MIKI TASSENI: _
AFRICAN universities are in a perennial search for relevance, where theoretical work is conducted within known parameters of what is being sought, and that it conforms or otherwise reflects problems arising from being in Africa, rather than constituting an extension of problems which troubled people elsewhere. It is however uncertain that Africa can build a foundation of its own that isn’t a physical and dialogical extension of what is being discussed in the West, tied as we are to western universities for both academic training, development assistance or agenda building for non-governmental organizations. Chances of wriggling free of all these constraints would appear to be nil, but not quite so according to Makerere University researcher, Prof. Mahmood Mamdani.
Explaining Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) efforts in that direction, Prof. Mamdani says in a keynote address that Africa ‘has no choice but to train the next generation of African scholars at home,’ which he then elaborates it requires ‘tackling the question of institutional reform alongside that of postgraduate education.’ It means this reflection is being given amidst a stretch of problems whose solutions aren’t in sight, though by comparison, the don seems to have an answer to at least this issue – revamping and enhancing postgraduate education. It is guesswork, though, how the two aspects are likely to interact.
Prof. Mamdani conducted his education in better days where bright young men or brilliant budding scholars could do so much in a short period, finishing his O-levels in 1962 and obtaining his doctorate, and returning home, in 1972 after ten years in the United States. Upon returning, he was quickly exposed to the effects of unfulfilled expectations and frustrations in the academic community, which lead generally to apathy in pursuit of learning, or reading generally, and to which his current project is related. In that sense preliminary criticism can be brought up, that apathy is socially driven; academic innovation can’t solve it.
Much further down in his exposure (The Guardian, Monday April 25, p.10) he says ‘I do not recall a single discussion on post-graduate education at either Dar or Makerere’ universities, which means there is another sphere in which the matter hangs, namely that of foreign training. Experience shows that there are different approaches to post-graduate training not just in local but also foreign universities, and at times distinguishing between Master’s level and pre-doctoral training. A professor at the University of Bordeaux I would direct his M.Phil students to notes given to his undergraduate class, for his various lectures.
Legend commonly has it that in some top UK universities like Oxford or Cambridge, when a student has taken up classes at undergraduate level with a certain professor who could as well be his tutor for a doctoral program, often he doesn’t need to take other classes, that is, prepare a Master’s. So when Prof. Mamdani’s program is to develop a doctoral training scheme based on coursework, the idea there is less to obtain qualifying papers (certificates) for a doctoral program but to alleviate for lack of exposure to intricacies of theoretical debate. However are such issues solved in classrooms, or are they rather tied to aptitude?
Prof. Mamdani is singularly concerned about the consultancy culture that has enveloped universities in Africa, and removed free debate and reading for that purpose, that is, reading for intellectual satisfaction and ability to contribute to those issues. For a ‘committed intellectual’ like the Makerere don, it isn’t surprising that this situation is irritating to him, but the idea that it can have an institutional solution is question begging. It firstly means changing entrance requirements for doctoral programs to exclude PhD by thesis, since it will be deemed ab initio that the first degree, even the second, is inadequate as prior training.
While it is quite proper that doctoral students be exposed to theoretical discursiveness in an intense manner, a couple of issues arise, namely how such a program is kept free from prior institutional prejudices, for instance a MISR doctoral student disputing the very thesis Prof. Mamdani is advancing. To wit, if the program shall be using existing material and available staff members, how shall intellectual excitement be created around those questions, when they have no reflection in reality? Where shall students or staff members obtain the social motivation they need to excel in theory, for instance influencing policy or NGO positions, etc?
The more passionate component of the don’s presentation, namely ending a situation where research in Africa works to ‘answer questions that have been formulated outside of the continent’ in the consultancy mode, is decidedly standing on one foot. Treating African ‘consultancy scholars’ as ‘native informers’ of imperialism (as it were) enables a chuckle and a heart throb among the radicals, but it is wholly unrealistic if one takes into account ‘glocalization.’ It is this phenomenon which a priori makes the North African revolution possible, because the youths were on Facebook and watch television, blog spots, YouTube, etc.
And it isn’t even a question of inability to build an African or Uganda-specific scholarship even on Uganda politics and economy because of Facebook but since the latter is merely an expression of what was in the first place universal, a constant use of the same parameters to judge. If that wasn’t the case most of what constitutes criticism would not exist, for relativism can apply even at an individual level, in which case this writer would be criticizing Prof. Mamdani because he hasn’t been exposed like himself, etc. Criticism or positive dialogue requires that common parameters exist prior to discussion; all discussion so presumes.
Saying as the don suggests that doctoral students pursuing coursework will be able to ‘both rethink old questions and formulate new’ is a tall order, if one has an exposure of Auguste Comte or Emile Durkheim. What data could Prof. Mamdani change in the history of Uganda, so that Ugandans are rational people, who did not need colonialism to foster a sense of institutions, and then performed as poorly as they did after independence, wrecking the first republic, leading to Idi Amin, a terror war of liberation, and Joseph Kony? Can anyone discuss such matters in detail without putting on the line Uganda’s basic claim to equality, dignity?
That is why everyone is safer when people rely on existing scholarship, most of which is already adapted to the psychological conditioning of its time, as in that case some ‘apologetics’ will be available to make the situation rational. One such study is Prof. Mamdani’s magnus opus, ‘Politics and Class Formation in Uganda,’ and even the more skeptical study by ex-Makerere don Prof. Ali Mazrui, ‘Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda,’ largely more authentic in outlook and bitterly criticized by Mamdani and his colleagues on account of seeking a leftist apologia, via the notion of brutality as a result of colonialism. How far for instance is it likely that Prof. Mamdani would include in the doctoral coursework, psychoanalytical mapping of radical debates in the 1970s?
He says that the ‘western paradigm (of the universality of human society, or political development theory as such) dehistoricizes and decontextualizes other experiences. He says it ‘relegates Africa to providing raw materials (data) to outside academics who process it and then re-export their theories back to Africa,’ a hazy notion. There isn’t much difference between a scholar on a short visit to conduct a study, a local student who writes a dissertation on a subject, or if the student is being trained abroad.
While Prof. Mamdani is seeking renewal of the debates of the 1970s but in a more sustainable manner by local training so that debates are a local aspect of examination of reality that is being pursued in a continuous manner, he fails to realize that the core requirement of such a condition is economic reform. Only when a country’s economy is in a course of growth that is an inspiration to its middle classes does it generate conditions for its theoretical examination, as in psychic terms theoretical debate is like mating in birds and animals, that it occurs during the rainy season. When there is plenty of grass, or prey, they mate.
Listening to experiences of what happened in Egypt brings out this phenomenon clearly, that in the time in which the revolution broke out and one month later, numerous magazines have sprung up, scores of newspapers and uncountable blog spots. The reason is that people not only have something ‘new’ to talk about but each is proud in one way or another with a contribution made – or suffering endured – in that period. It is this suffering which creates a ‘new language, and a new humanity’ when it has a positive ending, and if it’s also consonant with universal requirements of economic growth or personal liberty it is likely to be sustainable. But if it boils down again to proto-Mamdani ideas of African particularity, it will lead to some Laurent Gbagbo, as it is dictatorships and rejections of standards of democracy which constantly aspires to uniqueness, or flat ‘non-interference’ while people are killed. One can’t advocate African non-western ‘problematics’ as theory – and avoid indifference to African despotism.