THABO MBEKI

FIRST of all I would like to congratulate UNISA, including its Council, Senate, the SRC and the Trade Unions for the bold step they have taken to establish the Thabo Mbeki African School on Public and International Affairs. Indeed I am humbled by the decision to attach my name to this important School.

A College Library at Dr es Salaam University has a number of Doctoral Theses and Master’s Dissertations produced by Tanzanian scholars. It is important to note that these scholars graduated at Universities in various countries including Tanzania, South Africa, China, Germany, the UK, the United States and so on.

Here are a few examples of these Theses and Dissertations:

• one is about “Early Career Academics’ Professional Experiences within a Neoliberal Context: A Case of the University of Dar es Salaam”;
• another concerns the “Employability of Higher Education Institutions Graduates: Exploring the Influence of Entrepreneurship Education and Employability Skills Development Program Activities in Tanzania”;
  yet another concerns “Perceptions of Climate Change, Environmental Variability and The Role of Agricultural Adaptation Strategies by Small-Scale Farmers in Africa…”
•  another is a “Taxonomic Study of Selected Aloe species of Tanzania and the Associated Indigenous Knowledge”;
• one is an “Analysis of the Factors in Soil Water Management Practices of Small Holder Farmers in (a District in Tanzania)”;
• another concerns “Modelling Optimal Control of a Threatened Prey-Predator System: A Case of Wildebeest-Lion Prey-Predator Relationship in the Serengeti Ecosystem”;
• yet another is an “Assessment of Concentrations of Trace and Toxic Heavy Metals in Soil and Vegetables Grown in the Vicinity of Manyoni Uranium Deposit in Tanzania”;
  and one is about “Mathematical Modeling and Optional Control of Malaria”.

I have cited these Doctoral Theses and Master’s Dissertations because over the years many of our educationists have expressed grave concerns about what they said was the failure of our Universities to produce new and relevant knowledge.

For instance in 2009 the Association of African Universities published the:

“Abuja Declaration on Sustainable Development in Africa: The Role of Higher Education”.

The Declaration acknowledged that:

“The real challenges for sustainable development in Africa are the promotion of economic and industrial development, the eradication of poverty, the resolution of conflicts, and the optimum use of its natural resources.

“The African Higher Education research agenda tends to focus on purely academic and scientific objectives in order to ensure publication in refereed journals, with little regard to developmental needs because of the “publish or perish” syndrome,

“Most of the research works in Africa are rarely relevant to the search for continental solutions to health, education, water, climate change, energy and food security – all sustainable development indices.

“Where research has been conducted in relevant areas, the findings have remained largely on shelves and unavailable to those who need to take action or implement the often useful recommendations…”

In 2011 the outstanding scholar, Goolam Mohamedbhai, former Secretary General of the Association of African Universities, former President of the International Association of Universities, and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Mauritius, wrote:

“Most faculty undertake research for personal gain, with the aim of publishing in internationally refereed journals for promotion purposes.

The chosen topic is often not appropriate to national development. Most faculty do their research as individuals; there is insufficient multidisciplinary research, essential for solving development problems. Much of the research is externally funded, and being determined by the funders, the topics may not be of direct relevance to national development. Research publication comprises another challenge. Most of the research results end up on university library shelves—in theses and dissertations or advanced research journals. They are, thus, not accessible to or understood by policymakers or communities.”

While I respect the comments by the Association of African Universities, Professor Mohamedbhai and others who have made similar observations, we must draw inspiration from the fact that nevertheless, as illustrated by the Doctoral Theses and Master’s Dissertations produced by Tanzanian scholars, new and relevant knowledge is being produced by African scholars.

However it will be vitally important that our African School on Public and International Affairs, the TM School, takes seriously the critical remarks made by African scholars about scholarship on our Continent, thus to avoid the negative tendencies that have been identified.

Yet another African scholar, Emeritus Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones of the University of Sierra Leone, has pointed to one of the challenges facing our Universities.

Writing in 2004 he said:

“On graduation…in most parts of Africa, our students are faced with unemployment. This is a social problem which has already resulted in a growing class of dissident disaffected citizens ripe for disruptive anti-social action. It is our business in our tertiary institutions to look into the causes of unemployment and see how we can counter them.”

It would seem obvious that in examining this matter as suggested by Professor Jones, the TM School would be well advised to look at experiences on this matter from elsewhere in the world.

Immediately I am thinking of comments made five years ago, in 2015, relating to the well-known Duke University in the United States of America.

These comments were made in an article by a US professional economist, Bryan Williams, who had studied at Duke. The article was headed: “Elite Universities Are Turning Our Kids Into Corporate Stooges!”

