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HIGHER Education Minister Blade Nzimande says government is now in a position to welcome back 100% of university students back to campuses, including international students who are currently outside the borders of South Africa.

Nzimande was addressing the media on Wednesday on higher education and training’s response to COVID-19 epidemic lockdown Level 1.

“All universities are implementing their plans to return all students and staff from the 1st October, subject to any restrictions linked to their own risk assessment due to their local context and conditions,” said Nzimande.

“It must however be noted that the prescripts of COGTA regulations will apply. This means that the health and safety protocols in terms of physical distancing (at least 1.5m), wearing masks, washing hands, sanitising and environmental cleaning will be applied.”

Nzimande added that government will now be able to move to a 50% occupancy of rooms up to a maximum of 250 persons indoors at a time, with ventilation of rooms remaining critical.

“As a sector, we will also allow the hosting of side gatherings up to 500 people at a time,” he said.

“With respect to international students returning who remain  outside our country, they will need to meet the requirements of the COGTA regulations – which includes having a test, not older than 72 hours, showing that they are negative for the virus on arrival in South Africa; if not, they will need to go into quarantine at their own expense for at least 10 days before proceeding to their respective institutions.”

 Out of 25 universities in South Africa, ten universities aim to complete the academic year before the end of the 2020 calendar year while four universities plan to end in January 2021, seven universities plan to complete in February 2021, and five universities plan to complete in March 2021, said Nzimande.

 “There were some universities that were not able to start their academic year effectively before the lockdown and that is also reflected in this staggered end of the academic year,” he said.

Nzimande said the higher education and training sector expect that the results from the National Senior Certificate examinations would be announced on 23 February 2021.

“As a result, the start of the academic year for first year students will be between 8 March 2021 and 12 April 2021,” said Nzimande. 

(COMPILED BY INSIDE EDUCATION STAFF)

THE United States Department of State has awarded a R8.3-million grant to strengthen the US-South Africa Higher Education Network, a consortium of higher education institutions in the two countries.

Through the grant, the network will engage other institutions of higher education in order to increase the number of staff and student exchanges between the nations, a joint statement issued by the US Embassy in South Africa and the University of Pretoria (UP) on Wednesday said.

The United States-South Africa Higher Education Network (US-SA HEN) was founded in 2018 with funding from South Africa’s higher education and training department to promote exchanges, collaborative research and other partnerships.

The network’s current managing partners are UP, Rutgers University-Newark and the University of Venda.

“Today’s launch is a springboard for demonstrating the impact of partnerships for change,” UP vice-chancellor Professor Tawana Kupe said at the virtual launch of the grant.

“As much as there is a focus on increasing the quality and number of well-rounded doctoral candidates, there is also a parallel focus on adapting traditional educational approaches and developing lasting solutions to some of the challenges that afflict our global society,” he added, citing the global Covid-19 pandemic as an example.

The two-year grant will also facilitate joint research, especially in agriculture, food security, and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and provide training and transfer skills in all aspects of university administration.

According to US assistant secretary for African affairs Tibor Nagy, every year the US Embassy funds programmes for more than 150 South African students, faculty and professionals to travel to the United States to increase understanding between the two countries.

“With this award to support the United States-South Africa Higher Education Network, we reaffirm our commitment to further increase bilateral cooperation and faculty mobility between the US and South Africa,” Nagy added.

(SOURCE: ANA)

HOW will the University of Cape Town (UCT) embed decolonisation in Vision 2030, the institution’s new strategic vision? How will the university embed decoloniality as it unleashes human potential for a fair and just society? And what does it mean to be a global university in Africa?

These were the questions posed during a panel discussion on decolonisation in the context of Vision 2030. The discussion was part of a three-hour webinar on decolonisation and decoloniality, hosted by UCT on Tuesday, 22 September.

The panel discussion, which was moderated by Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Transformation Professor Loretta Feris, followed presentations by three recipients of the university’s decolonisation grant, and a UCT alumna.

