The country finds itself at a place where South Africans have to ask if we are still of any use and to whom.
This was the message by Prof Crain Soudien, Chief Executive Officer of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), who delivered the second Russel Botman Memorial lecture at the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University (SU) on Tuesday, 18 October 2016.
Delivering the lecture, Soudien, unpacked the complexities that privileged South Africans face regarding their use and obligations towards society.
Soudien stated that while it had become possible for many South Africans, such as the late Prof Botman, who grew up as an oppressed person to be absorbed into the ranks of the privileged, this was not possible for a majority of the country's young people. This fact was a great concern to Botman whom once commented that: "The cake is not getting big enough." (There are just not enough opportunities for everybody)
"Russel had a deep awareness of his own positionality in this dynamic. He was now a person of privilege. But this was not an ordinary privilege. The history of oppression, of being black, remained a deep part of his consciousness."
Soudien noted that this awareness could be seen in Botman's teaching and the many articles he wrote about it.
"The responsibility that came with being privileged was of immediate concern to Russel. Did the privileged understand the poor? More directly, did the privileged understand themselves and their obligation?"
He further noted that these concerns drove the former SU Rector in his work at the University to ensure a space that was representative and no longer an automatic rite of passage for the reproduction of the politically and economically dominant.
In his response to the lecture, Prof Yusef Waghid, Distinguished Professor in SU's Faculty of Education, remarked that a privileged society and university's obligation is to listen to 'otheredness'.
"If you witness inequality, address it."
At the lecture, Soné Reens, Sandiso Sogula and Randall van den Heever were also announced as the first recipients of the Russel Botman Bursary.
