Policy Expectations

3. Conclusion

The post-1994 period can be summarised as having started with a huge, participatory policy effort within a context of optimism for both the expansion of the system and redress for past inequities. This was followed by an ‘implementation vacuum’ in relation to the new policies, a shift in emphasis after 1997 to efficiency, and finally a reassessment of priorities and a more interventionist approach by government in 2001.

Chapter 1 on global reform trends alerts us, in hindsight, to the reality that whilst the South African transformation process invested heavily in a state-driven, linear, overly rationalistic notion of progressive policy formulation, policy implementation and change, other countries had not found this form of change very successful. The NCHE and the White Paper were silent on the role of institutions and the market as drivers of change, while co-operative governance created unrealistic expectations about direct societal participation. The policy was indeed a basket of ‘best practices’ culled from different parts of the world, but it did not adequately take into consideration the global pressure for increasing efficiency, nor that the two pillars of transformation (policy and implementation) were inadequately theorised. The remaining chapters in this book show that both these factors had considerable implications for what followed.

While Nelson Mandela’s famous walk to freedom resulted in a definable moment of triumph with South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, the new South Africa is a complex mixture of remarkable achievements and unexpected disappointments. Similarly, the progressive road of higher education transformation, based on a grand policy narrative and driven, ‘co-operatively’, from the centre by the new government, can claim many achievements. However, the path also led to consequences and effects not remotely anticipated in 1994. The rest of the chapters in this book tell the story.