2020 Annual Report

UCT has been addressing the challenge of increasing the number of black South African academics on its academic staff for at least the last ten years. Despite these systemic efforts, progress has been slow, with the designated groups (including black South Africans, women and persons with disability) still under-represented at the level of associate professor and professor. An Action Plan for Accelerated Transformation at UCT (which served at the October 2020 Council Meeting) flowed from the recently published Report from the Ministerial Task Team on the
recruitment, retention and progression of black South African academic staff; conversations that the Vice-Chancellor had with stakeholders to better understand specific barriers; and a request by Council for a plan that speaks to the identification of current gaps in transformation and ways to address them. The action plan focuses on the need to accelerate the recruitment of black South African staff, in particular, at the level of the professoriate. It also acknowledges the need to attract
and retain black South African postgraduate students to feed into a pipeline to be considered for academic positions. Improving the throughput rate of black South African postgraduate students is an important part of the plan to accelerate transformation: the Action Plan focuses on the need to ensure that all black South African postgraduate students graduate within the allocated timeline for their degrees, to facilitate access into an academic career and the economy more broadly. This will require dedicated and focused support. The plan includes two key components: (1) the expansion of the VC employment equity fund; and (2) an academic pipeline programme and enhanced support to ensure career progression for black South African academics.