tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/african-academics-22786/articlesAfrican academics – The Conversation2017-02-28T14:52:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/737852017-02-28T14:52:25Z2017-02-28T14:52:25ZThabo Mbeki calls for a ‘rebirth’. Is South Africa up to the task?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158725/original/image-20170228-29924-hwysw7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thabo Mbeki during his inauguration as Chancellor at UNISA.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Deaan Vivier/Netwerk24</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The appointment of former South African president <a href="http://www.mbeki.org/profile-of-former-president-thabo-mbeki/">Thabo Mbeki</a> as Chancellor of one of the country’s largest tertiary institutions, the University of South Africa (UNISA), comes at a unique moment in the country.</p>
<p>Universities are struggling to cope with student movements’ revolutionary demands for relevant, decolonised and free education. In his <a href="http://www.enca.com/south-africa/catch-it-live-thabo-mbeki-inaugurated-as-chancellor-of-unisa">inaugural speech</a>, Mbeki raised a number of issues, two of which I’d like to analyse here. He explored the idea of “the university” and its role, and also outlined his understanding of the role that knowledge plays in society.</p>
<p>The speech stretched far back into Africa’s history. It also looked ahead to how universities might free themselves of racism, tribalism, regionalism, sexism, patriarchy and xenophobia. This is a mammoth task which calls for what Mbeki described as “a rebirth”. </p>
<p>The million dollar question is whether South Africa’s current intellectuals and academia are up to the task?</p>
<h2>What universities should be</h2>
<p>Mbeki drew on several sources to explain his views on what a university should be.</p>
<p>The first was <a href="http://www.wsu.ac.za/campuslife/indaba/documents/challenges%20facing%20the%20Higher%20Education%20Sector.pdf">a document</a> drafted during his presidency. It was complied by a working group he convened, and dealt with the biggest issues facing higher education in South Africa. </p>
<p>These included changing the way government funded universities; increasing access for disadvantaged black students to higher education; redressing the racial and gender demographic profile of teaching staff; and Africanising and decolonising the curriculum. This working group and its output were designed to help institutions of higher learning to position themselves as agents of transformation in society. </p>
<p>The information gathered by this working group contributed to how Mbeki thinks today of “the university” and its role. But he was also shaped by the more distant past, taking the audience back to 1963. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/oct/15/guardianobituaries">Julius Nyerere</a> was inaugurated that year as the first black Chancellor of the University of East Africa (today the universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Makerere). The 1960s were dominated by African nationalists’ demand for African universities that were supportive of the nation-building projects and national development plans. </p>
<p>Mbeki also drew from a more modern national development plan. It was drafted in South Africa just a few years ago and is intended as a blueprint for the country going <a href="http://www.gov.za/issues/national-development-plan-2030">towards 2030</a>. The national development plan describes universities as key institutions in a developing nation. Their task is to produce the necessary skilled labour and relevant knowledge for South Africa. They must also advance a social justice agenda in a country emerging from apartheid colonialism.</p>
<p>Mbeki also described universities as, ideally, institutions that respond to local as well as global imperatives. They should also work consistently against all forms of prejudice. They ought to be, he said, perpetually in search of the “elusive thing: truth”.</p>
<p>But South Africa in 2017 has a problem: it is perpetually in a frustrating moment of “waithood”. Commissions of inquiry take months, even years, to “inquire” into what’s already known about social ills. Right now, the country is waiting for the findings of <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/FeesHET/docs.html">a commission</a> into higher education and training, specifically around the issue of fees. It completed its work some months ago. Now South Africans wait for answers.</p>
<p>Mbeki alluded to this lack of haste and urgency by <a href="http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/UniversityofDaresSalaam.pdf">quoting Nyerere</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yet it […] must be realised that we are in a hurry. We cannot just think, and debate endlessly the pros and cons of any decision. We must act; we have to tackle our problems now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This, then, is how Mbeki thinks of “the university” and its role. What of decolonisation and the role of knowledge in Africa?</p>
