Anna Majavu’s “Students fume over merger”

Students fume over merger

Feb 17, 2011 | Anna Majavu

STUDENTS at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for African Studies have hit out at plans to merge their department with three others.

The historical CAS was set up in 1976, building on the work of the School of African Studies, which had been in existence for more than 50 years and was one of the oldest in the world.

But UCT is now investigating a proposal to merge CAS with the departments of social anthropology, linguistics and the African Gender Institute.

The new department would be called the department of “Anthropology, Linguistics and Gender Studies” – and won’t even have the word Africa in its name, said angry students.

The students, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of victimisation, will launch a petition on Monday against the move.

“The CAS is a space of hope . one that UCT, in its apparent quest for transformation and Afropolitanism, must accept and support,” says their petition.

“It will be absurd if China has a Centre for African Studies but UCT does not,” said another student.

“It is a hugely political move because the history of the centre is radical and we don’t toe the line with UCT’s liberalism,” said a third student.

Paula Ensor, dean of UCT’s faculty of humanities, said the CAS was not being closed down, and if the merger went ahead, all programmes currently offered by CAS would still be offered.

“CAS was set up in the 1970s, not as an academic department in one faculty, but as a cross-faculty platform for debate and discussion about Africa. This was at a time when the study of Africa was marginalised at UCT.

“The situation at UCT is now quite different. The study of Africa is deeply rooted across the institution,” Ensor added.

But the students disputed this, saying CAS was a valuable space for students to study the continent and the African diaspora.

The students said important programmes set up between CAS and American Ivy League university Brown University and the University of the West Indies, were now in jeopardy.

But Ensor said the move came after years of “open and transparent discussion” and that students would be welcome to voice their opinions at a meeting to be held at the end of this month.

A former student of the centre, Danai Mupotsa, said: “Making a hodge-podge department that doesn’t say anything about feminism or Africa shows a complete lack of knowledge about what African gender studies entails.