Transition, Reform or Transformation? Mapping out the Discursive Space of African Renaissance in African Higher Education

• In Event: Impact of the global university

Proposal

Like elsewhere in the developing world, the challenges faced by higher education in Africa are considerable and somewhat overwhelming. Rapid expansion, increased access, declining public funding, the impact of information and communication technologies, the explosion of knowledge, heightened economic and social responsiveness and accountability, growing global, national and institutional competition, rising international cooperation and individual and institutional networking, are but some of the challenges. African higher education is under pressure to improve its participation rates and socio-economic responsibilities despite declining public funding and growing competition. In this context, some countries across Africa have had to embrace the idea of transformation to enable their reform strategies to deal more effectively with the colonial legacies. Similarly, other countries in other contexts such as the USA and Europe, the need for higher education transformation (Banks 1995:390) has recently increased due to the racial crisis triggered by the influx of large numbers of immigrants, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, among other challenges. Higher education transformation, underpinned by redress and a firm commitment to attaining equity, stands out as an inspiring unique model in contrast to the liberal market-driven models that feature in most higher education reforms in many parts of the globe.

The argument pursued in this paper posits three important claims. First, the changes after independence have been undertaken under rubric of transition and reform within the framework of modernization and in the context of global capitalism. After problematising these concepts, the paper argues that, against the colonial and apartheid legacies, the challenge facing African universities in the context of African Renaissance is that of transformation grounded in full acknowledgement of the centrality of knowledge, epistemic freedom and social justice.

Second, the paper borrows from Lange, the notion that transformation implies and derives a variety of knowledge(s) that are usually neither explicit nor systematically examined institutionally. These include the knowledge for transformation (the knowledge that needs to be produced in order to make change possible) and the knowledge of transformation (which is the knowledge we generate about transformation itself) and operate in a dialectical relationship that itself needs to be examined if we are to understand better current tensions and risks of institutional transformation in Africa. In this regard, the paper argues that, against the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, and the liberal university with its narrow market orientation, these two dimensions – knowledge for and knowledge of transformation – need to be grounded within specific political and ethical discourse that accounts for epistemic freedom and social justice.

Third, framing transformation within such discourse would require working with and through four important concepts to enable the necessary epistemological breaks. These include:  (i) the idea of higher education for public good implicit in the notion of ‘people-centred development’ embedded in the in CESA and the African Union Agenda ; (ii) looking to the past for inspiration (‘lessons’); (iii) looking inwards for individual and collective introspection; and (iv) looking outwards to the changing global spaces (critical engagement instead of self-ghetoisation). Looking through the rear view mirror is perhaps the most important source of inspiration available to human beings as they strive to shape their own future in different and better ways. Emphasising the role of memory, direct experience and expectation, Assie-Lumumba (2018) argues that “historical consciousness is critically important in analyzing the present and in trying to find solutions for our contemporary challenges.” To borrow from Erasmus (2001: 17), looking into the past entails "remembering and acknowledging the past - colonialism, slavery, segregation and apartheid - with its wounds and its contradictions, and acknowledging its power in shaping the present".

Looking inwards means 'being with yourself' and the use or misuse of 'technologies of the self, (Cross), which enable "individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality" (Foucault 1988: 18). Looking inwards also enables the individual to act upon oneself to ‘transform oneself into the subject of one's ethical behaviour’ (Foucault 1986: 27) through individual and social introspection. I argue here that resetting these technologies goes with the decolonization of the mind in Fanon's (1965, 1967) and Biko's (. ) perspectives. The decolonization of the mind can only happen when a person takes up his or her responsible subjecthood and refuses to occupy the position of violence-absorbing passive victim.

Looking outwards is about finding one’s position and place in the global world. There are two basic responses in this regard. The first is the ' market place approach', with globalization pre-determining the ‘common place’ of ideas and knowledge through market forces. This is tied up with the idea that it is unrealistic for the people on the South to think that they can sidestep the intellectual or knowledge patronage system of the West. The second is the “go-it-alone’ attitude very much embedded in narrow Afro-centric perspectives. It risks parochialism and narrow chauvinism. I argue for a “coming along-together” response on the following premises: (i) the realization that, as a consequence of the colonial experience, the misfortunes of post-coloniality and globalization, African universities today operate at the interface of both local (African) and global (Western) spaces, and some of the imaginary Africans celebrate in some discourses can no longer realistically be reclaimed; (ii) mutual engagement between the global and the local through suitable dialogue and conversations; (iii) the realization that today’s knowledge practitioners operate in knowledge intersections.

Looking forward is the only thing we can relatively control as human beings. It is the domain where we can lend our imagination, creativity to make it different and better for our own sake, the sake of our children and the sake of humanity in general. In this sense, higher education, as the main sector dedicated to knowledge advancement, represents the engine of the future.

Author

• Michael Cross, University of Johannesburg