Fezokuhle Mthonti
Post-apartheid South Africa,
saw a number of legislative
decisions come into play, which sought to create a more inclusive socio
political environment in which South Africans could start to reconcile
themselves with the numerous
institutional and political divisions that had polarized them for so long. Part of this legislative
process was the release of the Education White Paper- A programme for Higher Education Transformation. This paper was
drafted by the National Commission on Higher Education (NHCE) in 1997 and
sought to integrate the theoretical practice of community engagement into the
fabric of South African Higher Education. In a paper entitled Embedding Community Engagement in South
African Education Mabel Erasmus argues that the White Paper “called on
higher education institutions to ‘demonstrate social responsibility and
commitment to the common good by making available, expertise and infrastructure
for community service programmes’.” (Erasmus:2008,57) Further to that, Erasmus
argues that “one of the goals of higher education, is ‘to promote and develop
social responsibility and awareness among students and to increase the role of
higher education in social and economic development through community service
programmes’.” (Erasmus:2008,57)
In a sense, one could argue that the
prescriptions of The White Paper in this legislative process, was a means in
which the community engagement project could be used as an emancipatory tool in
the South African context. However, after sixteen years of implementation, one
needs to question if the theoretical
praxis on which the community engagement project bases itself on, insofar as
notions of political and social inclusion as well as an inherent need for social responsibility, has met the prescriptions
of the White Paper or if the outcomes of the community engagement project have
continued to institute levels of hierarchy and inequality between those who
form part of the Higher Education volunteer programme and those that form part
of the community that is to be ‘engaged with’. Effectively, the question that
this essay seeks to answer is: does the project of community engagement seek to
emancipate its subjects from what French philosopher Jacques Rancière refers to
as a ‘situation of minority.’ For the purposes of this essay I will define ‘a
situation of minority’ as the ‘logic of Enlightenment in which the cultivated
elites have to guide the ignorant and superstitious lower classes in the path
of progress. (Rancière,2010:167) In trying to frame this question and in trying
to frame my critique of the community engagement project I will reflect on my
experience in a community engagement initiative with the student run Music ,
Art and Drama education Society (MADE) last year and in so doing unpack Jacques
Rancière’s paper entitled Communists without Communism, wherein he
proposes two ideas on equality and collective intelligence which I think are
relevant to this paper. In using Rancière’s idea of equality as a starting
point, I will show how community engagement projects often fail to reconcile
humanizing philosophical work with their practical engagement with poorer
disenfranchised communities outside of the Higher Education Institution.
Further to that, I will also use Brazilian theorist, Paulo Freire’s work in the
Pedagogy of the Oppressed to critique
the pedagogical approaches often assumed by volunteers in in their attempt to
‘help’ their subjects.
Before
I can deal with my subsequent analysis on the merits or the demerits of the
community engagement project in South African Higher Education, or speak to the
nature of the community engagement project in the Rhodes University context
specifically, I think that it is very
important to define it. Mabel Erasmus defines community engagement “in its
fullest sense, as the combination and integration of service with teaching and
research related and applied to identified community development priorities.”
(Erasmus,2008:61) Further to that, Erasmus would contend that “since the
release of the White Paper (1997), the debate on community engagement in South
African higher education has sharpened its focus, defining community engagement
not only as one of the three silos of higher education along with teaching and
research, but as an integral part of teaching and research – as a mechanism to
infuse and enrich teaching and research with a deeper sense of context,
locality and application.”(Erasmus,2008:60) However, given the strong legislative
implications placed on the release of The White Paper and the need for
community engagement therein, one should question if these institutions have immersed
themselves wholly into the social developmental programs of their respective
communities (where they have established these
community engagement projects to be legitimate learning experiences) ,
or if these institutions have assumed themselves to be a kind of serious of
charity driven projects which seek to ‘help’ or ‘resuscitate’ their respective
communities through the work of their community engagement? I will contend that
these projects have predominantly shown characteristics of the latter and in so
doing have completely misunderstood the overarching intentions of The White
Paper and the possibility of using the project of community engagement as tool
with which to reconcile the many differences and disparities within this
country.
