Teaching and Learning Review 2020
5
Ad Destinatum Persequor: Striving for Student Success in the Context of a Crisis
The responses of academics across the country to the pandemic and the effects of the national lockdown were varied. Some thought that the state’s response to the pandemic was perhaps too extreme and potentially counter-productive. Many others considered it appropriate, given the seriousness and extent of the threat. Nonetheless, in the end, academics at the University of Pretoria agreed that it was incumbent on all of us to save the academic year because not completing it would be inordinately costly, for the University, staff and students. Moreover, the majority of lecturers
Foreword by Vice Principal: Academic
Indeed, it was at about this time that we realised that our quotidian lives were to change
dramatically, at least in the short and medium terms. Certainly, academics realised that, for the immediate future, they would not be able to continue pursuing their research interests or teaching in trusted, traditional and familiar ways. Most students (particularly those from under-resourced communities) were confronted with the realisation that not only were their daily lives going to be dramatically disrupted but making a success of their studies could become much more difficult.
Prof Norman Duncan
On 15 March 2020, after the positive identification of several cases of COVID-19 infections in South Africa, the South African government declared a national state of disaster and announced the implementation of various interventions, including travel restrictions and the closure of schools throughout the country. The University of Pretoria closed on that day as well. Then, on 23 March, the government announced that a national lockdown would be implemented as from 26 March, to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. On 27 March, against the background of 247 reported COVID-19 positive cases nationally, the first COVID-19-related death was announced in South Africa. It is on this day, I believe, that many South Africans realised that the potential devastation that would be wrought by the pandemic was no longer theoretical or something that only affected people in other countries, such as China, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain and South Korea.
