Apartheid's goals in the 1960s: the creation of the University of Port Elizabeth and the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit

Abstract

In the 1960s the National Party (NP) government established two new universities for whites. These were the dual-medium University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), which opened in 1965, and the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit (RAU), which opened in 1968. In this paper I describe these initiatives in the 1960s and argue that they form the third phase of the NP government's policies regarding university education. This phase is distinguished from the earlier two phases by the processes through which the policy emerged, and the goals of the policy. In conclusion, I question the implications of the history of the third phase of apartheid university policies for the analysis of the goals of apartheid in the 1960s more generally.