Despite
the fact that I think The White Paper was a valuable contribution to the
legislature within this country post the apartheid regime, I would like to
point out some problems with the way in which the document was presented in the first place. I would like to problematise the manner in
which community engagement is defined in this document. There are some
interesting subtleties within these definitions of community engagement,
which prescribe how these projects
effectively work in practice. For example, there is an implicit divide between
those that act as volunteers or the researchers of community engagement projects
and those that are the recipients of this ‘engagement’. Crudely put, there is a
sense that the White Paper encouraged the ‘haves’ to engage with the ‘havenot’s’
in establishing a wholly integrated society. Having said that however, this
interaction or engagement plays out largely on the terms of those that ‘have’.
They (the have’s) essentially mark the parameters for engagement. There is no
definitive attempt to call this a collective effort, rather it is one
privileged group with all the resources and power ‘helping’ out another group
with their problems. Professor Martin Hall argues that within the definition of community engagement
it is important to “ problematise the adjectival use of the term community.”
(Hall,2010:62) The reason why Hall would problematise the adjectival term of community is because
it “ implies a generalised intention of
doing good – of bringing benefits from those in the university who have
privileges to those outside who do not – it has the consequence of confirming
that the relationship is unequal and therefore that the partnership – the engagement
– is also unequal. This may have the consequence of justifying and perpetuating
the imbalance of power.” (Hall,2010:62)
Moreover,
Professor Martin Hall argues that there is an epistemological disjuncture
between the philosophical and theoretical work of the academy and the
experience-based practices produced in the disparate localities which community
engagement volunteers and researchers seek to rehabilitate and transform. He
attributes this to the nature of knowledge production in the University space
which he contends is a “clusters of formal disciplines that offer curricula
leading to qualifications and organisational research enterprise” (Hall,2010:7)
He not only argues that knowledge production in university is an organisational type but he also argues that
this type of knowledge dissemination is incompatible with community engagement
attempts. In light of this, I would argue that at some level, the
epistemological disjuncture that Hall speaks of is attributed to the fact that
“the sacred domain of structured and systematised understanding”(Hall,2010:7) that is insisted upon in the University space
is incompatible with the real and interactive forms of knowledge creation that
is found within these communities. The two dialects have two different
approaches to knowledge production and knowledge dissemination: and because
institutions of Higher Education are often assumed to be superior in the way
that they create meaning and understanding, the knowledge assumed by the
members of the communities ‘that need to be engaged with’ is often assumed and
constructed as inferior thus rendering the idea of engagement as superfluous.
The reason why I would call it superfluous is because in order for one to
really engage with another individual, meaningfully and critically, there
needs to be a concession from both
parties that they both share an equal
capacity to be creators and distributors of knowledge. Without that concession,
neither of the two parties can claim to have legitimately learnt from anything
substantial from each other. Moreover, I
would argue that because of this failure in equal recognition and appreciation,
the subjects of community engagement projects are often
constructed as objects of investigation, or one dimensional studies which are
not only ‘locked in a web of particularity’ but are also objects that assume
what Jacques Ranciere refers to as a ‘situation of minority’.(Ranciere,2010:167)
In fact, Harri Englund articulates the attitude assumed by community engagement
workers best, in saying that ‘here, as in civic education on human
rights, the providers of assistance feel they have something that the others
lack.” (Englund,2006:71) This is similar to Jacques Ranciere’s analysis on a
‘pedagogical presupposition’, which asserts that there are two sorts of intelligence that
exist in Plato’s Republic. Effectively
this ‘pedagogical presupposition’ would assert that “artisans have to do their
own job and nothing else; firstly, because work does not wait and secondly
because the divinity has given them the aptitude for doing this job, which
means the inaptitude for doing anything
else.” (Ranciere,2010:168) Because some people have the greater capacity to
teach (researchers and members of Higher Education Institution) they are
inherently obliged to ‘engage’ with those that cannot (this would include
members of the community which are inadvertently in a situation of minority).
Whilst
I do not think that the individuals that choose to get involved in community
engagement projects intend to impose a situation of minority onto their
‘subjects’, I will argue that some of their pedagogical approaches
inadvertently do so, despite their intentions to do otherwise. Hall’s critique
of the adjectival use of community becomes pertinent here again. Hall suggests that
the nature of engagement is inherently unequal because of the explicit
divisions between the two groups. Instead of using community engagement as a
tool for emancipation, Hall argues that “this may have the consequence of
justifying and perpetuating the imbalance of power.” (Hall,2010:62) Having said
that, I would now like to draw from my own personal
experiences with the Music, Arts, Dance and Drama Society (MADE) last year as a means with which to critique
and substantiate my previous and
subsequent claims on the nature of community engagement projects in Higher
Education institutions.
