I\nwas perched on a stool at a small oak bistro table, drinking a glass of Bartinney\nSauvignon Blanc \u2013 \u201cwine made on a mountain\u201d. At the table next to me at the\nwine bar (my favourite when in Stellenbosch) was a group of ten or so students,\nall dressed in evening wear for the end year ball. Dresses shimmered in hues of\nsilver, lilac, emerald and gold exposing bare backs in the late afternoon sun.\nThe men were more or less unanimously dressed in tight-fitting navy suits\nhugging gym-trained bodies, with sharp pointed patent leather shoes or \u201cvellies\u201d\n(informal suede shoes) and colourful socks. The picture that came to mind was\nlike a scene from \u201cBig little lies\u201d \u2013 beautiful people living seemingly charming\nlives in Monterey, California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beautiful\npeople living privileged lives while studying at the university \u2013 a centre for academic\nexcellence and innovation. But they were brash – loudly ordering one round of champagne\nafter the other, cigarette smoke drifting in the faces of Belgian tourists at\nanother table \u2013 hilariously laughing at silly conversation and endlessly posing\nand re-posing for the one perfect photo to upload onto Instagram, hiding all the\nlittle lies. Then finally, they ordered an Uber to take them to the ball, but then\ngrudgingly started walking to the venue when the Uber took too long to arrive\nin peak traffic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An\nhour later I was listening to a memorial lecture in honour of a previous Vice-Chancellor\u2019s\nlegacy of hope. The speaker from Ghana spoke about economic justice, right\nrelationships with God and between people and urged the audience to realise\nthat the time for change is now! But before all these fiery words, the\nrecipients of the bursary fund (mostly black) were introduced \u2013 studying in\ndiverse fields like occupational therapy, humanities, social work, theology, animal\nscience, viticulture, food science and law, most of them young people from previously\ndisadvantage communities, most of them perhaps the first of their families to\nstudy at a university. What struck me was their composure \u2013 serious, quiet,\nfocused. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Off course it\u2019s an unfair comparison for me to make, having no clue of the stories and \u201clittle lies\u201d behind the beautiful bodies or composed facades. Off course the contexts differ completely. Off course the university has made enormous strides towards transformation and inclusivity in higher education in the face of the brutal legacies of Apartheid. But what bothered me was the seeming lack of urgency in the demeanour of the group of beautiful students (only white). Off course the occasion did not call for a conversation on social justice, but absent was a sensibility. And I was thinking – a university like this as a centre of academic excellence do not only have the task to produce beautiful young people with competitive degrees, but people, standing in right relationships with each other \u2013 the daughter of the farm worker and the son of the farmer equally sensitised to the social and economic injustices of this beloved country, equally primed to make a difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otherwise,\nit only becomes a centre for useless splendour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was perched on a stool at a small oak bistro table, drinking a glass of Bartinney Sauvignon Blanc \u2013 \u201cwine made on a mountain\u201d. At the table next to me at the wine bar (my favourite when in Stellenbosch) was a group of ten or so students, all dressed in evening wear for the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodystory.co.za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}