A missed opportunity to rethink internationalisation – University World News

SOUTH AFRICA

Professor Robin Kelley points out that colonial domination required a whole way of thinking, a discourse in which everything that is advanced, good and civilised is defined and measured in European terms.

South Africa is a prime example of this.

South African universities are institutionally and epistemically rooted in colonial conquest, white supremacy and racist oppression, exploitation and erasure.

Colonialism and apartheid used Eurocentric knowledge and education to dehumanise black people and diminish their knowledges, cultures and humanity in order to maintain oppressive systems and structural domination.

Higher education systems and institutions were established in South Africa through the European colonial project, whose aim was to create institutions in the colonies that would develop knowledge and graduates for the expansion and maintenance of white supremacy.

This included the direct importation of educational and institutional models and curriculum from the Netherlands and Britain.

During apartheid, the white minority government saw education as a key sector tasked with the reproduction and maintenance of a racialised hierarchy and continued the propagation of racist and imported Eurocentric knowledge and curricula.

Steve Biko wrote in the 1970s how the colonial and apartheid authorities and universities distorted, disfigured and destroyed the history and consciousness of black people and painted a picture of Africans as barbarians and Africa as a dark continent through their racist and Eurocentric propaganda and lies.

Unfortunately, not much has changed epistemologically in South African higher education since the end of apartheid. Institutional cultures and the academic project remain entrenched in the colonial and apartheid racism, whiteness, Eurocentric hegemony and epistemic violence.

Assuming that Western knowledge systems are the only basis for higher forms of thinking, much of academia continues to reproduce and propagate Eurocentric worldviews, stereotypes and patronising views about Africa and the global South.

Internationalisation in South Africa

After being seen as a pariah by much of the globe during apartheid, South Africa re-entered the world in 1994. This moment also allowed the countrys universities to connect with the world.

Internationalisation, as practised in South Africa since 1994, has contributed to the further entrenchment of Eurocentric epistemological standardisation in higher education.

Internationalisation priorities have been primarily about linking up with institutions in the global North, profiling South African universities abroad in order to attract international students and make money and promoting Eurocentric education for the development of the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in the global knowledge economy and the integration of graduates from the periphery into the Euro-American game.

Sharon Stein, assistant professor of education at the University of British Columbia, argues that mainstream approaches to higher education internationalisation continue to be framed globally in ways that further entrench colonialist, capitalist global relations, and reproduce the Euro-supremacist foundations of modern Western higher education.

This has been completely ignored in South African higher education. Hardly any effort has been made to rethink and redefine internationalisation for the highly complex and unequal South African context. Instead, definitions and practices developed in the global North are taken as universal and uncritically replicated in South Africa.

Key demands of the #FeesMustFall student protests in 2016 were about the fundamental transformation of South African universities, the removal of colonial and racist symbols, the dismantling of oppressive institutional cultures and the ending of epistemic violence and decolonisation of curriculum.

This is relevant for all aspects of higher education, including internationalisation, which is deeply rooted in the colonial and neo-colonial projects of racism, domination and exploitation.

Higher education and internationalisation, as practised by the global North and their outposts since colonial times, have been constructed to systemically preserve the political, moral and economic authority of the people and nations that gained from exploiting others, or, at the very least, to impose their worldviews.

Nothing but a deliberate, critical and decolonial dismantling of the Eurocentric hegemony will change this oppressive status quo.

The South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) began work on a policy framework for internationalisation of higher education before the #FeesMustFall protests and debates about decolonisation began.

Looking at the policy framework that was approved in 2019, one has to wonder why the critical debates, engagement, ideas and scholarship about South African higher education and the need for the decolonisation of knowledge and curriculum, before, during and after #FeesMustFall, are completely absent in the document and its framing of internationalisation priorities.

DHETs policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in South Africa does not provide any historical context about higher education in the country, its colonial and apartheid roots and its post-apartheid complexities.

Definitions of internationalisation in the policy framework do not even attempt to think critically about the concept from the South African perspective. Rather, DHET simply mimics the dominant Western definitions which present Eurocentric worldviews as universal and applicable to all.

In the dominant global imaginary, promoted by Eurocentric education in the global North and in colonial outposts, such as South Africa, the Western world is seen to be at the top of a global hierarchy of humanity with the rest of the world trailing behind.

This imaginary continues to be reproduced through education and Western-dominated internationalised curricula.

The goal, ultimately, is the continued reproduction of people and places within a racialised ordering of humanity that was created through the colonial conquest. Yet, DHET does not even touch on this and the global power dynamics driving knowledge, the continued hegemony of Western and Eurocentric knowledge and ideas that are presented as universal in South Africa and the role of internationalisation in this process.

Plurality of knowledges

DHETs policy framework is completely silent when it comes to the colonial roots of internationalisation in South Africa and the continued hegemony of the Eurocentric canon in higher education.

The document quotes one of DHETs White Papers which talks about the need to advance all forms of knowledge and scholarship and the importance of prioritising the African continent in this process.

This is about plurality of knowledges and epistemic diversity and justice, which are key for higher education transformation, decolonisation and critical internationalisation debates.

However, DHETs policy framework completely forgets about this in the rest of the document, never linking plurality of knowledges to internationalisation, or explaining what the focus of South African higher education would be when it comes to this.

Internationalisation of the curriculum is presented as a priority using a Western definition of the concept. The fact that the curriculum has been international at South African universities since the colonial conquest, in which the Eurocentric knowledge was imported to subjugate and oppress black people and maintain white supremacy, something which continues unabated to this day, should have informed thinking about internationalisation of the curriculum, but it is missing in the framework.

DHETs policy framework reads largely as a technical and operational document that provides the parameters for international partnerships, collaboration, joint degrees, student and staff mobility and other tasks and procedures.

It completely fails to touch on the politics of internationalisation, the colonial roots of the concept and the continuation of the use of it to benefit the economies and institutions of the global North.

Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, research professor and director of scholarship at the University of South Africa, argues that internationalisation in countries such as South Africa cannot be a technical and procedural process, it has to be a liberatory and rehumanising project engaging with colonialism and dislocating it.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni adds that internationalisation of higher education needs to be based on decolonial internationalism and plurality of knowledges. This refers to anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-hegemonic and progressive education that, viewed from the African continent, centres Africa and the global South and views the world and all its historical and contemporary complexities through a solidarity-based epistemology.

Key here is the expansion of global archives and epistemic plurality, where all knowledges, archives, memories, texts and worldviews are critically assessed and studied in order to understand the past and present and chart a better future.

No vision for fundamental transformation

DHETs omissions are not simply mistakes; they are systemic and structural and examples of leadership failures. If one reads DHETs Strategic Plan 2020-25, decolonisation of higher education is mentioned only once, in passing, as one of the possible outcomes of DHETs efforts over the next few years.

When there is no real plan for fundamental transformation and decolonisation of the South African higher education system and institutions, we cannot expect visionary thinking that challenges the Western-dominated definitions, visions and narratives in internationalisation.

DHETs policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in South Africa is a missed opportunity to take a critical look at internationalisation in South Africa and around the world and think anew about the concept.

Still, DHETs failure should not stop progressive staff, students, practitioners and academics from disrupting the status quo, dismantling Eurocentric hegemony and thinking critically about higher education, internationalisation, the world and the possibilities of a better tomorrow for all.

Dr Savo Heleta has worked in South African higher education and internationalisation for more than a decade. He is currently based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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A missed opportunity to rethink internationalisation - University World News