‘Universities should prepare for a decolonial rupture’

African universities are caught in a colonial and neoliberal trap that they must escape in order to provide “authentic learning” – even though this will likely take many decades, says Fikile Vilakazi, the director of the gender equity unit at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa.

“The establishment of the decolonial university in Africa can only be achieved through a return to African ways of being, including in relation to how Africans, as interconnected abantu (people) or batho (people), understand knowing, knowledge-making and learning,” Vilakazi said.

At present, however, “the university is a trap”, she says, and it will take a “century-long process of rupturing” for the new university of the future to emerge from present structures.

In the meantime, and in an effort to escape the “trap”, a key question that Vilakazi seeks to address is whether the change that is sought may be achieved in one great step or whether it will have to be brought about more gradually.

Radical approach or a longer-term strategy?

The immediate significance of the task faced would seem to indicate the need for an urgent, radical approach. After all, as Vilakazi notes, “the university as it currently exists is not a place where authentic learning happens”.

However, the nature and scale of the task, which would entail reimagining “the present dominant modes of what are called teaching and learning through a return to an African philosophy of how to be”, may require a longer-term strategy.

Particularly given the challenge of undertaking transformation of an institutional form that is inherently resistant to such transformation – what Vilakazi describes as “the question of whether the master’s house – that is, the colonial university – can be dismantled by using the master’s tools or whether there is a need for rupture and reconstruction”.

Given the practical obstacles faced, Vilakazi notes that, although she is “fond of a radical approach”, a more measured effort is needed.

“The idea of rupture … would require a whole reorganisation of the state, of the body politic, to be successful, which is a long-term, hundred-year mission. In the meantime, undoing is not necessarily realistic in that it would entail rupturing a whole system, even down to the buildings.

Tackling marginalisation

“So, a policy of reorganisation, through a series of steps to prepare the way for a future systemic rupture, may be more effective. These steps may include deliberate efforts to reorganise the epistemes; to reorganise the academic content; and to reconstitute the staff and student cohorts.”

Such a programme would mirror the approach that has been adopted by the gender equality unit that Vilakazi leads at UWC.

The unit was established in 1993 by activists, scholars and thinkers who were imagining the contours of new post-apartheid South Africa after the introduction of democracy in 1994.

“At that time, the university in South Africa was, by design, a space that benefited certain bodies and intellects to the exclusion of others,” says Vilakazi, “including the bodies and intellects of women; black women; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (or LGBTQI+) scholars and students; people with varied forms of ability; and Africans in general – all of whom were marginalised by a political imagination of the university derived from Europe’s Enlightenment.”

Accordingly, she says, the gender equity unit was established in pursuit of “the idea … that those bodies that had been marginalised under apartheid and colonialism had now to be placed at the centre of a reimagined university”.

The mission entailed establishing equity among university staff in relation to recruitment and promotion and their pay and conditions; reimagining student life in inclusive ways; and fostering African-centred scholarship and research.

A centre of resistance

In broad terms, Vilakazi says, the unit was founded as “a centre of resistance to an emerging agenda of neoliberalism and an attendant epistemic violence which were present and were already shaping the course of the country’s public universities at that time”.

She describes how the “epistemic violence” of the period had been forged under apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s, when the content and dynamics of teaching and learning, community engagement and research at universities had been largely co-opted to sustaining the architecture of colonisation in what had already become a post-colony.

In response and adopting the position that “the African university of the future should be shaped by those who see themselves as African scholars”, the unit supported the efforts of academics “entering the classroom to change the content and shift the pedagogy”.

So, bachelor, honours, masters and postgraduate programmes in women and gender studies were established. In addition, the unit sought to ensure that its view of scholarship was promoted, not only within women and gender studies, but also infiltrated other disciplines.

“Such engagement is generally shaped by a feminist approach that says the personal is political and that there is a need to shift the world of thinking, the world of scholarship and the world of research accordingly,” said Vilakazi.

Relaying messages to those in power

The unit’s strategy to implement and shape institutional change at UWC has shifted over time. The original movement started with a community of allies, according to Vilakazi. Broader discussions among staff and students then expanded the movement’s base before it was decided that representatives within the institution’s decision-making structure should be delegated “to relay the message to those in power”.

As a result, the unit was placed in the vice-chancellor’s office with a mandate to ensure gender equity across the university in all its functions.

“The expectation has been that it should … provide leadership when tensions arise within the university around issues of gender inclusion or exclusion,” said Vilakazi. “In this respect, the expectation has further been that it should not be at loggerheads with management.”

However, in the past few years, the unit aligned with the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests that emerged in 2015 and attendant student struggles – and less so with the management’s agenda.

“This has created a tension with the management’s view of the unit’s role, which has led to the unit being marginalised in terms of funding, voice and influence,” said Vilakazi.

Learning from experience

Learning from this experience, Vilakazi says that it is important for units such as the gender equity unit “to adopt a nuanced approach, seeking allies within management and the institutional leadership, as well as among students and staff”.

At the same time, she expresses a certain frustration at the slow pace of the transformation that is being enacted at present, which, she says, “is still only happening on an incremental basis and not at the scale that is required” – and is far from creating the ideal university that Vilakazi envisages.

“A deliberate, intentional process of reorganisation is required at the levels of philosophy, theory and content, as well as in relation to the nature of the disciplines and the scholarship, which will likely be quite unlike the present disciplines and scholarship, since the aim will be … to create a world of knowing that informs, and interacts and interconnects with human life in all its diversity.”

While Vilakazi acknowledges the remote prospect of achieving this vision at present, she, nevertheless, revels in its possibility.

“Sometimes, it can feel that talking so much about these things can take one to the deeper places of madness. But that kind of madness makes me happy, because I think that that is the kind of madness that is needed to reimagine the African university.”

This article is based on an interview conducted by Professor Thierry Luescher and Dr Angelique Wildschut for ‘The Imprint of Education’ project, which is being implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), South Africa, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. This project, which includes a series of critical engagements with experienced scholars and thought leaders on their reimaginings of higher education in Africa, investigates current and future challenges facing the sector, including best practices and innovations. Thierry M Luescher and Mark Paterson edited the transcript for focus and length. A full transcript of the interview can be downloaded from the HSRC’s website.