<h2>African Renaissance and identity</h2>
<p>Mbeki has repeatedly called for the “renaissance of Africa”, most famously during his “I am an African” speech in 1996.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Thabo Mbeki’s 1996 “I am an African” speech.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During his speech at UNISA, Mbeki explained what this “renaissance” would entail: eradicating the legacy of centuries of slavery, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. These processes, he said, produced “a demeaning European perception of Africa and Africans”.</p>
<p>The key challenge is how universities help to achieve this renaissance and radically create a new view of South Africa, Africa and Africans while they themselves are stuck in the recycling of Eurocentric knowledge. </p>
<p>And these institutions were themselves imagined and constructed on the logic of a paradigm of difference. They emerged with racial, regional, patriarchal, xenophobic and hierarchical mentalities – all designed by colonialism. Surely it’s a mammoth task to expect them to play a meaningful role in social change and the transformation of knowledge while they are discursively entrapped in racism, tribalism, regionalism, sexism, patriarchy, and xenophobia. </p>
<p>This does not mean they should not try. Mbeki is correct: we desperately need a “rebirth”. He ended his speech with a reference to the Ghanaian novelist and thinker Ayi Kwei Armah who called on Africa to wake up from the spell of Eurocentrism. This awakening, Armah – and Mbeki – argued – is an essential prerequisite for intellectual rebirth and remaking the Africa society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s no doubt South African universities need to undergo a real shift. But are the country’s current intellectual and academic forces up to the task?Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Director of Scholarship at Change Management Unit at the Vice Chancellors' office; Professor and Head of Archie Mafeje Research Institute, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/665922016-10-17T15:19:38Z2016-10-17T15:19:38ZHow my journey to a PhD in genetics convinced me that fees mustn’t fall<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141384/original/image-20161012-8398-1dwdo54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scenes like these may drive young people away from academic careers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kim Ludbrook/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been 17 years since I embarked on my journey to becoming an academic. Academia seemed to be an exciting but simultaneously stable space.</p>
<p>Globally, this perception is changing. Academia is no longer <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/03/survey-finds-decline-attractiveness-academic-jobs-science-doctoral-students">as popular</a> a career choice as it was a few decades ago. In South Africa, the situation is exacerbated by <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-08-29-university-funding-boiling-point-imminent/#.V_3xw-h97IU">uncertainty around funding</a> and ongoing <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/student-protests-between-a-rock-and-a-hardplace">student protests</a>.</p>
<p>In recent days, I have reflected on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall-21801">#FeesMustFall</a> protest action in relation to my own tertiary education journey and the challenges my colleagues and I face as young academics at a South African university.</p>
<p>Reflecting on my own personal journey over almost two decades to become an academic in a country that graduates <a href="http://www.chet.org.za/news/reflecting-south-africas-phd-output-ambitions">very few PhDs</a>, I find myself at odds with the demands of the students. I believe that higher education is a privilege, not a right, and that the protesters’ demands are misplaced. South Africa has a great many challenges when it comes to education: in my view the areas which need the greatest intervention are primary and secondary schools. </p>
<h2>A long journey</h2>
<p>I was born of South African Indian descent and come from a <a href="http://www.econ3x3.org/article/who-are-middle-class-south-africa-does-it-matter-policy#_ftn1">middle class</a> family. We were far from poor, but university fees – as is true <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-south-africa-university-is-open-to-rich-and-poor-but-what-about-the-missing-middle-36801">for most</a> South Africans – were out of reach. I always wanted to keep studying after high school, and to become a lecturer one day, but knew this would be an expensive path.</p>
<p>I qualified for funding under the government-run <a href="http://www.nsfas.org.za/">National Student Financial Aid Scheme</a> and enrolled for an undergraduate degree in the biological sciences – genetics – in 1999. </p>
<p>I worked part-time throughout my studies. I maintained good grades, so I continued to receive funding, first through loans and later through bursaries and scholarships.</p>
<p>Come 2013, my long held dream was realised: I graduated with a PhD in Genetics.
