Peter Vale has been associated with Rhodes University for nearly 40 years. He shares the notes from his diary of his last week there.
SUNDAY
In what was once André Brink’s study, drinks with three librarians: two are visitors, the other directs the Rhodes Library. As every academic knows — but too few say — good scholar-librarians are like gold. Over dinner, we discuss this dying species. Fortunately, a Carnegie-sponsored library academy, which has been running for a few years at Mont Fleur in Stellenbosch, has improved the prospects on this front, but more needs to be done.
MONDAY
No regular first day of term, this. Today, I begin teaching my last ever undergraduate course: it’ll be the first six of 24 first-year sessions.There’ll be 400-odd students in a vast, cavernous lecture theatre — one of a twin in a nondescript building that was the parting gift of a deputy vice-chancellor who left for retirement in the Cape. I find teaching in these barns hellish.
My main worry is not the content — the ubiquitous PowerPoint on flash stick has that all in hand. No, my issue is what I am going to do about cellphones. They have intruded more and more into the classroom. Last year I frightened the first years by smashing an old cellphone with a rock at the beginning of the lectures series. It worked — not a single phone went off during the term.
What can I do this time round? Decide on a version of waterboarding. I arrive in the theatre with a dog’s bowl filled with water and last year’s near-crushed phone. After the usual pleasantries, I tell the students there are two rules here.
“Don’t be late, ’cause I’ll lock the doors. And if your mobile goes off, this will happen.” With that I plop the cellphone into the bowl. A gasp and a disbelieving silence — followed by a hurried reaching for mobiles. It seems to have worked. But how many, I wonder, have noticed the water splash on my face!
TUESDAY
Meet a visitor from Colombia who’s writing a PhD on some stuff that I once worked on. He says that he’ll get two PhDs out of his research — one version he’ll submit in Spanish, the other in French. Wow, this is the way to make university bureaucrats happy, I think — another version of the infamous double-dipping. He reports on the state of universities in Colombia — sounds depressingly familiar.
WEDNESDAY
In between my teaching and racing to finish a book, I’m taking leave of Rhodes this week. The place has been my academic home for the past seven years and I’ve been associated with it (in one way or the other) for nearly 40. For the last time I participate in the weekly staff meeting: the usual administrative routine — students, seminars and statistics.
The last item on the agenda reads “An Announcement”. Here, the head of department tells colleagues that I’ve “taken early retirement” and will be leaving for the University of Johannesburg. Like many others, they have known about it for six months. Technically he is correct, I have retired early, but the reasons why I’m leaving a university that is so integral to my very identity are varied and complex.
THURSDAY
The PowerPoints seem to be making an impression on the first years. I’m not a devotee of this pedagogic method, however. Instead of teaching from “within” the discipline, one teaches from the PowerPoint thingy. This year content selection has been made by my colleague (and PhD student): she’s done well and certainly the essence of the discipline’s passion seeps through.
Perhaps they should be augmented by a few cartoons? Very dangerously these days, I consider myself an expert on cartoons. The book I’m trying to finish is cartoon-based. But they’re devilish things, cartoons.
Firstly, very few are catalogued and so they’re very difficult to access — an issue aggravated by their daily production. Secondly, there’s the problem of translating from the printed page into electronic form. And finally, there’s the thorny issue of copyright. In PhD-speak, it is difficult to get control of the material when working with cartoons! In the end, a few cartoons are inserted into the PowerPoints.
FRIDAY
At 6pm a seminar-examination for an honours group in Cold War studies. I’ve taught this for four years with Gary Baines, a colleague from the Rhodes history department, and this has been one of the highlights of my teaching career. For one thing, I’m old enough to have been a participant-observer in the Cold War; for another, the students seem to enjoy the course, which is the only one of its kind on offer in the country. Some of the presentations are terrific — real, deep thought and interest. This all finishes after 10pm.
SATURDAY
Another seminar-examination: this one on Southern African states and societies. It goes well with good presentations — as might be expected with the excellent students at Rhodes. The other examiners are citizens of Lesotho and Zimbabwe: they bring a great comparative perspective to the deliberations.
At the tea break, the students are each given a breakfast pita. It seems to cheer them up on an icy morning. Just after noon, an SMS from a friend. The Springboks are taking another beating. After a while, the news from Brisbane is so depressing I switch off my mobile.
SUNDAY
In the Addo Elephant Park with the Australian social theorist, Peter Beilharz: luggage-less, he’s just arrived for a conference the Academy of Science of Southern Africa is running in Bloem next week. We talk family, retirement but, mainly, the decaying state of universities. To brighten things up, we occasionally lapse into social theory and exchange notes on the discipline’s luminaries.
He tells me that he once had to choose between listening to a lecture by Michel Foucault [French philosopher, sociologist and historian] and a dinner with Ernesto Laclau [Argentinian political theorist] and Chantal Mouffe [Belgian political theorist]. Talk about Hobson’s choice.
On a rise we come across two teenage elephants in rough-and-tumble play. They poke each other and, almost giggling, run then turn, rush at each other head-on before they tumble into the Eastern Cape thicket. Elsewhere, we’re well served by the ellies whose home we’ve invaded — small herds, charming babies and even two lonely old bulls. Believe it, I’ll miss all this
Peter Vale is Nelson Mandela professor of politics at Rhodes University and a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies