/ 8 October 2010

‘Humanities must lead again’ — Nzimande

University of Cape Town sociologist Ari Sitas will head a government initiative “to rejuvenate and strengthen the social sciences and humanities”, Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande announced on Wednesday.

Assisted by Wits University’s Dr Sarah Mosoetsa, Sitas will head a team to develop “a charter aimed at affirming the importance of human and social forms of scholarship”.

The humanities and social sciences “have increasingly been downplayed as a result of the [government’s] priority focus on natural sciences, technology and business studies”, Nzimande’s department said in a statement.

A writer, dramatist and activist, Sitas was a founder with Malcolm Purkey of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, which created Sophiatown, among many other workshopped productions.

In her study of the 1980s’ Natal Workers’ Theatre Movement, Astrid von Kotze wrote that, influenced by Augusto Boale and Paulo Freire, Sitas’s work aimed to take culture “out of the hands of the establishment to create new forms that are meaningful to the democratic forces working for change”.

His PhD at Wits University in 1984 examined the emergence of trade unions and social movements among black urban and migrant workers from the 1960s to the 1980s, and was supervised by the late David Webster and sociologist Eddie Webster.

The social sciences and humanities were important during South Africa’s liberation struggle in undermining apartheid pseudo-science and apartheid history, as well as in helping to reclaim and build democratic traditions, Nzimande said in this week’s announcement.

“In the past two decades the social sciences and humanities have taken a back seat. Now is the time for the teaching of and research in social sciences and for the humanities to take their place again at the leading edge of our struggle for transformation and development. They must play a leading role in helping our people understand and tackle the scourges of poverty, unemployment, racism, discrimination and HIV/Aids.”

Sitas said the decline in these areas of scholarship was palpable.

“All the professional associations and stakeholders in the broader humanities have been voicing concerns through the Academy of Science of South Africa [Assaf] and through their respective associations. Higher education bodies have been raising the alarm about the quality and quantity of our PhD endeavours,” he said.

Assaf, university vice-chancellors, deans, research directors, and academics in the global South will be among those Sitas’s team will interview in the initial fact-finding stage. Academics from Brazil, China, France, India, Jordan, the Netherlands, Norway, Senegal and the United States will also be included, as will local university staff.

As part of the fact-finding process, workshops and interviews will be held with local stakeholders.

Sitas’s team has until June next year to deliver its charter to Nzimande.