This is a rare commodity. South Africa produces <a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/SA-produces-fewer-doctorates-than-a-single-university-in-Brazil-20150429">very few</a> doctoral graduates compared to, for example, Brazil. These graduates often go on to work in universities, which is crucial: young blood can bring fresh new ideas to teaching and research.</p>
<p>South Africa knows this. The Department of Higher Education and Training offers <a href="http://www.gpwonline.co.za/">research develop grants</a> as an incentive for young academics. The country’s National Research Foundation has a special rating category for <a href="http://www.nrf.ac.za/sites/default/files/documents/Rating%20Categories%202014.pdf">academics</a> younger than 35. This aims to boost academics’ research profiles and their productivity.</p>
<p>These strategic measures attempt to acknowledge the importance of retaining talented academics to become the next generation’s professors.</p>
<p>So there I was, one step further on my path. I was Dr Naidoo. But the hardest part wasn’t behind me: it was still to come.</p>
<h2>A cloud of debt</h2>
<p>Once you’ve secured that all-important PhD, there’s no guarantee of a lecturing post. And such a post is crucial if a young academic is to really start building a successful research and teaching career. My journey continued positively: I was appointed as an academic at the University of Pretoria in 2015 and currently lecture a first year module in Molecular and Cellular Biology. </p>
<p>I teach around 1,500 undergraduates and coordinate the Genetics Honours postgraduate programme. I pride myself on being a dedicated, passionate lecturer and mentor.</p>
<p>But there’s a cloud hanging over me as I try to focus on conducting and publishing research as well as juggling the demands of teaching, advising and marking: my student debt.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141265/original/image-20161011-12027-lt1mix.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Student loan debt adds extra pressure on young academics.</span>
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</figure>
<p>Repaying my student loan debt is an obligation I take seriously. It’s a struggle, but it’s my responsibility. By repaying my loan, I’m putting money back into a pool for future deserving students. And while doing all of this, I’m watching protesting students insist that historical debt should be cleared and that higher education should be free for all. </p>
<p>As someone who incurred substantial debt to reach this point, and who is now paying back her education, I disagree.</p>
<h2>Right or privilege?</h2>
<p>It is wishful thinking to believe that tertiary education is a right. In fact, it’s a privilege. In his 2014 welcome address to new students, North West University Vice Chancellor Dr Theuns Eloff <a href="http://vaalnews.nwu.ac.za/n/en/268">echoed this unpopular view</a>. </p>
<p>Quality basic education – pre-primary, primary and secondary schooling – is the real right. If this is delivered, school leavers can all approach universities and funding bodies on an equal footing. Those who are deserving and whose results merit financial aid can then be given priority. </p>
<p>Universities are already facing major budget crunches. Without fees, their coffers will empty faster. This brings several risks: job losses, cutting back subjects or closing departments, and a general <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20151104111825416">dip in quality</a>. </p>
<p>It will also push some young researchers and lectures away from the academy. How can young academics have a positive outlook when our very jobs may be in jeopardy? Why would potential professors pursue a career in spaces that don’t value quality? Some are already <a href="http://www.jyi.org/issue/the-tough-choice-of-a-life-scientist-industry-vs-academia/">choosing the private sector</a>. Others may follow.</p>
<h2>More room for dialogue</h2>
<p>One of the problems is that, in the <a href="http://www.africanindy.com/news/south-african-students-and-police-clash-in-bitter-campus-battle-5817507">current climate</a>, there’s little room for academics to be forthright in their beliefs. Those who call openly for the protests to end and for the academic year to continue are reviled by protesting students and their own colleagues.</p>
<p>Are the rights that allow us to access our workplaces less important than the rights of those who want free education? It certainly seems so. For that matter, what of the rights of those students who want to complete their academic year? I have received many pleas from my Honours cohort for reassurance that we will complete the 2016 academic year. Many of my colleagues and I are fully committed to this, but it is a constantly changing dynamic. </p>
