Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (review)

Dedicated to the memory of a student shot by police during a student protest in 2000, and with an introduction by Dennis Brutus, this collection of critical essays on higher education in contemporary South Africa provides a series of case studies in how the policies of the ANC government are failing in their historic mission of uplifting apartheid’s downtrodden. The book was co-sponsored by the well-known Committee on Academic Freedom in Africa. “Asinamali” (“we have no money”) has become an anthem of working-class protest against low wages and lack of service delivery in South Africa. As it is used here, the word explicitly links the ivory tower with an articulation of a class-based project of recognition and redress.

For those still enchanted with the idea of a South Africa suffused with rosy “rainbow nationalism,” Asinamali will deliver a swift wake-up call. The contributions make it clear that despite their claims of redressing the inequalities of apartheid, the South African state has relentlessly rejected policies that prioritize the needs and perspectives of the poor. For these groups, access to higher education has receded; prospects of decent salaries and benefits for university clerical, cleaning, and grounds staff have vanished; and the production of knowledge has largely remained serenely and stubbornly entrenched in the impoverished disciplinary categories characteristic of the apartheid era, consciously foreclosing spaces for critical engagement with the majority of the population.

The book has a glaring Achilles heel. The last chapter, entitled “Gender and Women’s Studies in Post-Apartheid South Africa” and ostensibly written by Sheena Essof, is directly plagiarized from “Gender Studies for Africa’s Transformation” written by Amina Mama and published in African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development, edited by Thandika Mkandawire (CODESRIA and Zed Books, 2005). The work attributed to Essof exhibits just enough tinkering to suggest knowing falsification rather than an unwitting mistake of authorship attribution; aside from slight bowdlerization, the two essays are virtually identical, down to headings and references.

Nonetheless, a number of important essays in the developing critique of postapartheid institutions in South Africa are (legitimately) reprinted in the book. In particular, the chapters by Jonathan Jansen questioning the new government’s commitment to academic freedom, Mahmood Mamdani on academic hypocrisy at the University of Cape Town, and Roger South-all and Julian Cobbing on authoritarian politicking at Rhodes University were first published in journals that circulate mainly in South Africa—and now will hopefully find a wider audience. In a crucial chapter (originally a speech delivered at Rhodes in 2001), Neville Alexander decries the ways in which the English emphasis of current university language policy bars many students from taking their own languages and cultures seriously. However, Asinamali is not a comprehensive reader on South African higher education; Eve Bertelsen’s work on marketization and that of Sarah Mosoetsa and Eddie Webster on managerialism are not included, for example.

The deep disillusionment (if not bitterness) with which some of these essays were written in the late 1990s and early 2000s recalls the passing of a more hopeful age in South African social analysis. Even as some South African institutions attract ever-increasing levels of international attention and donor funding, we would do well to recall the often ugly decisions about the exclusions of poor students and unionized workers that have underpinned these national “world-class” reinventions. Whether or not a reader accepts a priori the oft-cited concept of neoliberalism, here are detailed accounts of the impact of the South African state’s early higher education policy on the lives of members of university communities, and the ways in which these developments mirrored international trends.

The debacle of the “gender chapter” aside, the book provides a service to scholars following the debates on higher education and development and provides very useful reading for those seeking to understand the complexities of modern South African universities.