JONATHAN JANSEN | Uncompromising Lis Lange was a gift to South African higher education

Last week South Africa lost one of its most formidable academic thinkers and doers. Just last month, we were talking on the phone from her place of recovery in the Boland town of McGregor, where two small machines were helping her breathe. The machines were not enough, her lungs further deteriorated, and Lis would die in a Cape Town hospital.

Lis Lange came to South Africa from Argentina in 1990 to do her doctorate under the formidable social historian Charles van Onselen at the University of the Witwatersrand.

From there she worked as an academic leader and administrator at various science councils including the Council on Higher Education, a statutory body responsible for among other things, quality assurance in our universities.

Prof Lange was not everybody’s cup of tea, to put it politely. For those who were blinded by their prejudices, Lis was everything they did not like. She was a tough, forthright woman with an extraordinary capacity for crap detection in academic work.

She was (in the minds of some) a foreigner even if she had committed her blood, sweat and tears to improving higher education in this country. She was openly gay and lived her life unapologetically.

When it came to scholarly work, she was uncompromising with respect to the standards of the profession. I saw more than one dean quiver as she provided feedback on their programmes. She would sometimes let loose with a well-placed “f” and the church aunties and oomies would reach for their smelling salts.

More than once, I got the impression that The Dirty War under military dictatorship in Argentina had left a deep impression on her sense of how easily people can be shut up by fascist leaders.

Lis should have been my successor at the University of the Free State, but for all these reasons (woman, gay, foreigner, non-Christian, straight-talker and standards setter) lesser men (papbroeke, in colloquial Afrikaans) could not see her full value for higher education in South Africa.

Having worked in universities across South Africa, I can confidently say that she had no match for her combination of roles as an academic administrator, manager, and leader. As a vice-chancellor, I could sleep comfortably at night because I knew the academic estate was in good hands.

She created a world-class institutional research capacity at the UFS, salvaged mediocre academic programmes from the real possibility of de-accreditation, and institutionalised data-driven academic planning at the Bloemfontein university. When she spoke in the Senate, Prof Lange commanded respect.

But this was another side to Leez, as she pronounced her name. She was also an intellectual, someone who had a command of the literature from history, politics and epistemology, on the one hand, as well as the scholarship on higher education studies, on the other.

We talked often about her longstanding book idea on Hannah Arendt, the German American political philosopher who came to world attention for among other titles, Eichman in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil. Now that work will never see the light of day, and that too is deeply saddening.

Finally, Lis was an academic activist. She stood with students through almost any protest action because she believed in the importance of being heard in a democracy. More than once, I got the impression that The Dirty War under military dictatorship in Argentina had left a deep impression on her sense of how easily people can be shut up by fascist leaders.

Everything she researched and wrote about was committed to deepening the democratic project in South Africa and our recent collaborations found her producing a landmark work of scholarship, Thinking the university in the aftermath of the decolonial turn, published in the journal Comparative Education (2025).

The turning point in her health and career came from a horrific time spent at UCT. While she certainly enjoyed the respect of the senior academics, there were those in leadership who systematically broke her down during her time as deputy vice-chancellor for academic matters. I saw one of the strongest women I knew shattered by that institution. Lis felt some vindication when the Council, somewhat belatedly, grasped and appreciated the extent and the costs of her contribution to the place.

I suspected health problems when she uncharacteristically cancelled lunch meetings, but I did not know it was this serious. Even so, on the phone in Cape Town or McGregor, we did what we had done for many hours over the years: talk about the academic project in South African universities.

I mourn my friend deeply. I will miss the working sessions at Hussar’s Grill on both sides of the N2. More than that, I no longer have an academic sparring partner whose last question to me as we reflected on some troublesome memoirs (I suspect my own included) was: why the &&^%$ do people write memoirs?

Rest softly Lis Lange.

Higher education in South Africa owes you an enormous debt of gratitude.

For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za