ABSTRACT
The notion of deliberative democracy has been central to an understanding of the 'restructuring' of higher education policy discourse in South Africa since the establishment of a democratic system of government in 1994. Educational leadership in higher education cannot be removed from a transformational approach. The discursive-reflexive idea that justifiable ways should be found in which political processes interact with cultural and social contexts - in this instance, higher education restructuring - can be linked to the contextual low-skills labour base of the country. Higher education would have been subjected to abuse and misapplications, which would further have entrenched existing systemic fragmentation, throughput, and graduation rate inefficiencies; skewed student distribution between science, commerce, and humanities; low research output; and poor staff equity. Higher education policy discourse in South Africa has already embraced such a neo-liberal conception of public education.
