Mamphela Ramphele

During the darkest days of apartheid, Mamphela Ramphele, a young black doctor, was detained without trial and banished to a remote, rural area of South Africa by the white authorities.

She was there, 20 years ago this September (9/12), when she learned that Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko had died in police custody. Their child, Hlumelo, was born a few months later. His name means “the shoot that grew from a dead tree trunk.”

So much has changed in South Africa since Biko’s death in 1977. His killers--former policemen--recently asked the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty. And his friend and lover, Mamphela Ramphele, now 49, is vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, the first black person--male or female--to run the nation’s leading research institution.

Ramphele is, in fact, a rarity among leaders in her homeland--a highly educated black woman who commands respect and real power in academia and beyond.

Another thing that sets her apart is her political independence. She is not a member of the African National Congress or any other party. Instead, she is a product of black consciousness, the current in black political thought that reached its peak of power in South Africa under Biko.

Ramphele, a small, bespectacled woman, remains a critical observer as well as a crucial player in the new South Africa. In addition to running the university, she is a renowned expert on rural poverty, a member of the boards of directors of several companies and the single mother of two sons.

She earned a medical degree in 1972 from the University of Natal, where she was active in the Black Consciousness Movement founded by Biko. Her relationshihp with Biko was a “semi-platonic friendship that frequently ‘degenerated’ into passion,” she has said.

By the time she was banished, in 1977, she had founded two community health centers. During her seven years under the banning order, she continued her work with the rural poor, launching a day-care center, a literacy project and a communal vegetable garden in the northern Transvaal.

After the banning order was lifted, she earned a doctoral degree in anthropology, taught at the University of Cape Town and launched herself into ground-breaking research on the life of migrant workers and township children and adolescents. She was appointed one of four deputy vice chancellors of the university in 1991 and became head of the school last year.

Ramphele has traveled widely and earned honorary degrees from three American universities. She spent a week in Los Angeles last spring as the USC Provost’s Distinguished Visitor for 1996-97.

She is an important role model for black women in South Africa and around the world. As she explained in her autobiography, “Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader,” published this year in the United States: “Being black, woman, mother and professional places one in a challenging position anywhere in the world, but more particularly in South Africa.”

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Question: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has held South Africans enthralled for months with appeals for amnesty from blacks as well as whites. Is it helping the country turn the corner on its past?

Answer: It is the best mechanism for dealing with the complex legacy of pain, resentment and failure to acknowledge other people’s pain. The TRC is the world’s first, in courageously dealing with the past.

But nothing can really deal adequately with loss and pain.

Q: It’s been three years since the first all-race elections in South Africa. How is the country doing today?

A: If you are judging by the distance from which we have come, we’ve done very well. But if you judge it by how far we still have to go, then we are really struggling. The success stories have been the absolutely superb constitution with . . . a wonderful bill of rights and very good provisions in terms of equality, including gender equality.

Q: And where have things not gone well?

A: The major difficulty has been the poor human capital we inherited.

Q: But doesn’t South Africa have more human capital than other countries in Africa?

A: At the top level, the education is fine. But it’s not good enough for running a modern economy.

The problem was the nature of the liberation struggle. From 1976 through 1994, very little real education happened in poor African township areas.

And the chickens of that are coming home to roost with a vengeance--young, 20- to 30-year-old people who have participated very actively in the liberation process and now feel society owes them something. And indeed we do. But how do you begin to repay people?

Q: One major concern from the beginning has been how President Mandela would be able to deal with the aspirations of black freedom fighters who feel entitled.

A: I don’t think anyone feels entitled to sitting down and receiving money. They do feel entitled to opportunities, which is quite legitimate.

But when you have a government that is struggling to deal with . . . housing backlogs, educational inadequacies, job creation and infrastructure development--it’s really a mammoth task.

Q: How does that play out at the University of Cape Town?

A: We are doing better than any university not only in bringing people in, but in transforming the university into a truly African university that can respond to the needs of society as well as promote excellence.

Since the early 1980s, there has been a steady growth in the number of black students, from under 10% in the ‘80s to now 46%. And the growth has been in the critical areas of science, engineering, medicine and commerce.

Q: When you talk about the human capital void, who is filling it now? Whites? Foreigners? Or is it simply not being filled?

A: In some cases it’s not being filled. Particularly in the government sector and in many areas of civic life. In the private sector, it is filled by attracting foreigners.

Part of the problem is that South Africa has suffered from the influence of the British, who felt that to be skilled meant to be able to read and write and wear a tie and suit, rather than also to be able to work with your hands.

