Morgenie Pillay, the Andrew Mellon lecturer in the department of politics and international studies at one of my old stomping grounds, Rhodes University, and a visiting doctoral research scholar at the London School of Economics asks (and tries to answer) an important question in The Mail & Guardian: “Why are there so few up-and-coming new career black academics at South African institutions?”
Her answers (and the question is legitimate — according to South African statistics (2004/05) 69.8% of the master's/doctoral degrees in the country are held by whites) ? Funding, opportunity, and of course racism, either latent or covert. There may be additional factors at work as well. For example, for high-talent strivers, academia might not seem as lucrative as the private sector or as significant as government. Another answer might be that South Africa is still dealing with the lag time of the PhD process. It takes a long time to earn a PhD. Perhaps those students still in the pipeline will help close the gap. A final possibility is that the gap may well be closing. I’d be curious to know the percantages among adcademics who were black in 1987 and 1997 to get a sense of change over time. Nonetheless, Pillay has identified a significant gap that South Africa's universities in particular must address.