Mr Williams wrote:

“Duke is a business, as are all colleges, and everyone has their job. The professors cared more about their real job (publishing in academic journals) than teaching. The administrators were corporate types who spent most of their time fundraising…The students were taught, usually not very thoroughly and mostly by an overburdened set of graduate students and part-time instructors…And attached to it all was the basketball industrial complex, a multimillion dollar enterprise awkwardly selling itself as caring about the educational prospects of its athletes. It was a massive system built not around education, but status.

“Some university presidents are remarkably candid about how they’ve transformed their institutions to serve market imperatives. Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, the former president of George Washington University, acknowledges that he worked to transform the school into a luxury brand. “College is like vodka, he liked to explain,” the New York Times reported in February. “Vodka is by definition a flavorless beverage. It all tastes the same. But people will spend $30 for a bottle of Absolut because of the brand.” The implication: All higher education is the same. Some schools are just cooler than others.

“The [2008/2009] financial crisis confounded most neoliberal beliefs about how the world works…It should have provoked serious philosophical thought about our society’s value system, and the university should be the philosophical thought center of society. But elite universities still largely initiate elite students into the corporate ruling class, and themselves embody the competitiveness and preoccupation with status that vex larger society.

“…we are letting our most talented students, who could be the next generation of thinkers, be drawn into jobs where they devise new ways to separate workers from their salaries or to help millionaires avoid paying taxes. We’re allowing the big business of college to dominate the real purpose of education, which is to learn to question everything, not make sure you’re on time to your Bain Capital interview.”

As Professor Jones had said, we are indeed faced with the challenge to help answer the question – what should be done to avoid or minimise the problem of unemployed university graduates?

But surely the TM School will have to avoid the consequence so graphically described by Bryan Williams of Turning (Its Students) Into Corporate Stooges!

I believe that in this context the School should pay close attention to some particular observations made by Mr Williams. Here I refer to his remarks where he says:

“the university should be the philosophical thought centre of society…

“…we are letting our most talented students, who could be the next generation of thinkers, be drawn into jobs where they devise new ways to separate workers from their salaries or to help millionaires avoid paying taxes.

“We are allowing the big business of college to dominate the real purpose of education, which is to learn to question everything…”

Professor Jones, whom we have cited, commented on these issues when he spoke on:

“African Academics and African Universities in the Twenty-First Century: Needs and Responsibilities.”

Here is what he said:

“…our (African) societies have been more inclined to take for granted as most desirable models, the thoughts as well as the artefacts of the dominant colonial culture – artefacts indeed which we cannot now do without: electricity, cars, telephones, television, western music and literature etc. We can adopt all these but will be only mimics if we do not adopt them fully conscious of our own history, culture and traditions, our social institutions and our arts. We must adopt a critical attitude both to what we have and what has been brought to us.

This should be a guiding principle in the selection of what we teach and how we teach it. African writers, the creators of the new literature, give us a useful lead into this area of critical thinking. Our aim in teaching should be to produce men and women who are both critical and creative. Our students should be encouraged to be thinkers and doers rather than accumulators of facts and received knowledge. This must be so if they are to be instruments of change, working towards the realisation of a just and consequently, stable society.”

The Abuja Declaration of the Association of African Universities we cited earlier says, among others:

“The real challenges for sustainable development in Africa are the promotion of economic and industrial development, the eradication of poverty, the resolution of conflicts, and the optimum use of its natural resources.”

Though incomplete, this statement goes some way towards identifying Africa’s central challenges. Over the decades of independence our Continent has learnt some lessons as it has grappled with the task successfully to respond to the challenges stated by the Association of African Universities and other challenges it did not list.

One important lesson is and has been that for Africa to succeed it requires, especially, Quality Leadership! Here I would like to mention:

quality political leadership; and,
quality intellectual leadership!
It therefore stands to reason that, as clearly stated by the Association of African Universities, the African University must play a strategic role in helping our Continent successfully to respond to its major challenges by producing the men and women who will provide the required Intellectual Leadership!

I am convinced that the TM School must position itself as a Home of Excellence in this regard.

To respond to the challenges stated by Bryan Williams, Prof Durosimi Jones and others, the School must strive:

• to serve as a philosophical thought centre of society;
• to train the next generation of thinkers who would learn how to question everything, in order to create new knowledge – men and women who would be critical and creative;
• to produce thinkers and doers at various levels of learning, rather than accumulators of facts and received knowledge;
• to add to the number of scholars like the Tanzanian scholars who have produced the Theses and Dissertations we mentioned; and,
• to ensure that the new knowledge does not, as the Association of African Universities said, “remain largely on shelves and unavailable to those who need to take action or implement the often useful recommendations.”

I therefore wish the UNISA TM School success as it establishes itself as a Centre of Excellence dedicated to the Pan-African task to produce some of the Intellectual Leadership Africa needs!

