Academics in South Africa have to focus on ‘outputs’: what’s lost when other work’s not counted

Professors Curwyn Mapaling and Nokulunga Shabalala are two Black clinical psychologists working as academics in South Africa.

What started as their shared frustration with the pace of change in universities became a research programme.

For three years they recorded their conversations with each other, leading to three journal papers that document their own experiences in higher education and the shifts they would like to see.

Here they explain why this matters.

What is the problem you’ve identified in South African higher education? When a postgraduate student hesitates to greet you in the corridor, or questions whether you really belong behind that desk, you learn something about the university that no policy document will tell you.

The institution may have hired you to transform it, but it has not transformed itself enough to fully recognise you.

Our papers are about what it feels like to be a young Black academic in a system that says it wants you but struggles to make room for you.

Black African academics remain underrepresented at senior ranks .

In 2018 they held 19% of professorial posts while white men held 67%, in a system where 80% of students were African .

South African higher education remains shaped by its colonial and apartheid history in ways that go well beyond demographics.

The curriculum still privileges Eurocentric knowledge .

Institutional cultures carry assumptions about who is credible, who deserves authority and who should simply be grateful for the opportunity .

Black academics and students have been calling for deep transformation for decades, but the pace of change has been slow and uneven.

Read more: South African universities must do more to tackle staffs’ race and gender imbalances Representation has improved.