ABSTRACT
The political motivations were clearly articulated by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd at the time, who pointed to the impact of higher education in heightening the frustrations of the subordinate groups through increasing expectations. It was therefore essential, he maintained, to devise an educational program which would focus on adjusting the gap between black expectations and reality. This was the theme of Leo Kuper’s highly perceptive satire, The College Brew. In general, ethnic universities have politicised and unified black students beyond the expectations of both apartheid ideologues and their critics. Tribal higher education has come full circle now that its major failure to depoliticise the subordinates into ethnocentric ‘community involvement’ has become obvious. Contrary to the rulers’ designs, ethnic universities backfired in speeding up an anti-white militancy, which would be hard to imagine in integrated liberal institutions imbued with the spirit and praxis of non-racial universalism.
