Resist Wits 2001
Fighting the privatisation of Wits University!
Against the market university in South Africa!
Against education as a commodity!
This page was set up as an archive and resource page dealing with the struggle against the neo-liberal restructuring of the University of the Witwatersrand ("Wits"), Johannesburg, South Africa, from 1999 onwards.
The "Wits 2001" programme, discussed below, was central to the ongoing transformation of the institution into a commercialised market university. At its heart was the retrenchment and outsourcing of 623 support service jobs, and the merger of academic departments and faculties. This was championed by Vice-Chancellor Colin Bundy, a former radical left academic, who now turned coat. Some of Wits' communiques relating to the Wits 2001 programme can be found here.
The process of outsourcing was resisted by students, workers, unionists and a number of academics, but implemented from mid-2000, with an enormously negative impact on support service workers jobs, income and working conditions. Currently, the university is focusing on commercialising and rationalising teaching and research, exemplified by its new "Wits Enterprise" initiative.
The restructuring of Wits is part of a broader neo-liberal restructuring of South African universities. It is driven by huge subsidy cuts resulting from the neo-liberal GEAR macro-economic policy of the ANC government, and is reinforced by the contemporary international restructuring of capitalism, centred on labour casualisation, union-bashing, and the privatisation of social resources.
A recent report, The Outsourced University, has demonstrated that a massive wave of outsourcing has swept South African universities, resulting in massive job losses, falling wages and benefits, and deunionisation. Meanwhile, academic work has become increasingly pressurised, and run on corporate lines.
This page was previously hosted by the SA Municipal Workers Union website at ResistWits2001.
The neo-liberal restructuring of Wits University:
The campaign against Wits 2001, February to June 2000
Reports, news, actions
The greatest achievement of the campaign against Wits 2001 was the links made between campus activists fighting the privatisation of Wits University, and other sectors of the working class struggling against neo-liberalism. Links were made during the struggle, and in June 2000, the Wits University Crisis Committee, the ad hoc action committee against Wits 2001, merged with the anti-IGoli 2002 Forum, to form the well-known Anti-Privatisation Forum. (APF)
The 'Urban Futures' actions
Following the outsourcing of the Wits support services, activists from the APF, including many retrenched Wits workers, disrupted the sessions at the prestigious "Urban Futures" conference, culminating in a protest on Friday 14 July:
Attempts by Wits' management to interdict student and union members (and discipline academic staff) were met with opposition, such as
International solidarity
A small selection of the vast outpouring of international support for the struggle against outsourcing at Wits University-
Appeal for solidarity by NEHAWU, union representing the affected Wits workers
Letters from abroad
Life after outsourcing
Wits after outsourcing: commercialisation to continue
More on university outsourcing in South Africa
Keep in touch
Please join the Resist_Wits e-mail list for updates on the struggle against neo-liberalism in South African universities: Join the Resist_Wits2001 e-mail list
Useful links
The part-time academic worker from the IWW's Industrial Worker
The Workers Library and Museum- independent labour centre/ bookshop/ rooms in Johannesburg