THEMATIC ANALYSIS: GETTING TO GRIPS WITH CITY-TO-CITY LEARNING
5.4. Making sense of city-to-city learning
5.4.2. From ‘mentorship’ to ‘learning exchange’
The neutrality of the concept of ‘mentorship’, as adopted by the UCLG, was tested with the various respondents in relation to how they understood and made sense of the notion of city-to-city learning. This discussion stimulated intense but healthy debate amongst the eThekwini Municipality’s focus group participants who appeared not to hold a single, consensual view of the acceptability of, or a sense of ownership of the ‘mentorship’ label. At the one end of the continuum, one of the facilitators involved in the program felt that the term was a very neutral one, and was merely a matter of definition:
Well actually the definition changes each time, based on the context in which we are using it. So, for example, in the UCLG reports we will record the learning as mentorship, when we work in the field we talk about partnerships.
Lead planner, eThekwini Municipality
Another eThekwini Municipality focus group participant, whose role was to lead the facilitated discussions in the respective cities, appeared to be at the other end of the continuum, disagreeing with such a view. She acknowledged that the ‘mentorship’ label made her uncomfortable.
To be honest, every time I open a session with stakeholders in Namibia and Malawi, I explicitly clarify that eThekwini comes with an open mind, and that we want to learn together with the respective city, and that both parties were not to be seen as mentors and mentees.
Lead facilitator, eThekwini Municipality
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This is a very important admission made by one of the eThekwini municipal officials, and raised only in response to issue of mentorship. In fact, this almost contradicts the earlier notion presented by the eThekwini Municipality team where city-to-city learning was seen as one city building the capacity of the other city. This acknowledgement of a two-way learning process is interesting and only dawned on participants later during the focus group session. The fact that there was no single consistent understanding again came to the fore, when another opposing view on the concept of mentorship emerged:
eThekwini has been mentored by Sao Paulo around planning and housing and this has been a very useful process. The learning has been valuable as it deals with the issues that the city is grappling with, such as working with civil society, social inclusion and dealing with complex planning procedures in different ways.
Spatial planner, eThekwini Municipality
This view expressed by a spatial planner who reflected on their relationship with their Sao Paulo colleagues, had no difficulty with regarding their Brazilian peers as mentors, as for her, these were
“experts” in their field and from whom the Durbanites were most eager to learn. It is interesting to note that there was no hesitation in the use of the term “expert” and no critical thinking about the underlying implications of being regarded as an “expert”. The respondent was of the opinion that in the same vein, the Namibian and Malawian planners would not object to the mentorship label, because of the expertise that the eThekwini municipal planning team held with regard to urban strategic planning.
As the discussion ensued during the focus group, it emerged that ultimately it was the mentor who would decide about the political acceptability of the mentorship label, based on their own ideological positions. From this discussion with the eThekwini municipal planners, it was suggested that for the city that was being “mentored”, perhaps the label did not have much meaning. This is an important conclusion that will be revisited when the results from the interviews with the planners from the Namibia and Malawi are analyzed, as the findings are not at all what the eThekwini municipal planners had assumed they would be.
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When the mentorship concept was tested with the UCLG respondents both officials admitted that there was sensitivity about the term and that many people have criticized the ongoing use of the mentorship label. However, the starting point of the UCLG was that whilst there was a hierarchical slant implicit in the concept, this was highly defensible. For the UCLG, what made the program successful was that the mentor was charged with taking full responsibility of the learning process.
The analogy of a coach and trainee was used to make the point that one party had the responsibility of supporting the other, given that they have the experience, energy and capacity, and that they were both part of the same team with one single goal that they had jointly shared and were committed to:
The mentor is like a coach, who is the senior one, supporting the other to grow through sharing knowledge in a transparent and generous way.
UCLG program manager, Barcelona
So whilst there was unevenness in the way the term was understood between eThekwini municipal officials themselves and between eThekwini municipal officials and the UCLG, it seemed that this was not important enough to jeopardize the program or hinder it any way. It seemed that a pragmatic approach was adopted amongst the ‘mentors’ in Durban, best expressed by one of the planners:
Well… we don’t argue with the UCLG anymore, we just use our own terms. For us it is about a long-lasting learning relationship, not about whether we call ourselves mentors or mentees.