The recipients were Associate Professor Shose Kessi, the dean of Humanities and the co-director of the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychology in Africa; the head of UCT’s Archaeological Materials Laboratory, Professor Shadreck Chirikure; and a lecturer in the Political Science department Dr Lwazi Lushaba, who spoke alongside UCT alumna and Fulbright scholar Ziyana Lategan. Professor Floretta Boonzaier, another grant recipient and the co-director of the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychology in Africa, was unable to join the discussion.

Speaking on the panel were four renowned UCT scholars who work in the area of decolonisation:

• Professor Elelwani Ramugondo (Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the co-chair of UCT’s Curriculum Change Working Group from 2016 to 2017)
• Professor Rebecca Ackermann (Department of Archaeology, the director of the Human Evolution Research Institute and the deputy dean of transformation)
• Dr June Bam-Hutchison (Centre for African Studies, the interim head of the newly launched San and Khoe Research Unit who led, in partnership with the A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum, the co-design processes of the renaming of the Jameson Memorial Hall to the Sarah Baartman Hall, and the introduction of the historic inaugural certificated foundational Khoekhoegowab at the university)
• Dr Kasturi Behari-Leak (Centre for Higher Education Development, the interim director of the academic staff and professional development centre, and the president of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa).

Embedding decolonisation

For Dr Bam-Hutchison, indigenous ways of knowing must inform Vision 2030, a practical example of which is the work she has led in collaboration with the A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum. From their years of work, certain factors have emerged as necessary for the act of decolonising. Crucial to decoloniality is multilingualism, critically understanding the formation of knowledge production processes, as well as interdisciplinarity – it cannot occur without these factors.

Bam-Hutchison also emphasised the importance of recognising prior learning to grow a cohort of scholars who will make a difference in the communities from which they emerge.

“It’s really about validating [and] theorising knowledges that have been on the periphery; people with these archives on the periphery and restoring as well as centring archives that have been lost due to colonialism,” she said.

According to Professor Ackermann, it is important to acknowledge her privilege but, even more so, to do something with it. Part of Ackermann’s decolonial work includes “actively working to stitch black and female postgraduates” into the academic networks she has been afforded access to because of her race and nationality as a North American. And this must be done in a way that centres and values black and female voices.

The paleoanthropologist added that decolonisation means owning the fact that her discipline has a dark history of racism and othering. It also means, more broadly, valuing diversity in research.

“Diverse and intersectional teams produce better science because they’ve got this rich, complex heterogeneity of thinking and practice,” said Ackermann.

Global, African university

When asked what it means to be a global university in Africa, Dr Behari-Leak noted that the very question surfaces the tension between being globally relevant and locally authentic. This, she said, is the decolonial work the university must do.

Included in this work is acknowledging that UCT is “not an island unto itself”.

Dr Kasturi Behari-Leak said that the big challenge is unpacking Vision 2030, using a decolonial attitude to translate it into meaningful praxis in the areas of teaching and learning, research and social responsiveness.

“There are 25 other universities in the country that we need to demonstrate a relational ontology with, and how we are growing together as part of South Africa, into Africa,” said Behari-Leak.

In her final remarks, Professor Ramugondo said that the question of being a global university in Africa pushes UCT to “reckon with the fact that we may be ambivalent about our Africanness”.

Professor Elelwani Ramugondo asked the question: What would knowledge look like if it was produced from the perspective of the colonised?

“Perhaps, as we think about a university, a global university, which finds itself in Africa, we are to ask ourselves: What do we mean by global? Do we mean the whole world with everyone in it? Or are we talking about a slice of the global?

“When we talk about global, to what extent are we resisting that allure, that attraction to a global that leaves many behind? And I think we ought to ask ourselves a very difficult question about on whose behalf we speak,” said Ramugondo.

She added that in calling UCT an African university, the question must be asked as to whether someone from communities such as Nyanga, Bonteheuwel, Bishop Lavis, Gugulethu and Soweto are included.

“Or are we going to find ourselves with Vision 2030 seeing less of exactly those people that would want to call this their university too?”

(SOURCE: UCT)