, we made SRC pre-meeting preparations among ourselves mandatory, using the strategy of persuasion as well as strategic retreat in certain situations. Active participation in student affairs exposed me to the prevailing concerns of students in South Africa and by then independent Lesotho. Student leaders at our university followed a deliberate policy of active engagement with SRCs at other universities as well as national student organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (Nusas).

      I participated in field trips to what was then known as Roma University in Lesotho, visited fellow black students at the University of the Witwatersrand and attended the historic Nusas meeting at Rhodes University during which the breakaway of black students was mooted. All in all, the situation throughout the early years of the history of our college was that for those of us who cared to be actively engaged in student affairs, there was much valuable learning to be gained outside the lecture rooms.

      I wrote the final examinations for my BA degree towards the end of 1962 and the degree was awarded by Unisa early in 1963. Before the start of the 1963 academic year I became aware of a vacancy at the National Institute for Personnel Research (NIPR) in Johannesburg, the national centre of the country’s research into the industrial psychology of Africans at work. In the 1960s and 1970s it was the home of research into and psychological testing of Africans through the use of in-house psychological test batteries.

      According to the advertisement, the primary requirement for the position was a bachelor’s degree with a major in psychology. I applied for the position, and to my surprise I was shortlisted and invited for an interview – a long and dreary process that included psychometric tests. It could well be that my psychometric profile did not make the grade, for my application was unsuccessful. Another unexpected crossroad was before me. Two options came to mind. One was the high-risk route of continued job-seeking. With a bachelor’s degree and no professional certificate I had no way of knowing how far such a strategy would take me. Whatever practical wisdom I had at the time prevailed, for I decided to go back to university to register for an honours degree in psychology.

      Did I consider studying for an honours degree in my other major, English? Yes, I did. But, apart from a teaching career, which had been made unattractive by the introduction of Bantu Education, there was little that a black man could do with such a qualification. In February 1963 I returned to Turfloop, where I registered for a two-year honours degree in psychology. Although the course was taught by staff at the university college, the course work and examinations were those of Unisa. One was expected to choose five study areas, equivalent to five papers that would form the basis for one’s final examination. Study fields such as psychopathology, developmental psychology, personality theory, research methodology and therapeutic psychology were largely familiar to me. What was expected was a broadening of knowledge and a deepening of understanding of the chosen study areas.

      What I found most stimulating was the study of the philosophy of science, especially the wide-ranging contribution of Karl Popper. Even today, after several study visits to some of the most prominent psychology departments in both the US and the UK, I am still convinced that Unisa’s honours programme was a sound preparation for advanced academic and professional studies in psychology. Indeed, by the time I fulfilled the requirements of the degree early in 1965, I knew I had been through an excellent theoretical preparation for entry into a research-based master’s degree.

      I worked diligently on the five papers or directions of study that I had chosen and, all in all, my failure to qualify for the position at the NIPR paid excellent dividends. After two years of hard work, Unisa awarded me a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in 1965. Armed with two degrees at the age of 26, I was prepared to venture into the world of work.

      During my five years at the University College of the North two tendencies appeared to be at play in the affairs of the university. On the one hand, Unisa, the institution which administered the academic programmes of the new university, appeared to conduct its academic oversight diligently. As the first victims of the Bantu Education experiment in South Africa’s segregated university education, some of us appreciated the supervision Unisa provided. On the other hand, the staff were deeply committed to the implementation of the separate development agenda of the Nationalist government. Looking back from the perspective of the more than 50 years that have passed, I am able to imagine how stacked against us the odds were in view of the kind of political objectives the government planned to achieve through the special kind of education we received.

      The all-white university council consisted of four whites who represented government entities such as the departments of Bantu Education and Bantu Administration. The all-black advisory council was made up of chiefs, church leaders and inspectors of Bantu Education. When it came to the appointment of black members of staff, white senior academics chose their black protégés scrupulously. Once they were identified during their senior undergraduate years, they were carefully nurtured and made to feel very special, so much so that the majority of my contemporaries who were offered the local carrot rarely left the university to study or work elsewhere. Some, indeed, would not have been qualified to work elsewhere in academia.

      Such a political programme on the part of the university authorities, both academic and administrative, meant that in due course they defined for themselves and for their own selfish interests who among the students they would prefer to dispose of as soon as possible. In my case, even after I had completed my doctorate at the age of 30, the authorities at my alma mater failed to acknowledge my applications for academic positions until 1990, when everyone’s political fortunes were about to change. When my application for a relatively junior position was greeted with silence, I remembered a conversation I had had with one of the influential black members of staff who was a superintendent of one of the university residences.

      The conversation had taken place after the elections for one of the SRC executive committees. The staff member invited me to meet him at his house one evening. It turned out to be a short meeting. Our SRC had recently elected a Johannesburg student as president. For reasons that were not divulged to me, the university authorities disapproved of our choice. My host was direct and visibly free from shame when he asked if I would agree to take over the presidency so that, in return, I could be assured of an academic position at the university. What a despicable and outrageous proposal! I declined the offer firmly and reminded the staff member that the president of the SRC was elected democratically by students and his SRC colleagues and that had to be the end of the story.

      The university subsequently gained its autonomy and a fully fledged university known as the University of the North (now the University of Limpopo) came into being.

      I had more pressing personal concerns. What prospects did I have, in early 1965, of finding a job in which the psychology I had studied for five years would be of some use? At that stage one needed fewer than the fingers on one hand to count the number of African psychologists with an honours degree, let alone a master’s degree. The prospects were not promising. During the course of my studies, specialisation in the psychology of work, or industrial psychology as it was once called, was relatively rare. Yet, at what now looks like a snail’s pace, an insignificant number of African graduates had found employment. The jobs were not only at the NIPR, the Chamber of Mines and one or two private sector companies; they were, as I was soon to find out when I joined Asea Electric in Pretoria West as a personnel officer, employed to help manage the increasing numbers of African employees in commerce and industry. However, my intention is not to relate the story of my first job in the mid-1960s. I will limit myself to a few essentials about work at Asea Electric because what is of greater interest are the steps I took to work towards a professional career in psychology under the conditions that prevailed in our country at that time.

      Asea Electric was a sizeable Swedish company engaged in the manufacture of electrical cables and transformers. Located in the industrial area of Pretoria West, the company employed

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