Public lecture addresses a depressing state of higher education system in South Africa
WORLD-renowned and respected sociologist Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah recently presented a thought-provoking virtual lecture on reconceptualising the African university at the University of Zululand’s (UNIZULU) KwaDlangezwa Campus.
Prof Prah is a prolific author of several books and many articles on topics around Africa’s history and writing on issues affecting the society and education system.
The sociologist’s lecture formed part of UNIZULU Vice-Chancellor Professor Mtose’s ongoing engagement sessions that are conceptualised as part of the University’s 60th anniversary celebrations. The lecture is at the heart of what UNIZULU is trying to achieve, being an African university as opposed to being a university based in Africa. Prof Mtose alluded that in order to transform our universities, a shift in mindset is required. She elaborated that we need to dislocate ourselves from the colonial sphere and paradigm which expects universities located in the continent to be mere clones of those of previous colonial masters. Prof Prah’s lecture sought to point out how this should unfold, by identifying the problem and features in order to truly experience and transform our institutions into African universities.
“The University of Zululand has deliberately redefined (itself) to be a university restructured for relevance. We understood it this way as ours should be a centre of strategic reflection and insight for it to be relevant,” said Professor Mtose.
The lecture was an extension of the work done by UNIZULU academics in March at Salt Rock. The task of the group was to produce a series of thoughts and ideas with regards to the challenges that UNIZULU and other universities in South Africa and all over Africa face, with regards to their mandate, purpose, object to structure the content of their offerings as universities. This is a response to the fact that post colonialism in Africa and post-apartheid in South Africa in 1994 the process of dismantling the educational system and installing a new education system which is more answerable to the broader sections of the community has not been achieved. It is this realisation that we face a challenge to ourselves to be able to fashion an educational system which is substantively meaningful to the lives and upliftment of Africans.
Professor Prah mentioned that in South Africa there has been a habitual way of looking at a crisis from a historical perspective of advantaged-and-disadvantaged institutions lens. We have to realise that this is not a realistic way of looking at a crisis because all institutions are born from colonial experience.
UNIZULU has agreed to start as soon as possible to clearly identify the components that hinder the success of a university idea in Africa. African universities like the idea of a university that reproduces and replicates the institutional forms that have been inherited from colonial powers and these standards have been set and maintained from outside. We create the theatre of the observed by exposing students to foreign languages that are not used locally e.g. Latin and Greece in African Universities said Professor Prah.
“Even in this generation there are lots of people who think that spending a stint in an (overseas) institution like Oxford, Harvard etc. gives you a particular competitive edge over competitors than colleagues who are derived from our local institutions,” said Professor Prah.
The priority solution is that African universities should be appetised by African concerns and interests, and seek to provide proper aligned African solutions. Our African history at the moment is an extension of western history and it is not surprising as it was written by colonial powers hence the distorted version of our society. According to Prof Prah, creating a centre for African languages, developing a unified Nguni dictionary and forming a consortium of universities in order to improve the curriculum offerings are some of the immediate solutions that are achievable.
The first respondent, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovations Professor Mashupye Kgaphola, stated that the Salt Rock discussions that Professor Prah alluded to resulted in the publication of the book titled “A UNIZULU Conversation: Reconceptualising the African University”. This is an important milestone in the context of UNIZULU’s 60th anniversary. The preeminent question, according to Prof Kgaphola, is how we will reclaim our intellectual sovereignty, 26 years into democracy, and look at what has and has not been achieved. Further, UNIZULU looked at how much effort it puts into what concerns it, lest it becomes an appendix in someone else’s agenda- hence the importance of the language issue.
The second respondent, Dr Maxwell Shamase who is the Acting Deputy Dean: Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Arts, spoke of the denial of our identity which has resulted in the Western education promulgation. He emphasised that colonial ideas cannot continue to reign in our language, tradition and song. A university has to be culturally closer to the society in which it operates and be intellectually linked to the wider scholarly values of the world of learning. He concluded that universities must take an active part in the social revolution that is promoting African consciousness.