We are a nation that really needs to be shaken into a completely new path in terms of skills and production.

Q: Is there a feeling of disappointment--if that’s not too strong--among blacks?

A: Disappointment is not too strong a word. But you’ve got to look at different sectors.

Many black South Africans have done extraordinarily well. Some of them have become millionaires because they’ve made deals with foreign investors and former white companies trying to look right in the new political environment.

And when you look at the black professional class, there is no disappointment there. They are doing very well.

But then when you go below that, you begin to meet a lot of anxiety. More and more middle-class people have to pay more and more money to give their kids the type of education that will give them opportunities in the future.

You get even more frustration among the working-class people, who have been waiting for houses, clinics and schools. There has been some progress, but nothing equal to the enormous challenges and expectations.

Below that, with the unemployed, it’s not just disappointment but anger and frustration. I’ve never seen such high levels of incest, of rape. It’s totally frightening.

Q: And for whites?

A: White people have done extraordinarily well. They had their fingers in butter in the past, and they still have it in thick cream. Their properties are still intact. Their children have been educated.

There is a problem with jobs. It is not because of discrimination; there are just too few jobs. And if a company has not hired black people in the past it’s only logical that it will start by hiring them.

So there is that anxiety. But many young white graduates are highly mobile. Some have left the country. I don’t think I can weep for them.

And of course you have a lot of whites who are very committed to making the new system work. In fact, I think one of the weaknesses of the new government has been in not taking advantage of offers of support from whites.

Q: Mandela has said he will not run for reelection. What is the post-Mandela future?

A: That future is beginning to be the dominant present because Mandela has almost opted out of active government. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki is the person running the government, for better or for worse. Mandela is becoming more and more of a symbolic figure.

That is not a bad thing. Mandela is a kind of Moses, the person who brings you out of the wilderness. But he’s not an institutional man. He uses his personal appeal and charm in relationships, be they foreign or national. But I don’t think you can have a democracy run that way.

Q: Thabo Mbeki is also charismatic, isn’t he?

A: I would not call him charismatic. He is much more of a calculating political actor who sits down, does a lot of analyses and of course has a very good education and has an enormous intellect.

His success will depend on surrounding himself with highly competent people and delegating responsibility.

Q: Sexism was a feature of the old South Africa. What is the role of black women in the new South Africa?

A: As African countries go, we’ve done very well, in part because of the benefit of the experiences of other countries, which got ANC women to realize that simply being part of the majority party is not going to ensure their empowerment

Mandela has been been very active in making sure that women not only got into Parliament, but that they got into the Cabinet. But that’s not good enough. Even within the ANC, the dominant power still lies in the hands of men.

Q: And outside the political arena?

A: In everyday life, that is where the real crunch is going to have to be. Whether you are looking at universities or the private sector, there really isn’t much movement.

Q: You started your political career in the Black Consciousness Movement. Are you a member of the ANC now?

A: I’m not a member of the ANC or of any other political party because I don’t believe that is a useful ticket to carry.

Q: Do you maintain your belief, though, in the core values of Black Consciousness?

A: The Black Consciousness movement was never really an opposition party. It was a movement intended to enable black people to assert themselves in a political environment in which being black meant being inferior.

That need will continue to be there until such time as South Africans stop seeing themselves in terms of black and white.

Q: And the ANC’s record on racism?

A: The ANC has fudged that issue. The ANC says all its members are important, whether black or white, and that race doesn’t matter.

Well, it does matter. Because when the ANC is criticized for incompetence the first thing it says is: ‘Oh, you’re criticizing us because you’re white and we’re black. You can’t stand black people being in positions of authority.’

I think that’s a sign of feelings of inferiority. Why must you assume that because you are being criticized, it’s because you are black?

So we still have that problem. I think racism will continue to be a shadow over South Africa, and we have to confront it directly and deal with it--both in black people and in the white people who still assume that somehow we must adjust to them because, as they put it, ‘there is no other future.’

It will remain an ongoing struggle until both black and white are comfortable with the fact that we are members of one common race, which is the human race.

Q: What would Steve Biko think of South Africa today?

A: (smiles) He’d probably laugh at some of the ridiculous sides of society. But it’s difficult to know. He died when he was 29, and what I thought when I was 29 is quite different from what I think now that I am approaching 50.

I’m sure he would have been different, but I don’t think so different as not to share a lot of the things that I care about, a lot of things that people like Mandela care about. He was an adaptable enough person to have been able to play a very creative role in helping society to meet many of the challenges that we face.*