THE ROLE OF THE SOCIALLY ENGAGED ACADEMIC IN TIMES OF STUDENT STRUGGLE
SESSION 2: 18 November
2016
CHAIR: Brendon Gray
REPORT: Razia Mayet
 |
| Nyasha Mboti and Tariq Toffa gave the key inputs |
Nyasha Mboti was the
first speaker. He opened by stating that he is fascinated by the long overdue
transformation in the educational landscape. As a mentor and HOD of
Communication Studies, he has attended many brainstorming and discussion
sessions with students. They students have reached the point where they feel
they need to move away from the cathartic complaining about their
demarginalized status within the agenda of the greater South African political
and educational landscape. They realize the need to start looking at scenarios
and solutions for the future. Nyasha invited students to offer suggestions and
solutions as a reflection on the ideas put forth by MEC’s and the minister of
Education and Vice Chancellors. He questions whether we as academics and members
of Senate are the best placed to offer suggestions and solutions, given our
vested interests. The real question for the students is how to move from the ‘self-righteous
pontification of the elite who benefit but are out of touch with the reality’.
The students felt that their feelings and ideas were being hijacked and in fact
they were presented as malcontents and othered as terrorists. This was
disturbingly reminiscent of the Apartheid era where the struggle activists were
labelled during struggle protests and problematized as a ‘a few malcontents‘ or
as ‘communists and perpetrators’. The narrative is going back to the same old
‘Swartgevaar /red threat’ narrative of the apartheid era, thus creating the
notion that the majority of students are fine and content with the status quo,
but that a few agitators are the enemy and have to be dealt with.
Nyasha shared the
details of one of the scenarios that students discussed:
If we decolonize the
curriculum or if protests continue, all the white students and rich kids will
leave the university and attend private universities that will be set up as
businesses. The brilliant professors and lecturers will be poached and head-hunted
to private universities and the whole system will be replicated with the rich
/white kids being favored. But say the students, the system is rigged to
benefit them anyway. It’s the intellectual property that matters and South
Africa belongs to the black people who are in larger numbers.
A second scenario is, ‘how
can we protect our universities?’ Many other such scenarios are being
problematized and discussed by the students.
The main thing is to
keep identifying the problem and prompting the students to find the way
forward. Students need the engaged academics to come in and help them to
identify the readings and offer expertise to help them to decolonize the curriculum.
It’s not as impossible as it seems. In UKZN the decision was taken, with much
dissent from whites and Indians, to introduce isiZulu as a first year subject.
A year into that decision it seems to be going forward and working out.
Tariq Toffa was the second speaker. His reflection was about looking at decoloniality anew through
the medium of both prose and poetry. For Tariq the decolonization movement was
a tremendous learning experience with many new insights and critiques having been
gained by everyone, including in the way the media is reporting about the debate.
“We are all stumbling around as no one really knows”, he said reflecting on his
own engagement. He has supported the protests and student action from the start
but along the way some of his views have changed. Here he cited Malcolm X as an
iconic example. People remember the early years and militancy of Malcolm X, but
in the last period of his life many of his views changed drastically. He was
often misunderstood as he rethought everything and was much more universal in
his outlook near the end of his life. So in times of crisis change is a useful
touchstone. In this regard Tariq observed three distinct engagements since the
decolonization debate started. The first he calls the clarion call (of a new umbrella and intersections of the
disenfranchised); the second courage and
criticisms (of activists) and the third period is the coming confusions and challenges. He shared three beautiful and very moving poems that he has
written, each inspired by and indicative of each of the periods:
1.
Clarion
Call
(from Oct to Nov 2015)
When did joining democratisation and education
become so objectionable?
When did separating profit and knowledge become
so unimaginable?
So mobilise equals criminalise?
Rights equals fights?
And the militarisation of public space so
common place?
The money, the power and the ivory towers;
The tactical management of any dissent.
Inhumanities, indignities,
A long list of Modern crises,
We must add to it now, the very idea of
'universities'.
2.
Courage
and Criticism
(from Nov
2015 to Oct 2016)
When technology and space is mobilised.
When the call to justice is villianised.
To protect a system from those it
disenfranchised?
It is,
The end of the civilised.
3.
Coming
Confusions
(from Oct
2016)
There is a great sadness, in this madness.
There is great madness, in this sadness.
Is this the time for revolution?
With new visions, persecutions?
Was this rising inevitable?
Is its fall predictable?
Have ideals now all soured?
Have young futures now floundered?
While they count rands not bullets?
And all of this left poetry wordless.
Some said, 'choose: injustice, or anarchy?'
I said, 'no, humanity, humanity'.
O soul unconsoled, this heaven is yet faraway.
Here the means is also the goal.
