Remembering Prof Terence Beard

I am not sure where the line “the death of an old man is no tragedy” comes from; it’s pragmatic intent is clearly to console, but oh, it is such a lie.

It is the way of life that an elder must move on; but they do take with them whole ways of being human, of seeing, and knowing the world.

I felt a sense of sadness when I heard of the passing of former activist and politics professor Terence Beard even though I had only ever had one conversation with Beard for my honours paper in 2003.

My interaction with him that day and my subsequent observation of him as an elder scholar in the Rhodes community really shaped my sense of understanding of what it means to be an academic citizen.

The research focused on the political life of the Anglican cathedral in Grahamstown during the apartheid years, beginning in the 1950s.

Some of the activist clergy at the cathedral were colleagues of Beard and he had insights into the broader political life of the church within the context of Grahamstown and Rhodes University.

I interviewed professor Beard in his home and like many interviews I did for that project, I remember it mostly not just because of what we spoke about but was conveyed to me.

I was extremely nervous to interview anybody for the project; Beard overlooked my clumsiness and treated me as an equal and attempted to make me understand things through plain explanation.

Beard gave me an insight into the intensity of the political repression of the late 1950s and early ’60s.

The apartheid state had passed the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950; I remembered the act from books and lectures at school and university.

Beard described to me the suppressive atmosphere it created. He explained how in this climate, the Liberal Party became a critical public political voice, whatever subsequent scepticism has grown around the term “liberal” in South Africa.

He was banned himself in 1963 under that act, and treated as a kind of political untouchable by the white community of Grahamstown.

I was intrigued by the way he characterised Grahamstown’s conservatism; the town did not seem to have moved on even in the 2000s.

After my interview, I became more aware of Beard’s ongoing engagement within the public intellectual life of the community.

I realised that to be an academic was like a lifelong identity; one’s active involvement in the life of the university did not stop at retirement. His continuous engagement embodied the spirit of what the university is – a community of scholars.

It is no controversy that the ideal of the university as a community of equals has been supplanted globally by the gradual corporatisation of universities. Beard saw this trend and wrote in 2005:

“Of all the institutions apart from those which are patently political, universities can be considered to be foremost among those which ought to be democratic from top to bottom.

“The history of universities in Europe begins with the identification of informal ‘communities of scholars’….In the last decade or two, the status of academics has been in decline, and salaries relative to those of executives in government departments have decreased over the years as well as relative to those of the senior members of university bureaucracies…I would argue that South African universities are in a sense inverted institutions in that academics are subordinate to the administrators.”

Reflecting on these words, I realise why Beard made an impression on me – it was his unassuming egalitarianism.

This is why the death of an academic elder can be a tragedy; they take with them a way of doing university. It is as if the “scholarly ideal” is becoming an archaic thing of another time.

Lala kahle, Prof.