This book offers new theoretical ground for thinking about, and transforming, leadership and higher education worldwide. Through an examination of the construct of intimacy and ‘nearness’, including emotional, spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical closeness, Jonathan Jansen demonstrates its power to influence positive leadership in young people. He argues that sensory leadership, which includes but extends beyond the power of touch, represents a fresh and effective approach to pro...

What are the real roots of the student protests of 2015 and 2016? Is it actually about fees? Why did the protests turn violent? Where is the government while the buildings burn? Former Free State University vice-chancellor Jonathan Jansen delves into the unprecedented disruption of universities that caught South Africa by surprise. In frank interviews with eleven of the VCs most affected, he examines the forces at work, why the protests escalate into chaos, and what is driving – and exaspe...

Jonathan Jansen goes back to school: to the Cape Flats high school next door to where he grew up.After learning that the school got the worst matric results in the Western Cape in 2023, Jansen signed up to help out. He spent two years in the principal's office, teaching some of the science subjects and getting to the bottom of extreme pressures bearing down on teachers and learners, for whom it was impossible to leave the trauma of broken families and violent crime at the school ga...

Professor. Pundit. Public nuisance. In his columns, books and on social media, Jonathan Jansen is prolific, and he likes to speak his mind about schools and universities, race, politics and our complex South African society. He has brought incisive analysis, compassion and a sense of humour to some of the most controversial issues in our country for many years. And now, in this memoir, Jansen goes back to his early years: growing up in a loving, fiercely evangelical family on the Cape Flat...

Professor. Pundit. Public nuisance. In his columns, books and on social media, Jonathan Jansen is prolific, and he likes to speak his mind about schools and universities, race, politics and our complex South African society.He has brought incisive analysis, compassion and a sense of humour to some of the most controversial issues in our country for many years. And now, in this memoir, Jansen goes back to his early years: growing up in a loving, fiercely evangelical family on the Ca...

In this collection of case studies and stories from the field, South African scholars come together to trade stories on how to decolonise the universityShortly after the giant bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes came down at the University of Cape Town, student protestors called for the decolonisation of universities. It was a word hardly heard in South Africa’s struggle lexicon and many asked: What exactly is decolonisation? This edited volume brings toget...

How is new knowledge produced in the social, natural, and biomedical sciences? What is the role of serendipity versus planning? How has technology changed knowledge production, from AI to large datasets? This book presents insights into the pursuit of new knowledge from fields as diverse as medicine, engineering, linguistics, and theology. Over twenty researchers and scientists describe the modalities of discovery in their disciplines, offering a diverse survey of the social norms and poli...

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town used the slogan #RhodesMustFall to demand that a monument of Cecil John Rhodes, the empire builder of British South Africa, be removed from the university campus. Soon students at Oxford University called for the removal of a statue of Rhodes from Oriel College. The radical idea of decolonization at the forefront of these student protests continues to be a key element in South African educational institutions as well as those in Europe and N...

In South African higher education, the images of dysfunction are everywhere. Student protests. Violence. Police presence. Rubber or real bullets. Class disruptions. Burning tyres. Damaged buildings. Injury and sometimes death. Reports of wholesale corruption. Year after year, often in the same set of universities; the problem of routine instability seems insoluble.The financial, academic and reputational costs of ongoing dysfunction are high, especially for those universities caugh...

'I proudly wear my badge as a Covid-19 front-line hero. I believe I was meant to be where I am during these trying times.' Our nurses have witnessed the pandemic first hand, compassionately caring for patients amid war-like circumstances. The havoc caused by the pandemic highlighted existing fault lines in the South African health system, and nurses faced shortages of staff and vital life-saving equipment. Colleagues tested positive and died. Visitors were not allowed, so nurses had to be ...

A celebration of Steve Biko's legacy of freedomSteve Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness philosophy, was killed in prison on 12 September 1977. Biko was only thirty years old, but his ideas and political activities changed the course of South African history and helped hasten the end of apartheid. The year 2007 saw the thirtieth anniversary of Biko's death. To mark the occasion, the then Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Mosibudi Mangena, commissioned Chris van Wyk to...

This volume brings together many of South Africa’s leading scholars of education and covers the full range of South African schooling: from financing and policy reform to in-depth discussions of literacy, numeracy, teacher development and curriculum change. The book moves beyond a historical analysis and provides an inside view of the questions South African scholars are now grappling with: Are there different and preferential equilibria we have not yet thought of or explored, and if so wh...