Chapter 2: Academic freedom in different contexts
2. Academic freedom in different contexts
2.3 Africa
institutional autonomy, formerly so highly prized in Britain, have been deleterious. He writes that, “Accountability and the audit culture combine powerful moral reasoning with the methodology of financial accounting” and that “accountability appears to be a type of penance that is now being paid for former autonomy.”141
The possible parallels with the trajectory described above and the South African situation are a matter of debate and are discussed more fully in Chapter Seven. Evident in the account above is a different locus of the debates from the United States‟ context.
While the United States‟ debates relate most closely to Quadrant One understandings of individual academic freedom, the British debates are located in Quadrant Three in the main, with a fundamental concern being the shift in the boundary of the state towards the institutions and control in the name of the market being exercised in a much greater fashion than in the past.
feared unrest from subject peoples. Thus when universities were established in the colonies, while otherwise modelled on the metropolitan home university, they were generally not permitted freedoms that were allowed in the metropole.”143 There was limited access to colonial higher education, and at the time of independence, the size of the academic system was very small. The language of instruction was the language of the coloniser. Indeed, in summary, “the few universities set up in the colonial period were designed with a narrow focus on cost-effectiveness and meeting the short-term needs of the colonial state and economy.”144
At independence in the 1960s, there were a number of challenges, chief among these being nation-building, or the national unity project, and development, as well as the expectation of increased access to higher education. Olukoshi notes that the big debate of the time was autonomy versus the development agenda, and in that the political agenda held sway, so that the modern African university is a product of nationalism. He notes that, given the artificial nature of modern African countries, not built on pre-existing unified nations, the state was the sole legitimate force able to constitute national unity and development goals were mostly set by the state. In the immediate post- independence period, statist models of government were adopted in many instances.
These held sway for a while, but began to unravel in the 1970s.145
Indeed, in the post-independence era, national education was regarded as very important, being seen as the key to national development. Mamdani sets up a dichotomy between relevance and quality in the debates of the post-independence period, quality being understood as standards determined in a Western context, and relevance meaning the application of knowledge in the advancement of the development agenda.
This is not unlike the equity/quality debate in post-apartheid South Africa. He sums up the argument as follows, “For if the quest for relevance would tend to localize
143 Philip G. Altbach, “Academic freedom: international realities and challenges”, Globalisation and Higher Education: Views from the South, Cape Town, 2001, p.10.
144 Mahmood Mamdani, “Introduction: the quest for academic freedom”, in Diouf, M. and Mandani, M. (eds), Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar, CODESRIA, 1994, p.1.
145 Adebayo Olukoshi, “Facing the challenges of reform and renewal in the African university”, SAARDHE Conference, Durban, 2005.
universities, would it not at the same time compromise quality and standards, which to have any meaning must be understood in universalist terms?” 146 He argues that the one uncontested and unexamined assumption was that the state was the custodian of a rather narrowly understood developmental process, with the main quest in education being to make it more relevant to an African situation.
Another debate of the time outlined by Olukoshi was the indigenisation debate of the 1960s and 1970s, referring to both academic staff and curriculum. There was considerable pressure to replace expatriate staff at universities, and in this the universities were successful. For example, in terms of personnel, where the Professors at the University of Dakar at independence had primarily been French expatriates, by the late 1970s the staff complement was 100% indigenous.147 With respect to indigenising the curriculum, the outcome was mixed. There was some success in indigenising the curriculum in the social sciences such as in African history, but not in other disciplines where there was mostly a replication of courses from elsewhere. In select disciplines there was some methodological innovation, for example in oral history, but most are still condemned to what Mazrui calls “paradigmatic dependency”.148 Mazrui argues that the real question is how to promote development in a post-colonial state without consolidating the structures of dependency inherited from its imperial past.149
Two other debates characterised the period. These were the question of the language of instruction, still an unresolved one, and the roles and responsibilities of the African intellectual. On the language issue, some intellectuals such as Achebe had suggested using English as effectively as possible to convey the authenticity of the African experience, that is, to enrich the English language and make it culturally rooted, but, largely because of the paucity of material in indigenous languages and the sheer
146 Mahmood Mamdani, “Introduction: the quest for academic freedom”, in Diouf, M. and Mamdani, M. (eds), Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar, CODESRIA, 1994, p.2.