Tariq concluded with
reflections on the current ‘third period’ and the last of the three poems. ‘The
‘decolonial turn’ according to Tariq is totally new. It has no precedence, or flavor,
no refinement or modalities. It is all being created as it unfolds. Whereas in
pre-modern frameworks methods could unfold from larger ontologies, here the
methods are creating the ontologies: “the decolonization movement is built upon
in situ in the moment”. Thus while he adds that he was initially critical of the
university authorities’ emphasis on decolonizing the curriculum at the expense
of other pressing and more immediate issues, he believes that now the time is
right to also work toward long term plans for the future of the project – that the
shorter and longer term need to develop alongside each other. Many people who
identify as allies of the movement for example say something to the effect ‘we agree with the ideals but not the
methods’ shows that we need to think of means and ends not as separate things. Rather
one is embedded in the other and each impacts upon the other.
Tariq believes that decolonization
therefore is not only about economics and material redress. It must also mean the
restoration of marginalized histories, narratives and discourses, as well as the
undertaking of what those very things have to teach us about how we should
think and act ‘decolonially’. If not then we may be objectifying the scope of
the project. Though students need each other’s strength and support, we also
need to take those kinds of criticisms seriously.
Tariq mentioned a recent conversation he had with
Dr Sikhumbuzo Mngadi from the UJ Department of English, one of a number of
scholars he regards as emerging critical decolonial thinkers, where the latter
called such long-term questions ‘post-war questions. Tariq believes this is a
fair assessment of the current situation, but nonetheless believes that one of
the roles of the socially engaged academic now is precisely to do that work. The
critical scholar/ the socially engaged academic cannot be neutral. It is the students
who forced us to bring these issues to the table. It is reciprocal that we should
be talking about it and developing the discourse. We must bring marginalized
groups, histories, ideas and notions into focus. In the end it’s for a more
humane and just world. Without these different kinds of work in both ‘scholarly’
and ‘activist’ forms, he believes the movement will be soured and distorted,
and undone almost inevitably.
Discussion
The first point raised
was about the subversive victimization of staff members who are seen to be
supporting the student struggle. A staff member felt that this was already
underway and that line managers were being fed distorted information, like that
students who are involved in Fees Must Fall are the poorly performing students.
The media is also attempting to sensationalize and highlight negative issues,
an example being an article headlined Professors of protest. A speaker was
concerned about the role of middle management. There are no conversations
within departments. Are managers afraid of getting implicated? Reporters are
fueling the ‘Profs of Protest’ notion and so positions get entrenched leading
to a refusal to engage.
A point was made about
the increasing language of militarization used in communiques and meetings at senate
level. There is talk of “our
intelligence reports…..we need to be ready for preemptive strikes….armed
security …. “.
Nyasha reminded us that #FMF has forced to the
surface issues that were never resolved due to the heady post-apartheid rainbow
nation days. He quoted Professor Bawa who said at the decolonization debate at
Resolution Circle: “We must thank the students for bringing this to the fore.
These issues were parked for over twenty years. But people live these issues
daily….”
These impasse’s will
always be there lying dormant. But the hidden apartheid within us and the
structures we serve will always resurface. It was good for the contradictions
to surface so that they can be seen and dealt with.
There are very real tensions
that exist and in the face of that there is value in ‘staying with the
trouble’. If we’re constantly looking away or looking forward it means that we
are not looking at the current space where the trouble exists. We must engage
with the past and present and deal with addressing the underlying issues. None
of this is easy or lends itself to finding solutions within the trouble. To be academics
who are engaged in times of student struggle means to teach in a way that opens
the way for critical thinking and engagement. To a large extent the curriculum seems
not to lend itself to finding the solutions within the troubles.
The meeting ended with a look at the way
forward.
Attendees all agreed
that another session in the New Year was vital but invitations and venue
details need to be sent out to all staff so more staff can attend and
contribute.
In preparing for the ‘COMING CONFUSION’ (Tariq’s
third era) Amira Osman offered 4 points from her experience of revolution in
Sudan.
· Revolution in a void has to be avoided at all
costs.
· Academics and students need to interrogate the notion that the end
justifies the means
· Language issues had to be dealt with. Beware of
Sloganeering. Words used can cause grave disruption. Examples from the Sudan
were ‘authenticization’, ‘Arabization, ‘Africanisation’. These must be clearly
interrogated and defined.
· Finally she warned that the decolonization
debate /issue should not only be looked at as a black vs white issue. If it is
looked at in that way it lacks the depth of humanity and history. In Africa one
cannot ignore the Arabs, Indians, Chinese and other people for whom this is
home.
Brendon
concluded by offering the following as the way forward:
· That an archive of information needs to be
created by writing reports on the meetings and debates.
· We need to agree on the discourse of
decolonization
· We need further discussions on the role of the
socially engaged academic
· We need to broaden the discussion to include
“what’s the purpose of the university?”
Razia Mayet
