‘Decolonization’ at the
University of Cape Town (UCT): What is it?
How should it be achieved?
Part 1: Chibber
The simple answer to both
questions is: no one knows? This
ignorance was made ‘crystal clear’ at three events held on UCT’s campuses
during 14-23 August 2017.
Event 1 - 14 August – Prof. Vivek Chibber’s
Vice-Chancellor’s Open Lecture: Eurocentrism, the academy and social
emancipation.
In
the pre-lecture announcement, Chibber stated:
“While the commitment to wrest free of Eurocentric biases and even to decolonise higher education is entirely laudable, it leaves open the question of what the content of new knowledge ought to be, and also the structure of new institutions. In this lecture, I suggest that the only way to press forward with these goals, while still upholding democratic principles, is by embedding the critique of Eurocentrism in an egalitarian and humanistic framework. This means rejecting parochialism of any kind, including the nativism that is often presented as a counter to Eurocentrism. Indeed, nativist critiques often recreate the Eurocentrism they seek to displace.” “For anti-colonial movements to win the full human emancipation they fought for, they need to rid themselves of the critiques embedded in nativism and nationalism”.
But, during his lecture, he actually:
1.
equated the African
struggle for liberation from colonialism with that between capitalism and
socialism and between Eurocentrism and racism rather than
Afro-relevance/centrism;
2.
erroneously characterized
Europe as the continued centre of morality and science, with Africa being at
the periphery and inferior;
3.
advocated the
replacement of race by class, producing an ”indigenous elite”; and
4.
predicted
that, without such a replacement, “nativism
[racial and nationalist discourse
that can creep back into leftist thinking] will return.
During question-time, when asked: “When does a black leader become free of Western influence”. Chibber replied only when he/she advocates the ‘Best Western’ ‘good ideas’, e.g. socialism/communism. When challenged by a ‘black’ attendee: “But white Marxism and Communism have had terrible consequences in this country.” he countered: “Come up with any strategy that will involve the upliftment of the vast majority of black and brown people in this country that does not involve attacking capitalism.” “There’s no solution to the problem without class.” There must be a “massive redistribution of resources” [from whom to whom?].
When asked about his views on the classic, discipline/faculty-gated, colonial university populated by traditional, scholarly “universal”, ivory-tower intellectuals versus what decolonist philosopher Achille Mbembe and UCT Transformation DVC Loretta Feris describe as a discipline-unbounded “pluriversity” populated by Gramscian “public intellectuals” engaged with society and focused on context, Chibber claimed not to understand the concept of a pluriversity. He eschewed the Marxist Gramsci’s concept of public/organic intellectuals, preferring what he terms “committed intellectuals”, ‘academics’ who might be hired as academic staff, but “spend all their time in trade unions”.
With regard to his views on student demographics, he commented (to loud applause): “What we should worry about is accessibility of poor people to university.” He offered no suggestions on how to help them to develop once they were admitted.
On a constructive note, he
stressed the need to develop in-house, competitive, African-rooted
intelligentsia who publish in local-language journals, and warned that academic
posts should not become “islands of privilege” protected by the tenure system.
I
n short, social emancipation can
only be achieved when a heavily taxed, partially market-driven economy is
totally taken over by a communistic government and wealth is “massively redistributed’. Then, somehow, funds will be found to
eliminate university fees and pay multi-lingual, primarily locally published,
decolonized, elite academics to develop trade unions when they’re not teaching
badly-educated, poverty-stricken students who study socio-physics.
Is this a meaningful ‘strategy’
for UCT’s decolonization and emancipation?
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