147 Adebayo Olukoshi, “Facing the challenges of reform and renewal in the African university”, SAARDHE Conference, Durban, 2005.
148 Ali Mazrui, “Towards re-Africanizing African universities: who killed intellectualism in the post colonial era?” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 2 (3&4) 2003, p.143.
149 Ibid.
number of them in any one country in Africa, the language of instruction remains that of the coloniser.150 Many linguists would argue that education in the mother tongue is essential for cognitive development, but logistics and feasibility undermine the potential for this to occur. As Mamdani comments, “No cultural constellation in the colonized world has a linguistic divide between working people and intellectuals as sharp as that in Africa.”151
In the second debate, the responsibility of the African intellectual was considered to be one of leading the nation in development issues and in building national culture.
Indeed, the era was initially marked by fervent intellectual activity, as Shivji fondly recalls. He reminisces about the University of Dar-es-Salaam in the immediate post- colonial era as follows:
The university flourished. It became a hotbed of radical nationalism where researches were done to reclaim our history; where debates were conducted to debunk domination; where students demonstrated and protested against injustice and oppression, exploitation and discrimination, imperialism and apartheid. It mattered not whether the victims of injustices and oppression were white, black, brown or yellow. Human liberation and human freedom are indivisible.152
And, in so doing, he bemoans the current resurfacing of the colonised mind and the passing of the culture of collegiality in the new corporate management culture ushered in through international donors.153
Mamdani holds that at the time there was little questioning of the developmental logic embedded in the nature of university education in Africa. In his account, the immediate post-independence national development fervour began to unravel as a result of growing
150 On the language issue see Mahmood Mamdani, “Why an African university now?”, SAARDHE Conference, Durban, 2005, and Neville Alexander, “Language policy, symbolic power and the democratic responsibility of the post-apartheid university”, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies, 12 (2) 2003.
151 Mahmood Mamdani, “Introduction: the quest for academic freedom”, in Diouf, M. and Mamdani, M. (eds), Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar, CODESRIA, 1994, p.10.
152 Issa Shivji, “Whither university?” CODESRIA Bulletin, (1&2), 2005, p.3.
153 Ibid.
state authoritarianism. Governments began to take over universities as national assets and campuses became arenas of conflict between students and academics against governments. The developmental capacity of the independent state appeared to be in trouble. By the late 1970s, with states experiencing severe budgetary crises, they began moving their priorities from development to law and order.154 A period of the denial of academic freedom began and continued in most cases until the present, although, as noted below, there are signs of change in some countries where democracy has taken root.
Mazrui relates how in the early 1990s he needed not only the permission of the Vice- Chancellor but also of the Head of State before he was allowed to give a lecture entitled
“African universities and the American model of higher education” at the University of Nairobi in Kenya.155 He outlines both the lack of academic freedom and the curtailment of intellectualism in Africa from the 1970s, an intellectualism that had been alive in the immediate post-colonial era, ascribing this to rising political authoritarianism and African countries being caught in the middle of the Cold War between Western powers and the Soviet bloc, a situation that manifested itself in sometimes contrary ways. He writes that,
“while in Kenya intellectualism died partly because of the Cold War opposition to socialism, in Tanzania intellectualism died partly because of excessive local enthusiasm for socialism.”156 Among other cases of a crackdown on academic freedom, he cites the abduction and disappearance of Frank Kalimuzo, Vice-Chancellor of Makerere University, as well as the Chief Justice of Uganda, Benedicto Kiwanuka, under Idi Amin‟s military dictatorship. As he says, the “scintillating intellectual voices of Uganda either fell silent or went into exile.”157
Indeed, the forces of repression were in those years mostly internal to the countries concerned. As Olukoshi points out, national political elites saw universities as
154 Mahmood Mamdani, “Introduction: the quest for academic freedom”, in Diouf, M. and Mamdani, M. (eds), Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar, Senegal, CODESRIA, 1994, p.5.
155 This was no longer the case for this lecture, delivered at the same university, in 2003.
156 Ali Mazrui, “Towards re-Africanizing African universities: who killed intellectualism in the post colonial era?” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 2 (3&4) 2003, p.138.
157 Ibid. p.137.
instruments, as integral parts of the state apparatus. National coalitions began to fall apart with single party rule and the “fathers of the nation” idea of presidents for life.
Some universities began to become detached from the people.158 While this national challenge to academic freedom arose in the late 1970s and 1980s, accompanied by severe fiscal crises, this factor has, in most parts of, not abated. Writing in 2003, Teferra and Altbach conclude, after outlining a number of violations of academic freedom in Algeria, Kenya and Ethiopia, that “most African governments are intolerant of dissent, criticism, nonconformity, and free expression of controversial, new or unconventional ideas … In such an environment, the academic community is often careful not to overtly offend those in power. This contributes to the perpetuation of a culture of self- censorship.” 159
It is clear to Mazrui too, that “governmental involvement in university affairs is the norm … Throughout much of Africa, the head of state holds the ultimate authority as the chancellor or president in appointing vice-chancellors”.160 This is true of Nigeria, and Barrow and Ukeje note that there “the appointment of vice-chancellors, in particular, has been a bone of contention between the university unions and the federal government.”161 They note that Nigerian higher education experienced phenomenal growth in the 1980s, but then funding declined and conditions for academics worsened. Higher education in Nigeria became characterised by a resultant brain drain, inflexible management
158 Adebayo Olukoshi, “Facing the challenges of reform and renewal in the African university”, SAARDHE Conference, Durban, 2005.
159 Damtew Teferra and Philip G. Altbach, “African higher education: challenges for the 21st century”, Higher Education, 47, 2004, pp.40-41. They quote Aman Attieh (2003) on serious violations of freedom of speech and expression by security forces, opposition groups and militant groups in Algeria since 1992 that have silenced not only scholars but also the citizens as a whole. They also note that in Kenya, Charles Ngome (2003) outlined unwarranted government interference and abuses of academic freedom that eroded the autonomy and quality of the higher learning institutions. A further case cited is the summary expulsion of over forty university professors from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia in the mid- 1990s (Wondimu 2003). A more recent case is the expulsion of Kenneth Good from Botswana in 2006.
160 Ibid. p.27.
161 Monica Iyegumwena Barrow and Fidelma Ekwutozia Ukeje, “The academic workplace in a changing environment: the Nigerian scene”, in Altbach, P.G. (ed), The Decline of the Guru: the academic profession in developing and middle-income countries, New York, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003, p.277.
structures, declining quality of graduates, and little inter-university traffic as a result of ethnic concerns. Not only the Vice-Chancellor, but the governing councils were appointed by the president of country. Staff unions negotiated directly with government for all institutions, staff members were all tenured, and their salaries were harmonised with the civil service. Civil service regulations for academics are common in Africa.
Barrow and Ukeje write further that “Traditionally, Nigerian universities have enjoyed considerable freedom in the area of teaching and research. However, this cherished freedom had been threatened from time to time by the degree of control the government has had over university affairs, especially during the long military era, which created an adversarial relationship between the government and the universities.”162 Barrow and Ukeje go on to make the point that autonomy and self-regulation may be difficult to achieve where universities rely on government funding.
The state-institution relationship in most parts of post-colonial Africa is clearly one that does not allow for academics or universities to govern themselves. Again, perhaps the precondition for institutional autonomy is democracy, for in many democratic countries where greater degrees of academic freedom in the Quadrant Three sense do obtain, such as in Britain, public institutions are also largely funded by their governments. As Neave writes:
It is theoretically well within the bounds of possibility to have a higher education system subject to formal state control and yet to have minimal interference or to have a degree of intervention which, if not negligible, is nevertheless perceived by those it affects as part of the natural order of things. In short, it is not State control per se which is the source of disquiet so much as what is perceived as reinforcing State control beyond established bounds. One is never so conscious of State control as when it assumes a dynamic which obliges central authority to take initiatives and, like Captain Kirk, to boldly go where it has never gone before.163
In Africa, certainly, it is apparent that there have been times when the state has ventured into those areas and made academics very aware of state control beyond
„established bounds‟.
162Monica Iyegumwena Barrow and Fidelma Ekwutozia Ukeje, “The academic workplace in a changing environment: the Nigerian scene”, in Altbach, P.G. (ed), The Decline of the Guru: the academic profession in developing and middle-income countries, New York, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003, p.291..
