Durban – The University of Zululand is trying to bring scholars from various countries to create an authentic African university.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Institutional Support at the University of Zululand, Professor Sipho Seepe made the statement during an international conference on African thought at the campus in Richards Bay, on Thursday.
Seepe said African universities established during the colonial era were meant to support the colonial project. He said many African universities remained colonial institutions; it answered questions, not about “our challenges, but the way we mimic scholarships elsewhere”.
“At the University of Zululand, we have taken a position of trying to transform this university into an authentic African university that addresses and identifies challenges that the continent and our local communities face so that we become a part of the solution and not an island in a sea of poverty,” Seepe said.
Seepe believes that the biggest challenge in dealing with this is how people engage in the relevant research. Seepe used the example of how the South African government was seeking help from international countries when Covid-19 began.
“How can a huge continent with almost 1 billion people, still have to rely on other people to solve its own problems?” This was why African scholars found it easy to go to other countries because what they had studied was close to that of the first world.
Seepe asked: “How do we give an institutional expression to the idea that our universities must stop being colonial projects, but become authentically African-centred; responding to African problems while contributing to world knowledge.”
Seepe obtained his masters in physics from University of Witwatersrand, as well as a masters in technology in education from Harvard University.
Seepe has co-written various works and two of them touch on the same issue. In 1998, his work was called “Black perspective(s) on tertiary institutional transformation”. The 2020 work was entitled, “Tertiary Institutional Transformation in South Africa Revisited”.
He summarises the first book by stating it focused on the reflection of transitioning from apartheid and change. “We had to ask ourselves what extent are our universities reflecting the geo-political imagination of apartheid and if they still reflect that, we need to transform them.”
His piece in 2020 was an extension of this book and says that not much has changed. “We have not made strides in terms of dealing with the issues of the curriculum. Our curricular still remain and isn’t that different from the curricular under apartheid.”
Seepe said: “We must participate in the total emancipation of African people, not only politically, but also culturally and economically. When that happens, then we will be giving that expression to Nelson Mandela’s vision of a free Africa. We must be masters of our own destiny, not simply people who are an outpost of the West or simply mimicking.”
Daily News