<p>I will no longer be the silent majority in South Africa’s higher education crisis. I want to be part of a highly successful and internationally recognised institution. I want to stand on the shoulders of giants and leave my own legacy for future academics – not drive them away from institutions that need their passion and skills.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kershney Naidoo works for the University of Pretoria. She receives funding from the Research and Development Programme (RDP) at the University of Pretoria. She is affiliated with the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), the Centre of Tree Health Biotechnology(CTHB) and the Tree Protective Co-operative Programme (TPCP). </span></em></p>Many young academics and those who might be considering an academic career will be horrified by what’s unfolding at South Africa’s institution. Will bright minds be lost?Kershney Naidoo, Lecturer (Genetics), University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/509302015-11-25T04:37:10Z2015-11-25T04:37:10ZWhy Africa’s professors are afraid of colonial education being dismantled<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102498/original/image-20151119-18448-1snimx8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Will academics keep standing on the sidelines while students dismantle symbols of colonialism like the statue of Cecil John Rhodes?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A series of student protests in South Africa has thrown up a number of questions. Many of these are linked to the problem of decolonising institutions. And at least one implicates the country’s professoriate by asking: how do academics transcend Western knowledge systems and ways of learning in African universities?</p>
<p>This needs an urgent answer. The professoriate - not bureaucrats or administrators, but those who are at the coal face of academia - should provide thought leadership. But aren’t the students and their supporters asking too much from the professoriate? I pose this question because a large proportion of African university teachers are cut from the cloth of Western knowledge. As the philosopher Kwame Nkrumah observes in his book <a href="https://marxistnkrumaistforum.wordpress.com/karl-marx-the-poverty-of-philosophy/kwame-nkrumah-consciencism-philosophy-and-ideology-for-decolonisation/">Consciencism</a>, African intellectuals and professors are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…anointed with a universalist flavouring which titillates the palate … so agreeably that they become alienated from their own immediate society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How, then, does a professoriate change the essence of its edifice?</p>
<h2>Edifice of professorship</h2>
<p>In most South African universities the professoriate is still almost <a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Where-are-our-black-academics-20150430">entirely white</a>. This is despite ongoing calls for “transformation” in the higher education sector - that is, in part, a change in the make-up of student bodies and the professoriate to better reflect the country’s demographics.</p>
<p>However, being white does not necessarily mean being anti-transformation. In the same way, being black is not synonymous with transformation. There are white professors whose sense of transformation is more remarkable than that of some black professors. So, reference to black and white is beyond pigmentation. It is, in the logic of the Black Consciousness <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/defining-black-consciousness">philosophy</a>, about a state of mind: ideas and attitudes that ought to underpin a strategic gaze to transformation. </p>
<p>This is not to underplay South African universities’ transformation imperative. The point I am making is simple: transformation of higher education generally in Africa and specifically in South Africa requires a professoriate with a decoloniality posture. Today, the transformation of higher education is increasingly being pursued through the prism of decoloniality.</p>
<p>But the continent’s professoriate is schooled largely in the white tradition. This imprinted the culture of whiteness in its making, which is not surprising. Western education in Africa as we know it is designed to <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=ffkFRTj1WIwC&pg=PA502&lpg=PA502&dq=western+education+proselytizing+africa&source=bl&ots=9abf0vj_Qb&sig=x23LeI75FY4AvjDTGkZPmYVul3I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOsbKlrJ7JAhWKcBoKHX9mChcQ6AEINDAH#v=onepage&q=western%20education%20proselytizing%20africa&f=false">proselytise blacks</a>. African academics may be reluctant to repudiate their very make-up.</p>
<h2>Creating a black professoriate</h2>
