Author: Noticias

África/09 de Enero de 2017/Allafrica

Resumen: La reciente muerte del Prof. Rok Ajulu ha vuelto a centrarse en el por qué de tantos académicos kenianos están basados ​​en Sudáfrica. El profesor Ajulu, esposo de la ministra de Asentamientos Humanos, Lindiwe Sisulu, vivió la mayor parte de su vida productiva fuera de Kenya y no sólo en varias universidades sudafricanas, sino que también fue consultado por organizaciones internacionales.

The recent death of Prof Rok Ajulu has once again turned focus on why so many Kenyan academics are based in South Africa. Prof Ajulu, who was the husband of Human Settlements minister Lindiwe Sisulu, lived most of his productive life outside Kenya and not only in various South African universities but also consulted for international organisations.

The 1990s were interesting years for both Kenya and South Africa, mainly for political reasons. South Africa was emerging from apartheid. Kenya was re-entering more accommodative politics with the return of political pluralism from 1991.

But prior to the 1990s, the Kanu rule in Kenya had progressively created an anti-intellectual culture, which had led to many academics going into forced or self-imposed exile. Apart from America and Europe, the southern African countries of Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia and eventually South Africa hosted many of the migrating scholars, professionals and students who sought higher education in the region. South Africa became the preferred destination after 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected in the first post-apartheid elections.

South Africa appealed to the migrating Kenyan scholars and professionals for many reasons. First, the political climate made it easy for Africans to settle down there. For those running away from political repression, South Africa’s liberal politics offered hope.

The pan-Africanist ideals of the African National Congress rekindled the dreams of the 1960s and 1970s decolonising Africa when academics were close to the political elite. These conditions made it easy for many scholars running away from countries such as Kenya, whose ruling elite had become quite intolerant and had jailed the academics before, to settle in South Africa. This is how individuals such as Prof Korwa Adar ended up teaching and researching at Rhodes University and at the Africa Institute of South Africa, in Pretoria.

Secondly, the South African economy was more advanced and offered better opportunities compared to many African economies that had been battered by the economic structural adjustment programmes that had seen the «real earnings» of civil and public servants collapse. Universities couldn’t pay lecturers living wages.

South African institutions of higher learning offered much better salaries and easily recruited from elsewhere on the continent because they needed to satisfy the new employment rules in South Africa that demanded that a certain percentage of staff in an institution be black. Considering that the apartheid system had disadvantaged black South Africans in education, qualified and skilled Africans filled the gap in the immediate.

Many Kenyans teaching in South African universities got employed in this way. But more also got employed because they were offering «special skills and knowledge», which was in short supply at the time of their employment.

Thirdly, and probably most important, and which explains the large number of Kenyan academics in South African universities today – compared to say Uganda and Tanzania – is that hundreds of Kenyans registered at South African universities for their Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the 1990s.

South African universities offered then and still do higher education comparable to any in Asia, Europe and America, more affordably. These institutions had a more established research culture than Kenyan universities and, therefore, attracted students who wanted to pursue postgraduate studies who couldn’t be absorbed locally.