Glenda Daniels
Development studies in South Africa are to receive a major boost as Wits University prepares to launch a new postgraduate initiative in the field. “This will entail the largest development network in the country and the continent,” says Professor Belinda Bozzoli, head of social sciences, who is spearheading the project.
Three faculties will combine to kick-start the development studies programme commerce, law and management; humanities, social sciences and education; and the built environment.
“For the first time there is an initiative that is so powerfully inter-disciplinary. And Wits is brilliantly placed to do this, in terms of resources and teaching, and the fact that geographically it is at the centre of development in Gauteng, where the government and NGOs are based,” Bozzoli says.
The programme has not officially been launched, but there are eight master’s students who began taking courses this year. “It’s important to understand the implications of what one is doing,” says MA student Fiona Keartland, who has worked with an NGO, Food and Trees for Africa. “Development is not a simple question of putting a water tank somewhere. You have to know how doing something fits into the bigger picture and that every intervention should be collaborative with another. Community participation is important and it’s crucial that you don’t assume that communities are homogenous.”
Lion Phasha works at the Electoral Institute of South Africa and plans to work in local government after completing his MA. He finds the master’s programme useful in that electoral systems are crucial to development. “There is the need to understand the priorities within communities, and in this programme there is more than one area of study. There are different methods of looking at communities for example communities themselves prioritise different things in their lives. Some might want toilets, others might prioritise soccer fields.”
Students can choose to focus on planning, policy or development within development areas such as health, education, politics, industrial, gender and the environment.
“An influential new intellectual direction will take place within the programme, for example, the study of states in crisis. Some developing countries have crumbling states some African states are at war, for instance. Then there are those states that are considered to have potential and hope like South Africa. And then some are in the middle, like India and Colombia,” says Bozzoli.
Major support and collaboration, she says, has come from the London School of Economics (LSE), which has raised massive funds for the launch of the programme, to take place towards the end of the year. There will be student and staff exchanges with the LSE, which will also assist with the setting-up of a development resource centre in Johannesburg. There will also be networks with southern regional countries, for instance Botswana and Mozambique.
“We are also encouraging mature students to participate. This is always a rewarding experience, because of the experience and understanding they bring,” says Bozzoli.