JONATHAN JANSEN | Why is academic xenophobia a threat to the future of the South African university?

One of the most serious threats facing higher education and the scientific enterprise in SA, is the rising tide of xenophobia in the halls of academia. I did not think this was possible. One could to some extent understand the raw competition for limited resources on the streets of Diepkloof or the farms of De Doorns where impoverished South Africans feel they were abandoned twice — first by the apartheid regime and then by their own leaders in the democratic period.

But in universities? These are the elites of society, the well-educated. Not exactly the marginalised poor. Many of those who work in universities gained from and are connected to international networks, without which their own research and statuses would suffer. After all the very word university suggests openness to the world, the universum.

It turns out, as I detail in my forthcoming book Corrupted: a study of chronically dysfunctional universities, the university in SA, as in the case of the (other?) state-owned enterprises, is perceived by many as simply a concentrated resource to be stripped and from which to gain individual or group advantage. One’s high-level ideals about a university as a place of higher learning, open to the best talent (students, scholars, scientists) from anywhere on the planet, can take a beating in a country that has long given up on such core academic values.

Concerned about anecdotal reports on the plight of African academics from other African countries in South African universities, our research team launched a study across the 26 public universities to generate a more systematic account of the workings of xenophobia on our campuses. It is early days in the research project but already our fears are being confirmed.

In the early years of our democracy there was an openness to ordinary people and professionals from other African countries, a recognition perhaps of the role of the front-line states in SA’s freedom and a generally pan African view of the world carried, for example, in then president Mbeki’s vision of an African Renaissance. As the country moved on from the heady days of the mid-1990s and social and economic hardship remained unchanged for the majority population, those lofty ideals started to fall away, particularly in areas of poverty and underdevelopment where South Africans struggled to survive from one day to the next.

One’s high-level ideals about a university as a place of higher learning open to the best talent (students, scholars, scientists) from anywhere on the planet can take a beating in a country that has long given up on such core academic values.

Gradually, coexistence with migrants from other African and indeed Asian countries was threatened, as competition for limited resources was politicised around national origins. Local and even national politicians (and a former king) saw a political opportunity in these conditions and began to mobilise and support angry South Africans against their neighbours with devastating consequences for especially African nationals from elsewhere.

Such xenophobic thinking started to reflect in certain ministries and their government departments. Leaders of science councils will tell you how they receive messages from their political heads to keep an eye on the appointment or advancement of African scientists and scholars from outside SA. Similarly, university vice-chancellors would receive these political messages, sometimes subtle and sometimes direct.

This is where institutional behaviour becomes interesting. In some universities, those political messages are taken very seriously, especially where they coincide with the xenophobic commitments of a vice-chancellor and/or her team. For example, at one university the interpretation of political messaging on foreigners is taken to mean that you go through several rounds of a search for an academic appointment and then even when you cannot find a black South African, rather leave the position open.

In rural universities there is a practical logic that kicks in during deliberations on political messages from national government. Those universities would quite literally fall apart were it not for other African academics willing to work in rural areas and uphold their academic programmes in everything from undergraduate teaching to postgraduate supervision and senior administration.

Why is academic xenophobia a threat to the future of the South African university? It’s quite simple. No university in the world ever became a global centre of academic and research excellence through nativist thinking in its academic appointments policy. The leading scholars in our universities are often world beaters in their respective disciplines. Together, African scholars from outside SA have trained hundreds of masters and doctoral students and mentored postdoctoral fellows who have themselves become academics in local universities. Many of those taught and supervised are black South Africans.

Why, therefore, would a country struggling with the production of high-level skills shoot itself in the foot? Because bigotry against others is blind even to its own needs, as social science research has repeatedly shown.

At the root of the problem is the lack of understanding of what a university is, and is not. I do not know of any higher education institution in SA that takes the time at orientation or any other forum to teach students what a university is. That it is a place of higher learning. That it is not a religious organisation requiring commitment to a shared dogma. That it thrives on reason, not rage. That it is not an extension of the school or home. That it is a public institution open to all. And that it is not a racial or ethnic or sectarian possession.

Most of all, that a university has open borders that welcomes ideas and inventions from anywhere and by anyone in the world. When these core academic values fall away, a university is simply a training institute that produces automata for the local markets without any sense of conscience towards a broader humanity.

I wrote a version of this article for the Newsletter of the Academy of Science of SA