MADE
was a non-profit student organisation that operated under the Rhodes University
Community Engagement Department (RUCE) for the duration of last year. As a newly established student society, MADE aimed to create a student volunteering program
in the fields of Music, Art, Drama and Dance to Sakhuluntu Cultural Group which
was founded in 1998 by cultural activist Vuyo Booi in the Joza Township. Booi often
suggested that the role of Sakhuluntu Cultural Group (which is often referred
to as just Sakhuluntu) in Joza was two- fold. It not only acted as a non-profit organisation which sought to help
young individuals from the ages of 3 to 18 to develop their creative potential
through some engagement with the arts, but it also acted as an alternative to
the high levels of crime, drugs and alcohol that the youth within Joza were
subject to after school. In a sense, Sakhuluntu is the equivalent to an
‘after-care’ program which is basically a place where children can spend their afternoons after school before they go home or before
their parents fetch them.
When the MADE committee was first introduced
to Sakhuluntu, Booi had over 200 young people under his supervision. The MADE
committee was also introduced to a number of obstacles that Booi and
Sakhulutuntu had been facing over the past few months. Sakhuluntu had been
struggling to secure volunteers which would help Booi provide and facilitate
arts activities for his students. This was largely due to the fact that
Sakhuluntu had no direct funding afforded to them and this made paying
volunteers and buying materials and equipment to teach the students with, very
difficult. Having met with Booi, the MADE committee decided to establish a
partnership with Sakhuluntu in which the society members could “develop a firm
mentor-mentee relationship between the members of MADE and the children in
Sakhuluntu.” (MADE Concept Document:2011,1) The idea was that “MADE was going
to establish an outcomes based curriculum to teach the children of Sakhuluntu and these
outcomes were going to be based on the various interests and specialities of
the MADE volunteers with regards to music, art, dance and drama” (MADE Concept
Document:2011,1) Furthermore, “MADE was also going to serve as an umbrella
society which would raise funds and monitor the financial aspect of Sakhuluntu
in order for Sakhuluntu to register as a Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) with
the South African Revenue Service. (SARS)” (MADE Concept Document:2011,1)
Having
being a part of the society last year as well as being part of the committee,
as the secretary, I was not necessarily sceptical of MADE’s intentions. I
thought that this was an incredible initiative to be part of and I was fairly
optimistic about the successes of our project. However having said that, there
were some glaringly problematic assumptions that the MADE committee made in
terms of the approach to their work. I think that these assumptions are quite consistent with a number of community engagement projects that do not
think critically about the philosophical implications of their intervention
within their respective communities. In fact, I would argue that a number of
individuals who do this sort of work take the fact that they are ‘helping’ for
granted and do not think reflexively about the nature of their ‘charity.’
Whilst
MADE intended to work collaboratively with Sakhuluntu Cultural Group, there
were a number of instances in which MADE ‘set the agenda.’ For example, when
MADE started working with Sakhuluntu they were rather prescriptive about which
activities the children of Sakhuluntu could partake in. The MADE committee
designed a number of lesson plans for the various workshops that were going to
be held at Sakhuluntu. The games were designed by MADE members and were also
facilitated by members of the committee. There was often very little room for
the participants to negotiate which games they preferred playing or which
musical or dance lessons best suited them on which day. This was largely
because there were different mentors within the MADE committee that specialised
and facilitated the different workshops, whether it be drama , art or music on
whichever day that suited them. Whilst this seemed to be the most viable way of
doing things for the MADE members, this approach to the work was inherently
problematic in that it did not give the children of Sakhuluntu any sense of
continuity. Further to that, there was
no real negotiation of what to do when. Rather it was one group of people
telling another group what they should do without any sense of reciprocity.