Head of Planning, eThekwini Municipality
From the above reflection from the senior planning staff member of the eThekwini Municipality emerges a subtle, but important notion of an underlying power dynamic. It is almost a benign resignation that there was no point in challenging the UCLG on the use of the concept of mentorship. It suggested too that these are just semantics, and what was more important was the actual relationship that mattered. This pragmatic approach, however, was clearly not shared by the
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officials from ALAN, whose views on the concept of ‘mentorship’ was very frank and illuminating and pointed to the first point of critical contestation in the case study.
For the Namibians, the ‘mentorship’ label was clearly politically loaded, and implied that one city is more knowledgeable than the other, and would therefore involve a process of one side giving and the other side merely receiving. Part of the difficulty with the term which emerged during further probing was the perception that the concept originated in Europe where it was assumed that the knowledge was held and to be merely transferred to Africa.
In our African context, the assumption that the ‘mentee’ has absolutely no skills and experience and expertise at all and has to learn from the other is a bit problematic, actually. For us, a much preferred concept is ‘learning exchange’ as this implies the sharing of aspects of municipal governance that each municipality is good at. It also allows for mutual benefit for both partners
Senior ALAN official
Again, with the Namibian planners from Otjiwarongo great insights into the difficulties with a generalized notion of city mentorship was gained. For the planning manager, whilst the mentorship tag in itself may not be problematic, a loose application of the mentorship notion could prove to be more destructive than beneficial. In reflecting on the concept of mentorship, she posed thought- provoking questions:
A mentor for what and a mentor for whom? What am I mentoring… and the knowledge that I am supposed to give, and the knowledge that I am imparting, is it really relevant for my mentee or not?... There must be similarity in the identities between mentor and mentees, otherwise the mentor starts imposing things that will never work.
Planning manager, Otjiwarongo Municipality
This aspect of knowing the area, understanding the context and appreciating the differences that was raised as important in a city-to-city learning relationship by the planning manager in Otjiwarongo was also elaborated on by the Otjiwarongo planner, who was the lead facilitator in
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the strategic planning process and the key point of contact between the eThekwini and Otjiwarongo municipal teams. For him, the label was less problematic than the mindset that comes with the label. Flexibility and openness to listen and learn was seen as critical elements in the relationship.
He explained:
In the context of our learning, maybe it can also go wrong if the mentor comes with an attitude that ‘I am the mentor and I know best’. So I think that all of us in life, whether mentor or mentee, life is a learning process and we can all learn from each other. The mentor should also be open to learning and should not feel that I own the expertise. Some mentors you will find are very rigid and are not open to ask themselves about the relevance due to context.
Municipal planner, Otjiwarongo Municipality
In further probing whether this attitude was prevalent during this program it was made clear that this was not at the case, however, that it was being raised as a theoretical or general concern.
Interestingly too, the ‘mentorship’ label also proved to be particularly problematic with the facilitation team at the Mzuzu City Council. For the Malawians, this concept again conveyed the notion of an unequal and skewed relationship, where only one side was giving and the other side was a passive recipient who was compelled to apply what was being shared uncritically and without adaptation:
I am not very comfortable with this label. It is because there is like a giant and then a small city. But experience has shown that even from small cities, the giants can learn. So I would say the best is to coin it as a learning exchange. You see there are implications if you say that you are being mentored. You will always think that what has worked in that particular area, will work in this particular area. You must leave room for customization, so for me, mentor is like the giant.
Lead facilitator, Mzuzu City Council
One of the Malawian support facilitators spoke passionately about how the use of a word can inform the way in which behavioral expectations can be structured. For him, using the mentorship
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label meant that there would be student-teacher relationship, which ultimately meant that one side implicitly knew more and was expected to control or at least manage the relationship. The need for a more neutral concept such as learning exchange was proposed:
Mentorship is really quite a strong word. If you had to take it seriously from the definition of it, what it means is that if I am being mentored, then I just have to sit down and listen, so it becomes difficult to propose because I am being mentored. There is a teacher there, and a student here to listen to what the teacher says and s/he knows it all. Mentorship is a word that deters other people from contributing… The notion of ‘city-to-city learning’ or partnership offers the opportunity for mutual learning and the exchange of ideas, where people are free to express themselves.
