TSWELOPELE MAKOE
Former president Thabo Mbeki, speaking at Unisa’s 150th anniversary this week where he serves as chancellor, chose the theme, “Reclaim our African Futures”.
He explained: “We need to apply knowledge to challenges that we face.”
I thought to myself, spot-on. We need to prioritise our development and our prosperity as a people. Many people who are pursuing higher education are the first generation to do so in their families, or even in their whole communities.
I believe we need to find a unified epistemology where all the races and tribes of Africa unite to develop a uniquely African scholarship. Mbeki, a Pan-Africanist of note, reminded me of the argument: “African solutions to African problems.”
I recently attended an international seminar on the future of open education. It featured various academics from institutions all over the globe, focusing on the various challenges the education sector faces. Open education system seeks to make the future of education “more inclusive, accessible, and diverse”.
The seminar also heard how the concept of open education enhances the “social justice mandate” in the education field. Access to education is perennially difficult due to the lack of access to resources.
Many factors such as locality, access to the internet, educational resources, financial restrictions and resources such as laptops, are some of the challenges faced by underprivileged people who are still – many decades later – seeking educational opportunities.
In any normal society, the central goal of education is to produce people who become useful to the communities in which they exist. As such, we need to ensure that our educational institutions are meaningfully shaping the lives of the citizens. There can be no better way to prepare for a brighter tomorrow.
The history of education in Africa is not only rooted in a Euro-western knowledge production structure but also an elitist and capitalist societal structure that strongly deters underprivileged people from access to educational opportunities.
Ultimately, these structures are holding us back both developmentally and progressively.
Unfortunately, social justice and social development have not yet been undertaken meaningfully enough in a post-apartheid SA, especially by educational institutions. Although there is progress, education remains a deeply individualistic journey. We exist in an economically and politically charged environment that promotes competition over collaboration.
We, therefore, need to engage not only educational institutions, but also the cultural, political, and social environments in our facilitation of African epistemological knowledge. We need to reboot the need to work for the common good, the very notion on which Ubuntu/Botho is based.
In SA leadership, structures, and systems that pertain to student wellness and student housing have been particularly unstable. It is for this reason that modern-day students need to undertake the mandate of national development in both their personal and collective capacity. We need to work together to bring about collective, widespread and meaningful prosperity.
The current students in our society are future lawmakers, educators, and engineers, among others. It is therefore pertinent that these individuals are developing in alignment with our common hopes for a prosperous society.
If we do not pay proper attention to the fears and concerns of today’s young people, we may well end up with a dangerous society of unsympathetic doctors, immoral lawyers, abusive and obstructive law-enforcement officers and hordes of disengaged educators.
It is therefore of the utmost value that we root our country’s social justice mandate within the refined education system, most especially at the tertiary level. The results will be a future generation that is focused on the development of the entire nation.
Those who understood the need for enlightenment and legitimate educational opportunities, among many, are the youth of the 1976 Soweto uprisings who died for an inclusive and equitable education system.
We need to ensure that we are nurturing a generation of scientists and engineers that are focused on the development of Africa that we desire. We need to ensure that we are encouraging and fostering creativity and flexibility in our educational institutions.
We need to ensure that we are cultivating an environment that is nurturing to young people, entrepreneurs, and more importantly to job-seeking graduates.
The researchers of today are scheduled to produce the scholarship of tomorrow. The substantial takeaway from this conference is the need to ensure that we are cultivating an Africa that is not only grappling with the unique challenges of African societies but is also actively supporting the professional and personal development of the citizens of the world.
Although knowledge production in the African context has proliferated in the recent past, it is of the utmost importance that all African people participate in the facilitation of our knowledge, especially in our national context.
Much of the historic African knowledge is still available through oral history, cultural sites, objects, and many other forms.
Oral history has recently been a site of contention, especially in the academic world.
Western education still struggles to recognise oral history as a legitimate form of knowledge. However, oral history is especially pertinent in African society and is a particularly legitimate form of knowledge production in modern-day Africa.
What is dangerous, however, is that oral history is embodied by people who sometimes pass away before fully imparting it to the next generation. As a result, there are immense gaps in the records of African history.
This was especially aggravated by the cruelty of colonialism that intentionally obliterated much of the valuable African epistemology held by historic African storytellers. As history has proven, the written word is more dependable to document over a longer period.
The act of recording oneself, your family, neighbour, grandparents, and those within your community, is especially valuable in modern times when technological development is popularised and widely engaged. In this way, we can store extensive oral knowledge that we were previously unable to keep.
It is becoming increasingly evident that we need to adapt to the changing time, and better use our technological resources to our advantage. Globalisation has resulted in a deeper inter-connected and interdependent global network.
Literate people must write their views on the world. They mustn’t fear being creative, engaging, and perceptive. Being a novice in education doesn’t make one illegitimate.
Various African societies have undertaken the recording of their history with seriousness, from the ancient Egyptian kingdoms to the late Black Consciousness pioneer Steve Biko. Without their written records, much of their knowledge would be limited to human recollection and filtered reiterations of their knowledge.
Because Biko wrote and recorded his philosophy, beliefs and knowledge, the children of today and tomorrow are sure to engage with his seminal works.
This must serve as a call particularly to budding academics, to never underestimate the power of their epistemological contribution to the hub of African knowledge.
Although many African scholars are oftentimes challenged and rejected from the platforms that house global academic resources, it is pertinent that Africans become self-reliant on their knowledge production and capabilities.
We no longer exist in a time when foundational knowledge, especially about Africa, is undertaken from the perspective of a foreign speculator.
African people are in a particularly unique position, where they have the opportunity and general freedoms to create their knowledge, to draw on the knowledge of their African counterparts, and to enact meaningful change, especially in the institutions that ground knowledge dispersion.
We need to further work collectively with institutions and policy-makers to ensure that African knowledge production is legitimised, dispersed, and undertaken with the same vigour as knowledge from the global North.
Africans cannot continue to passively consume knowledge that is based on far-removed societies. We need to unite to ensure that our African epistemology is stratified. This role begins at home, in our institutions, in our schools, and our governments.
Knowledge production needs to be accessible and affordable. Ours is a deeply disproportionate society, where citizens have varying lived experiences, and many combats with the choice of educating themselves, or physical survival for themselves and their loved ones. It is undeniable that education is the root of self-sufficiency and individual empowerment.
We, therefore, need to ensure that we are formulating knowledge that is rooted in the African experience, and the challenges of African people. This is more so pertinent for young women in society, who are increasingly more vulnerable to social and institutional manipulation.
* Tswelopele Makoe is an MA (Ethics) student at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice at UWC. She is also a gender activist.
