The experiences of African scholars in the South African academy

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The Afrikan Higher Education Landscape

Proposal

In recent years African academics from outside South Africa have experienced a unique set of threats to their very existence in South Africa’s 26 public universities. First, there are the tensions in the broader society around an explosive xenophobia against especially African traders in the townships (Sebola, 2019); these events no doubt have an influence on the sense of safety and security among academics from elsewhere on the continent. Second, there are the campus-based tensions that arise from increasing pressure on university managements from government departments to be cautious in the appointment of non-South African academics (Oloruntoba, 2022).
Many universities have responded with measures that make it very difficult for African academics to be appointed or re-appointed against a regime of tightening restrictions on the staffing of non-South Africans in public institutions. A recent study found that many African academics are exploited by being retained in temporary appointments without the prospects of full employment (Oloruntoba, 2022).
This research project brings together empirical inquiry, conceptual innovation and social protest and activism in order to document, understand and explain prevailing anti-African sentiment in public policy broadly and university appointments policy specifically.
There is simply too little empirical data on the employment status and academic experiences of black African scholars on South African university campuses. Promising starting points are evident as in a dissertation on the subject (Nkomo, 2018) but in the nature of a Masters project the questions are modest and the data is “thin.” The same problems of superficial data and rudimentary theoretical work on the topic is also found in the research of more established scholars (Musitha & Mafukata, 2021; Obadire, 2018) which in both cases limit their focus to rural Black universities.
One of the major sticking points in the experiences of these academics is not so much what happens on campus but the negative experiences of gaining access to university employment because of bureaucratic and administrative hurdles at the government’s department of Home Affairs.
The representative sampling frame for the study includes urban and rural African academics as well as highly accomplished ones and more junior academic staff from outside South Africa.
The main research question itself is relatively straightforward:
• What are the experiences of African academics in South African universities against the backdrop of xenophobia in the broader society and increasingly restrictive employment opportunities on campuses?
Under this broad question there are several subsidiary questions.
• Are those experiences similar or different in former white versus traditional black universities?
• In rural universities compared to urban institutions? For highly accomplished senior academics compared to more junior academic staff?
Probing questions include how these African academics deal with the pressures of negative, anti-other-African experiences. Where do they find solidarity among South African peers, for example? What strategies do they deploy in the face of negative pressures? How do those positive and negative sentiments about their foreigner status differ across the different universities and by levels of seniority? Finally, what do these African academics identity as important interventions that can improve the quality of their working lives in South African universities?
The sample for this study were drawn from across urban and rural, former white and black universities, and also with immigration status in mind e.g., permanent residence versus recent immigrants.
The method utilised was in-depth qualitative interviews of about 90 minutes each starting with a biographical narrative on each respondent followed by a series of questions such as the ones illustrated above.
What does decolonization even mean when academic employment policy works with geographic borders inherited and retained as colonial constructs? It is within these political and conceptual muddles that a new and emergent theory of Africanization might arise through this research.

 
Bibliography

Musitha, M. E., & Mafukata, M. (2021). The Impact of Perceptions of Tribalism and Ethnicity on Public Administration in South Africa : A Case Study of the Vuwani in the Vhembe District. Politeia, 39(2).

Nkomo, T. (University of the W. (2018). The experiences of African Immigrant Academics in South African Higher Education. University of the Witwatersrand.

Obadire, O. S. (2018). Towards a Sustainable Anti-Xenphobic Rural-Basd University Campus in South Africa. 32(4), 186–198.

Oloruntoba, S. O. (2022). From Paradise Gain to Paradise Loss : Xenophobia and Contradictions of Transformation in South African Universities. 109–128.

Sebola, M. P. (2019). Refugees and immigrants in Africa: Where is an African Ubuntu? Africa’s Public Service Delivery and Performance Review, 7(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/apsdpr.v7i1.285

Authors

• CYRILL WALTERS, Stellenbosch University

• Jonathan Jansen, Stellenbosch University

• Precious Simba, University of Stellenbosch