Price reflects on turbulent times at UCT

Though the title of the new book by Dr Max Price is Statues and Storms: Leading through Change, one of the alternate titles he thought of was “The Man in the Arena”. In many ways, as the then vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town (UCT), he was the man at the very centre of the historic student protests that gripped the university from 2015 to 2017.

No such moment captures this more than when Price calmly met students to hear their demands on 14 October 2016, but was assaulted as students closed in on him. He was the man in the arena, surrounded on all sides, trying to lead UCT through its most unprecedented, sustained, widespread, disruptive, and at times violent protests, triggered by the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements.

Price was vice-chancellor of UCT from 2008 to 2018, a decade that spanned a watershed period in higher education in South Africa. The Fallist movement spread, fragmented, degenerated, and threatened to ruin many South African universities. Price’s new book is an insider’s view of what happened, and is about making tough decisions in times of rapid transformation.

“The university went through turbulent storms – all universities in the country did,” says Price. “I don’t think it was a given that they would survive. It could have happened that we couldn’t graduate students or have new intakes, that we would have faced financial ruin if the whole university had to repeat a year of study. There could have been, at least at UCT, far more violence than there was. And I believe we brought the ship back to safe harbour.”

He wrote this book because, he says, he had a feeling he “had a story to tell”. Upon reflection, in the heat of the protests, communication wasn’t always clear, Price says. “The public and student activists didn’t understand the strategies we adopted. It was important to explain these in a more considered way, and to evaluate them with the passage of time.”

He also learnt many lessons from the crisis, and wanted to share these insights. “This is history that needs to be recorded. As an insider, I have access to details which others wouldn’t have. It’s a partial view, which must be taken into account together with the narratives of others.”

The most challenging aspect of writing the book was “undoubtedly reliving the experiences,” says Price. “Some were traumatic – being surrounded by a crowd; the uncertainty of not knowing how they would respond; the engagements with the police. Watching the visual material and reading the newspaper articles was challenging.

“In some ways, it was also cathartic,” he says. “That reflection was also the most positive aspect of writing the book – reminding myself how the executive team stood together and shared the burden of leadership, the experience of being in the trenches together, and the camaraderie that it generated.”

Because he’s writing about such a volatile time, Price does expect some backlash. However, he never considered it a reason not to publish. He expects there will be criticism from students “who think I acted harshly against them for bringing police and private security onto campus, and for interdicts and disciplinary charges. The book recounts that and explains it, and I hope they will read the book with an open mind, willing to hear the rationale of my actions”.

Then there are “people in the university and in the public who thought that I wasn’t being tough enough with the students,” says Price. “I haven’t had the opportunity to explain to that audience the logic of our thinking.”

His most difficult moment during his 10-year tenure wasn’t when he was assaulted, but when he had to disinvite Danish journalist Flemming Rose from delivering the annual TB Davie Academic Freedom Lecture at UCT. Rose was the foreign affairs editor of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and is best known for commissioning a group of drawings of the Prophet Muhammad that were published in 2005, causing global protest and riots.

“We felt that the resulting violence if he spoke would mean that he wouldn’t end up being heard. It would pose a risk to students, staff, and to himself,” says Price. “The damage done to the institution would be far greater in the short term than the damage done by disinviting him. I was severely criticised, and it’s a decision that I deeply regretted having to make.”

Looking back, he said, “The university survived [the protest period], but not unscarred. The one area which I think we could have always been better at was using social media. Even staff at the university were getting their news from the students’ social media posts because they were up to date. It took us a long time to adapt.”

When asked what his most significant achievement was during his time as vice-chancellor, he says, “I’m glad to have the question asked, because inevitably, the publicity around the protests overwhelmed my term of office as a whole.” He’s proud of several achievements during his term, especially in transformation; increased research; increased international collaboration; the university considering a wider set of factors when accepting and supporting students; and overcoming research and teaching happening in “silos”.

In the area of teaching, UCT, in a sense, “anticipated what would happen during COVID-19” and expanded online teaching and online learning resources. “We recognised that students whose first language isn’t English really struggle to take notes quickly and understand exactly what a lecturer is saying,” says Price. “UCT therefore introduced lecture capture, recording the lectures on video and audio.”

Though he’s generally pessimistic about South Africa’s challenges, the graduates he saw during his time as vice-chancellor have given him hope. “There’s nothing more wonderful than meeting a young black graduate who was the first in their family to come to university, to observe the transformation happening within one or two generations. That’s the core business of the university, and we saw that at 16 graduations a year. It was also inspiring to meet young students who had overcome huge odds to get to UCT.”

Finally, he emphasises that Jewish students “undoubtedly” still have a place at UCT. “I wouldn’t think that Jewish students’ experience would be any different from other white students’ experience. White students continue to constitute about 20% to 30% of the student population, which is four times their representation in the general population.

“For better or worse, many Jewish students will be coming from Jewish schools, which will have provided them with an outstanding education, but they will still feel stretched intellectually. If parents think that the standards have dropped, they should talk to students who have been studying at UCT.

“Jewish schools have a homogeneous culture, so there is a big social adjustment to be made to coming to UCT,” says Price. “But there are many spaces which can help make that transition, such as sports clubs, societies, and residences, and I urge students to accept that challenge.”