The unbelievable is possible: Non-racialism on university campuses can be achieved with consistent foresight and effort

Written by Jonathan Jansen

By the previous weekend the alumni had already sent their predictable text messages: "You can lose all your rugby matches, but not this one."

It was the annual rugby clash between alternately cousins and arch-enemies, the University of the Free State (UFS) Shimlas against the North West University (NWU) Pukke. The tension was palpable, the grandstand was full. Even the Varsity Cup mascots looked edgy.

The NWU team started strong, taking a commanding lead. Then the UFS team fought back, and took a slender lead. We chewed our way through the short lunch break, and I swear you could have put cockroaches in the meal, nobody would have noticed in the tension-packed rugby box.

By the last 10 minutes, the match hung precariously in the balance. The NWU fought bravely, launching wave after wave of attack. The visitors would surely score and break the hearts of 30000 UFS students and staff.

Then it happened. On the attack, the NWU spilt the ball backwards. A huge forward of the Shimlas rushed through the gap and, like a fast backline player, collected the ball from the ground and lifted his heavy frame towards the try line. The young forward, with a little jig, threw himself over the line and scored, lifting his body to his knees with a fellow player assisting.

But nobody saw the young black woman student on the sidelines defying the rules of rugby (the match was still in progress), and in the excitement of the moment, running onto the field to embrace the young white student.

That image, shown right, will be framed in my mind forever.

In that moment, the woman set aside history and memory, bitterness and bile; this was her man, the Shimlas rugby player. The photograph shows the left hand of the woman on the shoulder of the player, and her right hand in movement towards his head. The young man smiles in return, lapping up the adoring attention.

In this one picture, you find a story of a campus emerging from its moments of racial bridge-building and reconciliation. In another series of pictures, in the media, a story of a country going the other way as the nation reverberates from a spate of public attacks on an ethnic minority group.

If there is one place in South Africa where students can and should unlearn racial thinking about others, it is on the university campus. It is not enough for universities to prepare students for degrees in the discipline without structured interventions that prepare these young people for degrees in life.

Unfortunately, one of two things happen on university campuses today: either campuses reinforce the racism and bitterness of black and white students towards each other, or they completely ignore the troubled knowledge that young people bring with them to higher learning.

There is little in the curriculum in the organisation of social spaces, in the selection of sport codes, and in a compelling example of academic and administrative staff who consciously break down negative racial perceptions of others and recreate positive mental and emotional dispositions towards brothers and sisters.

For example, how many university campuses these past few weeks organised public lectures and open seminars on the racism of Kuli Roberts and Jimmy Manyi - not simply to condemn these racists, but to try to understand what these public provocations mean, where they come from, and what they do to people in a divided country?

A university's role is not simply to react to bad things in a society - there is a place for moral outrage - but to reflect on what happened, and to work against it.

So what appears to be a staged picture of a spontaneous event at a rugby match is actually the outcome of the work of scores of people over hundreds of hours to build a rugby team that is integrated, a rugby audience that is diverse, an appreciation of a perceived "white man's sport" in the residences, and a broader set of sport codes (including a university contract with Bloemfontein Celtic to build soccer on campus) that are inclusive.

This picture (and there are hundreds of others) is the consequence of taking incoming students from diverse, and sometimes hostile backgrounds, and bringing them into common and constructive educational spaces where they "unlearn" bitter knowledge and learn what it means to build inter-racial community.

What happens next in this frozen frame? The beautiful woman student grabs the head of the smiling player, delivering a firm kiss. Now that's the kind of country I am proud to be part of.

(This story was provided and used with permission by Timeslive.)