Helping young black students aim for a life in academia
● An unassuming associate professor at Wits University has been quietly inspiring young black women to become academics.
Mzikazi Nduna and her two colleagues Peace Kiguwa and Thobeka Nkomo have taken it upon themselves to identify, mentor, train and provide resources to young women who wish to join academia.
Described as a champion of social and gender justice, Nduna is the head of the school of human and community development in the faculty of humanities. Kiguwa is a senior psychology lecturer and Nkomo is the head of the department of social work.
“I am passionate about working with young women,” Nduna said.
“We realised that, for us, the journey has not been easy because we did not have mentors and we want it to be different for younger academics.”
She said they had a bias towards young black women and those who identify as gender nonconforming because they believed that the higher education space was already supportive of a society that promoted heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation.
“People who come into this space, white male heterosexual, are supported more than black women or those who are gender nonconforming.”
Among those they have recently assisted to become academics are Matamela Makongoza and Khanyisa Chauke, who have both been employed as teaching assistants in the department of psychology at Wits.
Thandeka Mdletshe, a teaching assistant at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Lungile Khumalo, a lecturer in biological sciences at the Vaal University of Technology, have also been beneficiaries of the programme.
Nduna said they identified potential academics from among students who were doing undergraduate degrees.
“We create opportunities for them to publish articles in academic journals and we train them to write conference papers by organising writing retreats.”
Their main source of funding was from the Ford Foundation through a project called the African Gender Institute.
“Our emphasis is on the building of young women academics.”
As a teacher in the Eastern Cape in the 1990s, Nduna campaigned for contraceptives to be dispensed on request at schools to prevent teenage pregnancies. She also regularly speaks out on sexual rights, gay rights, abortion rights and the rights of people living with HIV/Aids.
Nduna said one of the challenges women faced was that of the “motherhood penalty” where they were still expected to contribute more to parenting than their spouses. “They are still expected … to take care of most of the domestic work. It’s difficult for a woman to say to her kids: ‘Please don’t disturb me; I’m writing this journal article.’ Men can do that easier than women.”