Paulo Freire would contend that “every prescription represents the imposition
of one individual's choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the
person prescribed to into one that conforms with the pre servers
consciousness. Thus, the behaviour of the oppressed is a prescribed behaviour,
following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.” (Freire,2005:48)
Moreover, this approach to work completes disregards the fact that both Booi
and the children of Sakhuluntu had come up with a program that may have best
translated to them what the value of music, arts, dance and drama were. The
role of MADE was to simply supplement those ideas not to replace them.
A
large reason as to why the MADE members got to impose their ideas onto
Sakhuluntu without any real sense of engagement was because of the linguistic
barrier between the two groups. The workshops were often in English despite the
fact that most of the members of the Sakhuluntu group were Xhosa first language
speakers who spoke very little English. This
was primarily because most of the volunteers could not speak Xhosa, however
that being said, the MADE volunteers did
not necessarily make an effort to learn Xhosa. It was obvious that
communication was a problem, however with that said this linguistic barrier
often made the MADE volunteers feel like their participants simply did not
understand what the objectives of the games or the lessons were and that was
why they may have been reluctant to engage with the workshop material. MADE
volunteers did not really consider the fact that there may have been alternate
ways to approach similar projects that may have been closer to the frame of
reference of the Sakhuluntu participants through the use of their own language.
I
would argue that the monopoly of English as the language of instruction in the
use of community engagement, especially in this instance, was inherently
problematic in that it excluded those without a firm grasp of the language from
the ability to effectively articulate their thoughts and ideas effectively within the group. Moreover, I would contend
that one’s world is created and experienced through their language and it is
through the use of language that we can start to attach meaning to different
signifiers. Language also allows us a platform with which we can start to experience the world in which we live
critically and reflexively. Cultural Theorist Stuart Hall, argues that the nature of language is that it is
inherently a signifying practice that codifies meaning and knowledge. He argues
that by “fixing the relationship between our conceptual systems and our
linguistic systems, codes make it possible for us to speak and to hear
intelligibly as well as establish the translatability between our concepts and
our languages which then enables meaning to pass from speaker to hearer and be
effectively communicated within a culture”. (Hall,1997:22) I would argue that
when the MADE volunteers chose to speak in English rather than Xhosa, there was
a missed opportunity there where the linguistic differences prevented either of
the two parties from effectively communicating with one another. Instead of
trying to reconcile these differences, I would argue that MADE further
entrenched a distinction between themselves and those that they had proposed to
help through this false sense of charity. Harri Englund defines charity as
“that which differs from structural change, whether by legislation or
evolution, in that it presupposes a categorical distinction between the
advantaged and the disadvantaged. The former help the latter to sustain
themselves whilst the distinction itself remains virtually intact.” (Englund,2006:71)
Having
said that, one then needs to question if community engagement can in fact be
used as an emancipatory tool in a country like ours? Given the numerous
problems that I have recounted with the community engagement project presently,
I would like to argue for a fundamental shift in the way that work is
conceptualised. In trying to do this I would like to touch on the work of Jacques
Rancière who brings to the fore, a very useful way of conceiving of equality
and intelligence.
In
his essay entitled Communists without
Communism, Rancière refers to an egalitarian maxim which I think is
important in this discussion and is useful to more constructive pedagogical
practices in the community engagement project. Rancière argues that there are
two [interrelated] principles to the egalitarian maxim, the first being the
notion of equality and the second idea being that of a collective intelligence.
Rancière would argue that equality is not an aspirational goal that exists
outside of man, rather, he would contend that equality is and should be a
starting point. He articulates this point in saying that, “equality is not a
goal: it is a starting point, an opinion or a presupposition which opens the
field of possible verification.”(Ranciere,2005:168) Secondly, Rancière would contend that notion
of a collective intelligence is both viable and possible, he would argue that
“intelligence does not fit any specific position in a social order but belongs
to anybody as the intelligence of anybody. Emancipation then means: the
appropriation of this intelligence which is one, and the verification of the
potential of the equality of intelligence.” (Rancière, 2005:168)
These
two ideas are crucial to the ways in which one could start to subvert current
approaches to community engagement work. In order for the community engagement
project to be one that is emancipatory, both the volunteers and the members of
these communities should see equality as a starting point. Community engagement should not be seen as a
tool with which students from Higher Education
institutions can try to ‘fix’ the problems of these communities through their
very particular lens of knowledge and access to resources from the institution.
