Robert Dowse, visiting professor of political studeies ar Rhodes University, rebuts the views of Prof MW Makgoba published in the M&G last week
Professor Makgoba asks the question “what is a university in modern Africa?” and appears to believe that they should not be the same as elsewhere. Universities should, he suggests, be transformed “in a fundamental way” and not reformed, “a cosmetic change”. Cosmetic changes are bad and fundamental changes are good; just why this is the case he does not say except that in South Africa the universities reflect “the legacy of a sad past”.
In the light of this past a “back-to-basics transformation” is what he wants. The most basic is that universities should “capture and encapsulate the essence of Africa”. He does not tell us what this looks or feels like. To me, an outsider, it sounds like hot air escaping.
Africa is a complex place. For a start, no one seems able to define its boundaries. Is the Mahgreb a part of Africa? No one I have ever read seems to believe that Somalia has much by way of culture in common with Ghana or even with Ethiopia. Professor Makgoba himself, when writing of South Africa, refers to its African, European and Oriental roots. So much for the “essence of Africa”.
There is worse to come. These windy generalisations have to be — wait for it — used by universities in such a manner as to “trans- educate, trans-orient, trans-socialise and harmonise” with each other. By doing this the universities can avoid the “imitation thinking or soft approach” and thereby avoid the censure of the deputy vice-chancellor. This is radically unclear. Does he really wish to subject, say, university departments of medicine, physics, or, for that matter, political studies to a radical re- orientation of their research and teaching. If so, a bit of detail might help. Until we get detail the proper response to Professor Makgoba is to demand it. One hopes that his fellow academics at Wits will be asking him a few questions if his ideas are to be initiated there. A University is no place for mere
In fact, a bit of detail might have helped elsewhere in Professor Makgoba’s proposals. For example, when writing of “French, German or British” universities, he believes that they were established by a first principle that sought “to capture the essence of France, Germany or Britain”. It’s difficult to know where to begin but, for a start, all the older universities in those countries were formed before France, Germany or Britain were anything like the shape they are today. There was no “essence” to capture! On the contrary, the universities were established from a variety of political, economic, regional and religious features that had nothing to do with “essence” and everything to do with elite perceptions of specific problems. And in this the universities resembled the states in which they originated. And much the same was true of the later universities. They were responses to felt needs, almost always elite felt needs, to particular sets of circumstances and problems.
Quite simply, the idea of “the essence of France, Germany or Britain” is nonsense. As such it should have no part in a proposal, if that is not too concrete a description of Professor Makgoba’s article, to “re- examine and redefine tertiary education in a fundamental way”.
One further protest about Professor Makgoba’s proposal. Does he really believe that “great nations are not built through imitation”? What does he think that armies, navies, bureaucracies, parliaments, religions, economies (and universities?) are about if not precisely that.
You cannot begin without imitation. That’s not the problem. The problem is when to start veering away from the model. Judging by Professor Makgoba’s philippic, the time is unripe.