Changing discourses and meanings of redress in South African higher education, 1994-2001

The apartheid state provided higher education in very differentiated ways. After 1994, the issue of how new policies would address the issue of unjust differentiation was widely discussed via the concept of 'redress'. After 1994, the idea of redress for the cohort of historically disadvantaged institutions went through many shifts and competing definitions. The article shows that by 2001 the stage was set for a number of centrally imposed proposals to address the problems of institutional inequality; these relied more on notions of developing institutional fitness for mandated missions within given financial constraints than on reparation for past discrimination or injustice.