This is particularly important because “the epistemological positions
associated with practices of social engagement [presently] hinge on two issues – how forms of
knowledge are structured, and role and location of the authority that serves to
validate the structure and content of knowledge. It is these questions of the
structure of knowledge and the location of authority, that are the key to
understanding the continuing marginalisation of social engagement in the
academy. (Hall,2010:10) Instead of
advocating for one authority over another, community engagement efforts should
start to take Rancière’s assertion about a ‘collective intelligence’ more
seriously and start to re-inscribe that idea into the work that they do.
Paulo
Freire would suggest that in order to do this a
pedagogy of the oppressed must be developed. He would argue that “a
pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals
or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. This pedagogy
makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and
from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for
their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade.”
(Freire,2005:48)
In
a book entitled Scholarship Reconsidered,
American Educator Ernest Boyer interrogates the intrinsic link between the
theoretical work of academia and the practical engagement of researchers
through a series of articles which he refers to as the ‘scholarship of
engagement.’ (Erasmus,2008:61) Erasmus argues that Boyer sets up four
‘necessary and interrelated forms of scholarship’ which should inform ones
pedagogical approach when dealing with a community outside of a Higher
Education institution and outside of a community with wealth and
privilege. The ideas that Boyer brings
to the fore are a) a ‘scholarship of discovery’, b) a ‘scholarship of
integration’, c) a ‘scholarship of application’ and d) a ‘scholarship of
teaching’. (Erasmus,2008:61) For the purposes of this essay, I will be looking
specifically at the ‘scholarship of application’ as new pedagogical approach
that can be instituted into the practice of community engagement. I will also
be looking into how these practices can better compliment educational practices
in Higher Education Institutions as mandated by the White Paper (1997)
In
his definition of the ‘scholarship of application’ Boyer argues that it is a
pedagogical approach that acknowledges that
“knowledge is not produced in a linear fashion. The arrow of causality can, and
frequently does, point in both directions; that is, theory leads to practice
and practice leads to theory. Community engagement, viewed and practised as a
scholarly activity, provides the context for a dialogue between theory and
practice through reflection. (Erasmus,2008: 61) This theoretical and reflective
process should be afforded to both parties in a community engagement initiative.
Further to that, knowledge should not just be seen as a commodity which one
party can offer to another, it should be a process of dual engagement . In conjunction to this approach , I would
argue that there should be a serious consideration to equal out the playing
field through acknowledging Rancière’s ideas on a collective intelligence. Rancière argues that “it entails the
possibility of breaking links of ‘’necessity’ tying an occupation to a form of
intelligence. Emancipation means the communism of intelligence, enacted in the
demonstration of the capacity of the ‘incapable’: the capacity of the ignorant
to learn by themselves.” (Rancière, 2005:168) Moreover, I would contend that in
order to make this possible it is very important to reconcile the differences instituted
by Higher education Institutions already, by unlearning their very prescriptive
models of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination as the only way to engage with community based
projects. The role of language in these interactions, for example can start to
transform the engagement of these two parties into something that is more than
superfluous and start to transition the project of community engagement as an
emancipatory tool for not only those ‘that are to be engaged with’ but for
those to ‘seek to engage’ as well.
In
closing, I would contend that community engagement can be used as tool for
emancipation in this country, however , the project itself is still in need of
some serious and reflexive thought on how to achieve this. I think that
individuals who continue to involve themselves in these initiatives should
consider how their engagement can be read as divisive and problematic and in so
doing try to reconcile their work with humanizing practises which afford their
‘subject’ the equality and the respect that they deserve.
References Used:
P.
Freire. 2005. The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. The Continuum
International Publishing Group. New York
H.
Englund. 2006.The Hidden Lessons of Civic Education’ in Prisoners of
Freedom: Human Rights & the African Poor. University of California Press: Los Angeles
S. Hall. 1997. Representation:
Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. Sage Publications
Limited. London
J. Lazarus and M. Erasmus. 2008. Embedding
Community Engagement in South African Education. Sage
Publications
J.Ranciere.2010. Communists
without Communism. Verso: London
Journals:
M. Hall.. 2010. Community
Engagement in South African Higher Education. Kagisano Number 6: (1-47) Jacana
Media(Pty): Pretoria
