Reflections on Teaching Africa in South Africa
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9256.12107 |
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Special Section: Teaching Africa and International StudiesGuest Edited by Julia Gallagher (Royal Holloway, University of London) |
research-article2016
Special Section Article
Politics
2016, Vol. 36(4) 467 –481
Reflections on Teaching
© The Author(s) 2016
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Africa in South Africa
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9256.12107
pol.sagepub.com
Sally Matthews
Rhodes University
Abstract
This article draws on the author’s experience of teaching African Studies to undergraduate South
African students in order to reflect on some of the key challenges facing teachers of African Studies,
both in South Africa and beyond. In particular, it discusses challenges relating to teaching a field
as contested as African Studies, looking at whether teaching African alternatives to mainstream
African politics is helpful and at whether and how one can teach Africa in a way that encourages
and develops critical thinking. The article also explores how the racial politics of the context in
which one teaches African Studies inevitably affects the way in which students engage with the
content of the course. While the article discusses these issues in relation to the South African
higher education context in particular, implications for other contexts are also highlighted.
Keywords
African Studies, international studies, teaching Africa
Introduction
African Studies is, as Thandika Mkandawire (1997, p. 26) notes, a ‘contested terrain’.
There is little agreement about how Africa should be studied and much discomfort, indeed
outrage, about how it has been (and still is) studied. The many disputes about how Africa
ought to be studied raise several challenges for anyone who seeks to teach African Studies.
In the South African context, these challenges are further deepened by particular debates
around the country’s position in Africa and the transformation of education in the wake of
apartheid. As a university lecturer who teaches African Studies, I have wrestled with
these questions for several years. This article draws together some of my reflections with
the aim of contributing to the rather limited literature on how university students should
be taught about Africa and, in particular, the question of how Africa should be taught to
African students. The first part of the article explores some challenges that arise when
teaching African Studies. I look at the question of how to teach against the ‘backdrop’ of
the various problematic ways in which Africa is represented in the media and in aca-
demia. I go on to explore some problems that arise when one tries to teach ‘African
Corresponding author:
Sally Matthews, Rhodes University, UK.
Email: s.matthews@ru.ac.za
468
Politics 36(4)
alternatives’ and discuss the way that the politics around race in higher education affects
the teaching of African Studies. The article concludes with some tentative suggestions
about how to address these challenges.
African Studies in South Africa
Throughout the article, I refer to my own experience of teaching an African Studies
course at a South African university as part of a undergraduate political and international
studies programme. African Studies does not feature prominently as a separate area of
study in South Africa – to my knowledge only two of the country’s universities have units
dedicated exclusively to the study of Africa.1 However, African politics and international
relations do feature fairly prominently in political and international studies programmes.
While Africa is certainly not absent from the curriculum at South African universities,
there is continued debate in higher education circles about its place in the curriculum,
with many commentators feeling that the subject is under-represented.2 To a significant
extent, curricula in most fields (including political and international studies) remain very
similar to those taught in the West. While there have been significant attempts to trans-
form South African higher education institutions, for the most part the focus has been on
de-racialising the student and staff bodies of the universities with less attention being
given to changing the curriculum.
A key example of the way in which South African universities have struggled with the
imperative to change the way in which Africa is approached is the example of the treat-
ment of Mahmood Mamdani by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in the immediate
post-apartheid period.3 Mamdani was appointed as the A.C. Jordan Professor of African
Studies in 1996, presumably as part of UCT’s attempt to diversify its staffing body and
to place more emphasis on the teaching of Africa. He was tasked with designing a course
that would be presented to first-year humanities students – an increasing number of
whom were black as the university was de-racialising its student body. However, the
course he designed, which was called ‘Problematizing Africa’ and which included read-
ings by a large number of African scholars, was recalled by the university and replaced
by a course based on a single textbook written for American students which the univer-
sity deemed more appropriate. Mamdani subsequently resigned from UCT and went on
to accuse the university of teaching students ‘a version of Bantu education’ (Mamdani,
1998, p. 74). Almost two decades after these events, the South African academy has de-
racialised considerably, particularly in relation to student bodies, which are now pre-
dominantly black even at most former white institutions, but questions about curriculum
are receiving more attention as it is increasingly recognised that transformation must
mean more than simply de-racialisation.
It is in this context that I teach this particular course, which is compulsory for all
students taking Politics III. As mentioned above, most South African students politics
take courses on African politics, but what differentiates this particular course from oth-
ers focused on Africa that are offered as part of a politics degree is that a key component
is the interrogation of the very question of how Africa ought to be studied.4 The course
takes place over a 6–7-week period with around two weeks dedicated to the topic of
how Africa should be studied. The remaining weeks explore some key themes in Africa
politics, such as (neo)colonialism, statehood, and the political economy of resources
and conflict – all of which are discussed in relation to a single case study: the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.5
Matthews
469
Teaching African Studies: some key challenges
Commentaries on the field of African Studies suggest that there is much disgruntlement,
particularly on the part of African scholars, about the way in which the continent has been
and continues to be represented in mainstream African Studies (see, e.g. Ferguson, 2006;
Keim, 1999; Mbembe, 2001, pp. 1–23; Mkandawire, 1997; Olukoshi, 2006; Soyinka-
Airewele and Edozie, 2010; Wai, 2013; Zeleza, 1997).6 Such commentaries accuse
African Studies of continued Eurocentrism, implicit racism, the misrepresentation of
Africa, the marginalisation of African scholars and a lack of rigorous scholarship. Indeed,
Mkandawire (1997, p. 26) doubts ‘whether the divide between area specialists and the
indigenous scholars is as sharp elsewhere as that between the African scholars and their
Africanist counterparts’.
These critiques are directed at what could be described as ‘mainstream’ African
Studies, which typically focuses on questions of statehood, development and conflict, and
which typically presents Africa through the lens of its shortcomings: it is the continent of
failed states, under-development and intractable conflict. Examples of scholars writing
firmly in this tradition are Christopher Clapham (1996), Robert Jackson (1993), William
Reno (1998) and William Zartman (1995). There are a variety of scholars who contest the
approach adopted by these prominent scholars, although often in quite different ways;
here some key authors are Mahmood Mamdani (1996; 2013), Achille Mbembe (2001),
Thandika Mkandawire (1997) and Paul Zeleza (1997). As the names suggest, the main-
stream scholars are mostly Western, while those contesting the mainstream tend to be
African in origin. However, it should be stressed that there are scholars from different
regions of the world in each ‘camp’ and that the division of African Studies into ‘main-
stream’ and ‘alternative’ groups is an over-simplification. There is much variety – and
disagreement – in both groups. Nevertheless, what can safely be concluded is that African
Studies has long been and continues to be a very contested field of study and that these
contestations relate to the broader global political economy of knowledge.
Given how contested the subject is, it is evident that when presenting a course on
Africa we cannot just build on whatever prior knowledge students have about the conti-
nent as we have good reason to think that much of this prior knowledge may include
misrepresentations. Nevertheless, teachers of African Studies do need to have some sense
of what their students already know about Africa and what their attitudes towards Africa
are in order better to engage with that existing knowledge and those existing attitudes.
While there is little literature about the challenges of dealing with this prior knowledge
when teaching about Africa to African students, there is some thought-provoking com-
mentary on the challenges of dealing with prior knowledge when teaching non-African
students about Africa.7 Such commentators...
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