Re: Article on SA Universities - Has nothing really happened at CAS/UCT since Mamdani left?

[Chambi Chachage]

Dear Domza,

 

Do you care explaining what you mean when you say "that nothing has happened to African Studies at UCT since Mamdani left ten years ago." I have just read it now below and I can't wait until I read Helena's lengthy paper, which I will read as soon as possible, to say what I am just about to say. The Mamdani saga was coming to an end when I joined UCT as an undergraduate student in 1999. My dad, Professor Chachage, was moving in there in 1998/1999 while Professor Mamdani was on his way out and since somehow he was inspired by Mamdani to join UCT, they had a lot of discussion on the matter then and thereafter when he, my dad, had his own similar kind of struggles with the UCT Sociology Department which also 'made' him leave after a short stint. ( I am attaching herein a compilation/improvisation of his Farewell Note At a Tea Party which is a brief critique of what was happening with the Higher Education Transformation - his other lenghty criques appearing in some of the texts referenced therein).

 

That experience made me interested in knowing what really happened when I joined the Center for African Studies (CAS) at UCT for my Honors. What I observed is that at that time they were doing more or less the same thing that Mamdani urged them to do before they cornered him to leave (or is it kick him out?). One day when Mamdani visited my dad in Dar, I remember asking him why he left given that CAS ended implementing his idea and if I remember correctly Mamdani said he realized he was fighting a losing battle so, I guess, he had to leave to give space for them to learn from experience about what he meant. I remember my CAS UCT years as a time when I got introduced to a lot of interesting works of the likes of Julius Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko from the old generation and the likes of Emmanuel Eze, Abiola Irele and Mahmood Mamdani plus those involved in that infamous Soyinka-Mazrui tussle from the relatively new generation of African Scholars. Two years ago I passed by CAS and met Professor Harry Garuba who told me there was a move to dissolve or merge some 'small' centers, CAS being one of them, so they were trying to build a case of what they had done so far. I haven't talked with him since then about what happened but it would be interesting to know about the public/non-internal contents of that defence which, as he told me, was based on the achievement/success of CAS with respect to its relevance in the advancing of knowledge on and about Africa.

 

So, in sum, I don't really understand what you mean that nothing has happened with African Studies since Mamdani left. Apart from sharing all this, I have taken the liberty to copy him and coincidentally we will be meeting today and I will surely prompt a discussion with him on this issue. I am also copying Garuba whom I am told is the current  Director of CAS just in case he can clarify on this say what has been going on since then - and yes I remember he once told me that when he read the Mamdani controversial text on how African Studies ought to be taught at UCT he didn't find any problem with it. Just in case you are interested on my take on the Mamdani saga, check out my paper Bringing African Studies Back to Africa: Beyond the ‘African-Africanist’ Divides at http://ecas2007.aegis-eu.org/commence/user/view_file_forall.php?fileid=946.

 

Thats all from here - I couldn't let it pass without a personal comment.

 

Kind Regards,

Chambi

 

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My mission is to acquire, produce and disseminate knowledge on and about humanity as well as divinity, especially as it relates to Africa, in a constructive and liberating manner to people wherever they may be.
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Address: P. O. Box 4460 Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

Cell : + 255 754771763

Blog: http://udadisi.blogspot.com/
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From: Dominic Tweedie <dominic...@gmail.com>
To: Debate is a listserve that attempts to promote information and analyses of interest to the independent left in South and Southern Africa <debat...@fahamu.org>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 9:50:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Debate] article on SA universities

Dear Helena,

It's good. Very nice, really. Warm and true. Also shocking, e.g. that nothing has happened to African Studies at UCT since Mamdani left ten years ago.

But, it looks like only the first half of the necessary report. There's a lot more water under the bridge already. Plus, what is your "way forward", comrade?

Also, did you not talk to the YCL, the ANCYL, SASCO or PYA?

Did you not talk to the new Minister of Higher Education?

Question from me: What if anything is good or bad out of the following: Sociology of scientific knowledge; The Strong Programme; General semantics; Critical pedagogy; Social epistemology; Social constructivism; Social constructionism. Add your own to the list if you like. This looks like a whole big thing that has been going on over your side in the same period of time since our democratic-breakthrough-liberation fifteen to twenty years ago. So some of us don't know about it.

Or, in other words, is there anything like a popular conception anywhere of generalised intellectuallism and common, public-realm mass learning, that is not ploddingly didactic or given-text-bound, or physical-institution-bound, that could take off, even if it was "extra curricular" like that chair or hot-seat that Mamdani had for three years?

 

Domza, VC

 

2009/6/26 Helena Sheehan <helena....@dcu.ie>

Comrades, colleagues,

Here is an article of mine coming out of my engagement with SA and
looking at the transformation agenda in the universities. It has just
been published in the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies. It
is called "Contradictory transformations: observations on the
intellectual dynamics of South African universities". It is quite long
(16,235 words), so I think it best not to paste the text into the
e-mail. It is on open access at

http://doras.dcu.ie/4537/1/HS_09_SA_universities_jceps-doras.pdf    or

http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=145

I'll steel myself for the critique.

Best,
Helena

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Professor Helena Sheehan
Dublin City University
Dublin 9  Ireland
tel: 353-1-7005568
e-mail: helena....@dcu.ie
http://webpages.dcu.ie/~sheehanh/sheehan.htm


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