Support facilitator one, Mzuzu City Council
How do the findings in the case study resonate with the literature on mentorship, as discussed in Chapter 3? It is suggested that the Namibian and Malawian interviewees’ responses resonate best with the somewhat more conventional view of mentorship as a predominantly one-sided hierarchical relationship as articulated by many writers such as Devos (2004) and Manathunga (2007) that were identified earlier in the literature review. What is critically important to note, however, is that in the last five years, this traditional notion of mentorship has been critiqued, and more progressive notions of “peer mentorship” between colleagues in a more equal and reciprocal learning relationship have been gaining momentum in the leaning literature (Badger, 2010;
Huizing, 2012; Linden et al., 2013; Preston et al., 2014). The point to be made, however, is that despite what the latest thinking in the learning literature on more progressive notions of concepts, for the African planners on the ground, these terms were not appropriate as they had internalized and had strongly identified with the traditional notions of mentorship.
In pursuing this issue during the interview with the previous Municipal Manager from the Mzuzu City Council, a less tempered view around the concept of mentorship emerged. For him, what the process was called was far less important compared to the quality of the relationship and the attitudes between the partners:
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Looking at the label, I think ‘mentoring’ could be okay, as the one city had more experience in planning processes, and the mentee has a lot more to learn. If there are other terms that could be used, that is fine too, as some people may not be comfortable with the term. For me peer learning may be a better term. We could also talk about city- city learning… I don’t know, stakeholders could come up with better terms. The most important thing is to look at the purpose and the spirit of the relationship. The mentor has need to be developed.
Former Municipal Manager, Mzuzu City Council
This perspective from a seasoned and well respected Municipal Manager, who has since assumed the position of Municipal Manager of Malawi’s largest metropolitan area, is interesting in that it goes beyond the language to focus attention on looking at the intention and spirit of the relationship between the cities. Notwithstanding this observation, he conceded that a new term was needed, given the sensitivities implicit with the concept.
The researcher also canvassed the views of the former City Manager of the eThekwini Municipality on the concept of ‘mentorship’ to determine whether it was indeed just about semantics, and perhaps a red herring that would serve only as a distraction. The response from this city leader and academic who was instrumental in introducing the program in the eThekwini Municipality, and was the Co-chair of the UCLG is important and draws attention to the contestation of the concept. His insights are valuable and are therefore cited here in its entirety:
I took issue with the concept… it was a battle between the UCLG from the global north and myself representing the south. You see, mentorship can be used in a person to person context, as there are people with experience and those without experience. But the more I studied cities the more I learned that there is no city that knows everything, that is better than another, and there cannot be a one-to-one relationship there. Even in the most rural, the dustiest, the most devastating of contexts there is something to learn there, and sometimes there are really good experiences there. If you are thinking city-to-city, then it has to be partnerships, not mentorships.
Former City Manager, eThekwini Municipality
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The results from the case study have shown that the whilst the program has been progressing for the last five years without overt objection to the ‘mentorship’ label there are some serious reservations ranging from discomfort through to an explicit dislike of the concept. These were revealed only during this research project, and not otherwise raised at all during the program by any of the protagonists, except for the former eThekwini Municipality City Manager. It is worth reiterating at this point the phronetic research approach adopted in this research, which involves a more active role for researchers, who become “actors in the flow of history rather than bystanders”
(Sandercock & Attili, 2012: 164). Given this philosophical stance, the researcher requested that the preliminary findings from his research be presented to all the key stakeholders including the UCLG, UCLGA, funders and the respective cities involved in the program.
The emerging challenge with the concept of mentorship was presented as a key tension point at a reflection workshop organized in Mozambique in March 2015. At this session, there was consensus that in moving forward the notion of learning exchange or peer learning would be used as the official terminology of the UCLG. What is significant is that it was only through the intervention of this research that a key tension point was identified, and presented back to key stakeholders, and then through consensual collaboration an alternative concept found that was acceptable to all players involved in the case study. Working in this phronetic research mode, and becoming an actor rather than a bystander in the UCLG case study, for the researcher, is a powerful way to contribute to transformative planning practice on the continent.
Whilst some respondents have dismissed or discounted the debate as a distraction centered on mere semantics, it is posited that given the emotion around the issue; this could also be a useful indicator or pointer to a more fundamental issue of recognizing subtle power relationships at play – an issue that will be developed later on in the analysis that explores this theme. What is turned to next is the related aspect of whether or not learning between cities involves a one-sided transfer of knowledge from ‘mentor’ to ‘mentee’ that was referred to in the definition of city-to-city learning or about a more equal relationship with mutual benefit.
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