(This is the statement of the Patron of the TMF, Thabo Mbeki, at the Virtual Launch of the UNISA Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs: 22 September, 2020.)

MARIETTE REYNEKE

SINCE the first case of COVID-19 was reported in South Africa, the question of how to manage the country’s schools has been top of mind. Schools were closed in March and, as part of a phased approach, began returning from June. The risks associated with the pandemic mean the situation could change at any moment.

There has been much debate about whether schools should be open at all. Some have pointed out that children’s rights – to dignity, life, equality and education, among other things – must be considered throughout. While this is correct, in the legal sense, the situation is slightly more complex.

This can be illustrated by at least two South African court judgments. Drawing from these findings, there are a few basic legal principles to consider when it comes to children’s rights.

First, whenever a decision needs to be taken that concerns children, as with the closure of schools, all relevant factors must be taken into account. The best possible decision needs to be taken for the specific circumstances.

Second, when children are affected by the decision, the decision maker needs to do a separate or additional investigation into the impact of the decision on the interests of the children concerned.

The decision-maker must then take all reasonable steps to minimise any negative impact on the best interests of children. This is of paramount importance in terms of the Constitution.

The national and provincial departments of education took the first step to take the most appropriate decision in the circumstance: to close the schools when it did. But the second step – thoroughly assessing the impact of closures – should have received more attention, especially when it came to how children were affected by the closure of school feeding schemes.

Education authorities knew that children would suffer without feeding schemes but said they did not have the capacity to keep the schemes running while schools were closed. Civil society groups urged the department to rethink its position; the matter eventually went to court.

It is clear that the department did not fulfil the second step: going the extra mile to mitigate the negative effects of school closures on children. And it dismally failed on step three by not taking all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of closing feeding schemes.

One would have expected a department responsible for 13 million children to prioritise those children’s best interests. But it seems as though the political will to comply with the constitutional obligation to optimise children’s best interests is lacking. This can also be seen in the general state of public schooling, from overcrowded classrooms to a lack of water and sanitation at many schools.

And yet the country’s Constitution, as well as several court rulings, offer clear guidelines for how children’s best interests should be managed and prioritised.

Case law

I base my arguments here on two important cases. In 2007 the Constitutional Court set a clear precedent in S v M on how to ensure that decision-makers give effect to children’s best interests.

The case dealt with the question of whether a single mother found guilty of fraud – and who had four children – should be sentenced to direct imprisonment or correctional supervision.

Courts normally consider a few factors in determining an appropriate sentence: the interests of the community, the offender’s personal circumstances (including whether or not they have dependants) and the gravity of the offence. The central question in this case was how to act in the best interests of the woman’s children – and, by association, the children of all offenders.

The court ruled that the children’s best interests tipped the scales in favour of correctional supervision. The offender was a single mother and there was nobody to take care of the children if she was jailed. Crucially, other factors were taken into account: the woman had already paid some of the money back to the people she defrauded, and she’d stolen a relatively small amount. This case permanently shifted the approach to sentencing when an offender has dependants. There must be an independent investigation into the impact of a sentencing decision on the interests of an offender’s children.

A second case, from the Supreme Court of Appeal, shows how crucial it is for the decision-maker to take as many steps as possible to mitigate the negative effects of any action on children.

The facts in Howells v S 2000 JOL 6577 (A) are similar to those in S v M: a single mother convicted of fraud, who had no-one to take care of her child.

In this instance, though, the offender was in a position of trust with her employer and defrauded him of a large amount of money. The severity of the crime meant direct imprisonment was the only acceptable sentence. However, it was clear that her child’s best interests would be affected as the child would need to go into foster care.

The child’s interest could not and should not change the court’s sentencing decision. In this instance the court’s separate investigation ended with several recommendations designed to do as little harm to the child as possible. These included ensuring that mother and child maintained contact so their relationship could develop and they could eventually be reunited. The court ruled that the Department of Correctional Services should ensure the mother and child had frequent contact and that the child could visit the mother. This was not part of the traditional approach to sentencing.

Considering COVID

These cases and others that form part of South Africa’s case law show that it’s not enough just to consider children’s best interests. Decision-makers also need to go a step or two further and optimise children’s circumstances as much as is possible.

There will no doubt be more tough decisions around COVID and schooling in the coming months, or even years. The department of education has to consider postponing exams, closing schools where there are COVID cases, and how to catch up on lost class time. In doing so, it must do everything possible to go the extra mile for pupils and minimise the impact of the pandemic. This may include, but not be limited to, making sure schools have access to clean water and proper sanitation and allowing schools to be flexible in managing the impact on the children at that particular school.

*Mariëtte Reyneke is Associate Professor in Education law, University of the Free State.

(SOURCE: THE CONVERSATION)