163 Guy Neave, “The evaluative state reconsidered”, European Journal of Education, 33 (3) 1998, p.270.
While the above picture in terms of governance looks bleak, there are signs of change. For example, President Mwai Kibaki in Kenya decided to give up Chancellorships of the six public universities as a symbol of “decentralisation and depoliciticization”.164 In Nigeria, there were indications that with the advent of democracy there would be moves towards a deregulated system where government interference would be minimised.165 Barrow and Ukeje note in addition that, in 2003, the Ijalaye Panel was working on policies and legislation to ensure academic autonomy.166 Similarly, partly as a result of experiences in Tanzania and Senegal, academics have in the past come together in a number of forums to produce Declarations on Academic Freedom that still have currency, for example, The Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility, 1990, signed by “the African intellectual community, and the Dar- es-Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of Academics, 1990, signed by the staff associations of institutions of higher education in Tanzania.”167 The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) has an ongoing project on academic freedom, with occasional conferences run under its auspices, such as one on academic freedom in Dakar in 2004, and it has recently been a theme in the Journal of Higher Education in Africa.168
Apart from the direct attacks on academic freedom and the general curtailment thereof through governance arrangements, there have been a number of related, but different, external challenges to academic freedom in Africa as well. The funding crisis of the late 1980s led states to seek assistance from multinational lending agencies, chiefly
164 Damtew Teferra and Philip G. Altbach, “African higher education: challenges for the 21st century”, Higher Education, 47, 2004, p.30.
165 For example, the Declaration of the UNESCO-NUC (National Universities Commission) Roundtable on
“Promoting a Culture of Reform in Nigerian universities” initiated by ex-President Obasanjo, July 2004. It remains to be seen to what extent such proposed reforms will be implemented under the new government of Umaru Yar‟Adua.
166 Monica Iyegumwena Barrow and Fidelma Ekwutozia Ukeje, “The academic workplace in a changing environment: the Nigerian scene”, in Altbach, P.G. (ed), The Decline of the Guru: the academic profession in developing and middle-income countries, New York, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003, p.291.
167 The Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility, in Diouf, M. and Mamdani, M. (eds), Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar, CODESRIA, 1994, p.13.
168 CODESRIA http://www.codesria.org/Publications.htm/
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their conditions of lending led to the adoption of structural adjustment strategies: that is, currency devaluations, liberalisation of the economy, the removal of subsidies, deflationary economics politics and fiscal conservatism, and these together resulted in the intensification of the funding crisis of African universities. Teferra and Altbach trace the origins of the concerns for higher education to a variety of factors. They write that, “Africa faces severe fiscal crisis, as a result of „massification‟ and expansion in the post-colonial era, economic problems in most countries, a changed fiscal climate induced by multilateral lending agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF, the inability of students to afford the tuition rates, or the inability to impose tuition fees because of political pressure, misallocation and poor prioritization of available financial resources.”169
Others note that part of the problem was the prioritising of primary over higher education, a decision that inspired outrage among African intellectuals. Referring to World Bank and IMF terms and conditions which favour primary education at the expense of expenditure on higher education, Mittelman argues that:
Literacy for the poor is a worthwhile objective, but it should not be at the expense of depriving a Third World country of investment in research and development, which is essential to increasing productivity. Conditionality not only imposes false choices, but also constrains academic freedom, for without the most basic academic support – books, journals and equipment – how can one attain an education? Under such conditions, how can educators maintain standards?170
The consequences of the structural adjustment programmes, which emphasised primary education and resulted in a reduction of funds to higher education, were deleterious. Indeed, in 1978, Vice-Chancellors of a number of African universities met in Harare171 and were asked to rationalise universities as the per capita cost was too high.
It was intended that primary and vocational education be undertaken locally but that tertiary level education was to be followed overseas. More than sixty Vice-Chancellors refused as they were not about to secure their own dismissal. However, there was a
169 Damtew Teferra and Philip G. Altbach, “African higher education: challenges for the 21st century”, Higher Education, 47, 2004, p.26.
170 James H. Mittelman, “Academic freedom, the state and globalisation”, in Diouf, M. and Mamdani, M.
(eds), Academic Freedom in Africa, Dakar, CODESRIA, 1994, p.145.
171 Mahmood Mamdani, “Why an African university now?, SAARDHE Conference, Durban, 2005.