Early days

UWC started as a "bush college", a university college without autonomy under the auspices of the University of South Africa. The university offered a limited training for lower-to-middle-level positions in schools and the civil service. In the first years of its existence, a great deal of the teaching staff was white. Many of the lecturers came from Stellenbosch University. The language in most lectures was Afrikaans. The first rector was N. J. Sieberhagen (from 1960 until 1973). The university started as a small institution: in the first year, 166 students were enrolled and the teaching staff numbered 17. In 1970, the institution gained university status and was able to award its own degrees and diplomas.^[2]

Resistance against apartheid

During the first 15 years, the board and staff were primarily whites, supporting the National Party and apartheid. One of the few exceptions was Adam Small, head of the philosophy department. Small was dismissed in 1973 as a consequence of his involvement in the Black Consciousness Movement. Apart from lecturers like Small, there were many students who were active in the struggle against apartheid, and who were loyal to the Black Consciousness Movement. Protests from students against the conservative university board and lack of participation in the university led to the appointment of the first coloured rector, Richard E. van der Ross in 1975. The years thereafter gave way to a more liberal atmosphere, in which the university gradually distanced itself from apartheid. In 1982, the university rejected the apartheid ideology formally in its mission statement; during the next year, the university gained the same autonomy as white universities through the University of the Western Cape Act.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, numerous UWC students were involved in the creation of Bush Radio, an anti-apartheid media project which distributed political and cultural radio programming via cassette tape due to the lack of a license to broadcast on a conventional radio platform. By 1993, the station went to air as a pirate radio station, and eventually became South Africa's first licensed community radio station.^[3]

Rector Jakes Gerwel made UWC an "intellectual home of the left", with attention to social and political issues. The university attracted increasing numbers of students from disadvantaged communities. Apart from coloured people, more and more black students enrolled. Gerwel was succeeded in 1995 by Cecil Abrahams, who was succeeded by Brian O'Connell in 2001. UWC retained the status of an autonomous university during the education restructuring of 2002.

UWC is the only African institution that is a member of the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC), and was voted onto the OCWC board in 2007.

Today

UWC is a research-rich environment. The academic staff is highly qualified, with 50% holding doctorates. Most departments have graduate programmes, some with the largest intake in the country. There are many institutes and centres with a strong research emphasis, and there are significant projects and programmes which draw on expertise across departments and faculties. There are also joint endeavours between the University of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town, and Stellenbosch University. 20% of all students at UWC are postgraduates.

Like other South African universities, UWC has been affected by sporadic student protests since 2015. The reasons for the protests change with each new period of protest. They began with the Fees Must Fall movement^[4] where the main goal was to get university fees to be state-funded and then grew to include issues surrounding student safety and accommodation. These protests often lead to the shutdown of academic activities at the university. Most recently academic activities were suspended from 5 February 2020 to 7 February 2020 due to a delay in financial clearance which left many students unable to register for the new year.^[5]