In the light of a new democratic dispensation in South Africa, it has become necessary to pose the question - to what extent have South African universities retained their institutional autonomy in the making of a new South Africa, not only in widening participation but, for example, in constitutional reform and the spreading of an era of social openness and civil society? My argument in this essay is that the institutional autonomy of universities in South African is beleaguered by a climate of utility whose forces are principally those of democratic politics.