ABSTRACT
I argue that being an agent of transformation in the South African context goes beyond choosing from an array of possibilities to pushing beyond those possibilities. I argue that participants’ experiences and responses to contextual factors cannot be explained in terms of structural conditions alone, as the participants were drawing on personal properties to take action. Hence the chapter argues that while structures condition our experiences, the individual’s choice to respond or not and choice of which type of action to take is dependent on personal properties – revealed in participants’ perseverance in the face of failure or determination in the face of being shunned, as opposed to responding to such experiences by being silenced or leaving the institution. The transition from apartheid to democratic rule opened up an array of possibilities within South African universities. What these stories reveal are individuals engaged in pushing the boundaries of these ‘new possibilities’ by engaging in battles, both discursive and material, to enable transformation, thus emphasising the need for an alternative bottom-up approach to the process of transformation within South African higher education.
