I make use of the swimming pool at a local gym at least three times a week. It is an immaculate public space. Like clockwork, the black-grey tiles surrounding the pool are scrubbed with a bristled machine. The machine’s hum can be intrusive, as the clear water amplifies the sound, and my concentration shifts.

When I pause between my swimming sets, I observe the swimmers, the cleaners, and other clients in the gym. A few weeks ago, however, the machine scrubbing was augmented by manual scrubbing. The familiar male cleaner, identifiable through his uniform, was on his hands and knees scrubbing a spot on the tiles.

I climbed out of the pool and looked over at him to greet him. But his head was down, focused on the tiles. Two or three tiles were covered in soapy suds. Discomfited by this sight, I turned towards the ablution facilities. Moving into the common area, I saw another worker, a woman, in the same posture, focused on scrubbing the family change rooms.

I rushed through my ablutions, irritated, and made my way to the reception desk. Without much introduction, I blurted out: “Why are men and women on their hands and knees in this gym? That pool, and the surrounding space, is the cleanest public area I have ever encountered. Users occasionally leave litter behind. But I don’t see the necessity for men and women to scrub the area further on their hands and knees.”

The young receptionist looked at me, confused. “They do have knee guards to protect their knees,” she replied. Incredulous, I responded: “That’s very triggering for me. I come from that — from a South African history where the physical labour of men and women was invisible, unseen. Physical labour that curated the ‘good life’ for others.”

Weeks later, that experience — and further observations — knou aan my. In a month that centres human rights, which I translate as human dignity, my observation feels charged. So I ask: Do you see what I see?

As we move through our everyday lives, there are multiple moments of observation. The change in someone’s tone. A particular look that registers disdain. A dismissive wave of the hand. A smiling face. A friendly exchange between patrons and service staff. Cleaning staff chatting and laughing as they share a meal seated directly adjacent to the toilets. In multiple ways, both visible and invisible, we confirm or deny another person’s dignity. Not as a particular category of human being – woman, African, young, professional, academic, cleaner – but as a human being.

The right to dignity is enshrined in our Constitution. Do we embody that dignity? In a month where we commemorate and reflect on human rights, an important question arises: how do we, as members of the Kovsie community, extend acknowledgement, dignity, compassion, and understanding to ‘other’ members of our community? When we say “Only a Kovsie knows the feeling,” does that feeling extend to care, respect, and dignity for all who form part of our university community? Is social justice a non-negotiable principle of the Kovsie community? Is it given meaning and expression in the everyday spaces we share?

Introducing the Social Justice Working Group

A year after the Executive Committee’s decision to reimagine the work of the Unit for Institutional Culture and Social Justice, the Social Justice Working Group has begun its work, chaired by me as Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Free State (UFS).

In the months to come, the working group invites the UFS community to critically engage, explore, and examine how social justice is experienced across the institution. Our work is constructively supportive of an environment that extends human dignity to all. It acknowledges both how far the university has come since the Shimla Park and Reitz incidents, and how much further we still need to go. 

The UFS, like all universities, is a microcosm of the larger South African society. What we do here, consciously, to cultivate a learning, teaching, research, and a working environment that supports and promotes the humanity of all, will have an impact beyond the institution.

Humaning together

Humaning – the everyday practice of recognising and affirming one another’s humanity – is a complex, multi-layered activity. To human in a way that upholds the dignity of all – the inviolable significance of each human being – is difficult in a complex, multi-lingual, fast-changing world. 

But it is not impossible.

Each of us has a role to play in maintaining a just Kovsie community, and in extending this orientation to the spaces we inhabit beyond the university. Human rights, inclusive of dignity, freedom of expression, and further education, are not only something we commemorate in March. They are something we practise in the everyday. In the tone we use with one another.

In the recognition we extend to those whose work sustains the spaces we inhabit.

In the dignity we affirm – or fail to affirm – in the smallest interactions.

And sometimes that practice begins simply with asking:

Do you see what I see?