<p>Tshilidzi Marwala, the deputy vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/summit/Docs/Announcements/page%206.pdf">has agitated</a> for the making of a black professor. But what constitutes a black professor? In trying to theorise, it’s worth invoking Steve Biko’s explanation from his celebrated book I Write What I Like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Black Consciousness philosophy introduces the concept of non-white, which means neither black nor white. This refers to the category of those whose “aspiration is whiteness”. Much of the African professoriate falls into this category, simply because its edifice is embedded in Western knowledge systems. What does this mean, in the context of Marwala’s pursuit? The making of a black professor is no easy task. It requires a revolution of the mind, which should draw insights from <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=z60udlv1F_cC&pg=PR7&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false">decoloniality theory</a>. </p>
<h2>A galaxy of scholarship</h2>
<p>There is a body of knowledge from which the decoloniality discourse could draw theoretical and philosophical insights to spawn African knowledge systems. This galaxy of scholarship includes the works of, among others, Archie Mafeje, Dani Nabudere, Cheikh Anta Diop, Molefi Kete Asante and Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane.</p>
<p>In Nabudere’s <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Oy3Ie8fGMpQC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=nabudere+on+mafeje&ots=U85z6K784R&sig=4MraOHhsIKqL5nNGTlIwl5htjiw#v=onepage&q=nabudere%20on%20mafeje&f=false">words</a>, Mafeje “tried to deconstruct structural functional Anthropology and attempted to construct a new research methodology that was free from … colonially inspired disciplines, within the wide social sciences discourses”.</p>
<p>Nabudere himself <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=v2jsIFo183cC&oi=fnd&pg=PA33&dq=Dani+Nabudere+indigenous+knowledge&ots=2Ew_-ocEZV&sig=esq3Q9NoLLr72EmvO-X4nr4zSbo#v=onepage&q&f=false">challenged</a> the colonial theorisation of Africa. He sought to mainstream indigenous knowledge systems. <a href="http://www.centerformaat.com/files/African_Origin_of_Civilization_Complete.pdf">Diop</a> situated the origin of civilisation in Africa and, in the process, nullified German philosopher G.W.F Hegel’s contention that Africans do not have history.</p>
<p>Asante, meanwhile, aggregated pan-African thoughts into <a href="http://www.asante.net/articles/1/afrocentricity/">Afrocentricity</a>. He described this as a paradigm that represents</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a revolutionary shift in thinking proposed as a constructural adjustment to black disorientation, decentredness, and lack of agency.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/41066769?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Magubane </a> is best known for his work that untangled the political economy of race and class in South Africa. He also exposed the falsehood of colonial apartheid and liberal narratives of history. He asserted African perspectives in the centre of historical consciousness. </p>
<p>The works of these scholars are important for theoretical insights into decoloniality. </p>
<h2>Heed students’ calls</h2>
<p>But, how much does a professoriate engage with this body of knowledge in their curricula development endeavours? I am asking this question to caution against decoloniality becoming an ideological rhetoric for student activism rather than cause for knowledge revolution.</p>
<p>These questions are relevant because, as academic Ziauddin Sardar puts it, “the real power of the West is not located in its economic muscles and technological might. Rather, it resides in the power to define.” Those who refuse to conform are “defined out of existence”. Most African academics have accepted the definitions and prescriptions of the West as the template of their world outlook. This is a defeatist posture. Or perhaps it’s cowardice? </p>
<p>The professoriate must heed the multiple cues of the millennial generation’s activism, particularly when it comes to decolonising university curricula. If it doesn’t, it won’t be the West that defines Africa’s professoriate out of existence - it will be they, themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from the National Research Foundation for his post-graduate studies. He is affiliated with the South African Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM). Maserumule is Chief Editor of the Journal of Public Administration.</span></em></p>African academics are steeped in European knowledge systems and ways of teaching. There is a galaxy of African scholarship they can draw from to change this - if they’re brave enough.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.