Nomalanga Mkhize, Business Day
IN 1998 eminent Ugandan
scholar Mahmood Mamdani put forward the following challenge to his colleagues
at the University of Cape Town (UCT): "The key question before us is: how
to teach Africa in a postapartheid academy?" This was in response to the
hostile resistance he received when, as professor of the Centre for African
Studies, he devised a curriculum that put at its centre African scholarship
that many UCT academics had either never heard of, or whose significance they
did not understand, largely due to the isolation of South African universities
under apartheid.
That debate, known as the
"Mamdani Affair", exposed the ignorance of many prominent,
predominantly white South African scholars who, because of their racially
privileged positions, had risen up the ranks without having to engage three
decades of rigorous postindependence African scholarship.
No doubt, the Mamdani
Affair is now a little embarrassing for UCT. It has become clear that Mamdani
was right and his detractors were wrong. They were wrong not so much because
they disagreed with him on the academic content of the course, but rather
because there appears to have been a manipulation of administrative processes
with the objective of scuppering Mamdani’s course simply because it did not
reflect the tradition of African studies white South African scholars were
accustomed to. Taken aback by the way in which the UCT academic laager closed
ranks over the issue, Mamdani left for a more intellectually up-to-date
institution in the US.
His departure was
understandable, his peers were trapped, it appears, by their own "unknown
unknowns"; they did not realise that they were completely out of touch
with the intellectual currents on the rest of the continent.
The episode raised
questions about the nature of the postapartheid curriculum, and of teaching
"Africa" in universities with histories of racism. But it had deeper
implications about the very claims of intellectual custodianship implied by the
university project in postapartheid SA.
Are our universities fit
to lead the "new SA" society intellectually? Should they aspire to?
Claims to intellectual
leadership necessarily place moral and ethical burdens on universities. They
cannot claim to be vanguards of an intellectual culture if they have no designs
on improving the ethical outlook of a society.
If universities want to
claim this intellectual custodianship, they bind themselves to a higher ethical
standard. They also have to demonstrate how their intellectual commitment
operates within the institution academically and administratively.
For example, if formerly
white universities struggle with the small matter of their own transformation,
why should anybody trust them to grapple with questions relating to society?
In what ways do
universities differentiate themselves from other public institutions?
It is easy to
characterise the African National Congress as being increasingly
"anti-intellectual", as vilifying its critics and protesters, but how
did our universities respond to student grievances and protests over the past
four weeks? Can our universities be trusted to demonstrate contextually
relevant, socially intelligent responses to pressing social questions when so
many in their ranks seem to be struggling with basic sociological concepts such
as "race" and what defines "racism"?
