I wrote the following piece earlier this month in answer to the comments of two senior politicians, Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr Blade Nzimande and Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, about how South Africa’s universities – their staff and their students – should respond to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In essence, I believe very strongly that, as I phrase it below, universities are “not activists nor ideologues”, and that, in contrast, it is the task of engaging in “critical reflection” that “goes to the heart of what a university stands for”. The value of the academy lies in its “dispassionate, reasoned and reflective nature”.
Pressure being placed on South African Universities to Take a Stance on Israel-Palestine*
On 6 May 2024, the South African Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande, expressed his “dismay and disbelief” at the decision of Stellenbosch University’s Senate when it voted against a motion of `Genocide and Destruction of Scholarship and Education in Gaza’. He labelled the decision shameful and called on “all progressive members of the Council, the alumni, the workers, and the student leadership at Stellenbosch University to condemn this morally bankrupt and profoundly racist decision by the Senate”.
Three days later, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor appealed to students and university administrators in South Africa to follow the lead of their US and other international counterparts to join the Palestinian solidarity cause.
Leaving aside the thorny question of the autonomy of universities, should we follow the lead of these two cabinet ministers? My answer is a DECISIVE NO!
Often the full import of an event or set of events is known to us only years later. In conflict situations disinformation from all sides is real. How can universities respond to a conflict which we do not fully understand?
Universities are not intelligence services, they are not militaries, humanitarian agencies or foreign ministries. In this polarizing world, one needs the dispassionate, reasoned and reflective nature of universities even more to understand the roots of conflict.
According to the Geneva Academy of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, there are 110 armed conflicts currently taking place in the world. Should South African university senates respond to all of them? Should we issue 110 statements on all these conflicts? The pressure being placed only on Israel gives rise to the question of why Israel is being singled out? This in turn opens South African universities up to the charge of anti-semitism.
It also raises the question of what we hope to achieve with these statements. Just between 2015 and 2024, there have been almost 200 UN resolutions against Israel. What has been achieved? Will Jerusalem shake if a South African university condemns (Israeli) actions in Gaza?
It is also abundantly clear that certain conflicts are privileged over others. No South African university had any discussion of the 377,000 people killed in the war in Yemen or our government’s complicity in arming those countries involved in attacking Yemen. How about the 6 million people killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 31,000 more deaths being added every month? Do they get a mention? What about a statement on the brutal civil war in Sudan where tens of thousands have been killed, millions have been displaced and famine has seized the country?
Far from condemning the actions of murderers, the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted General Hemedti in his official residence in January this year. Hemedti has a long history of human rights abuses. He was a commander of the Janjaweed militia in Darfur (which committed) unspeakable crimes against a defenceless population. In that instance, South Africa chose to protect his boss, Field Marshal and President Omar el Bashir, from an international warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court. Some 300,000 lives were lost in Darfur and South Africa did its utmost to protect the guilty.
This begs the question: do African lives matter less than Palestinian lives for South Africa?
It seems to me that the ANC has politicized the issue of Israel-Palestine in a cynical attempt to shore up their faltering support base.
Others have suggested more malevolent reasons for Pretoria’s stance. Last week, 160 lawyers wrote a letter to the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken urging Washington to investigate the allegations that the South African government accepted bribes from Iran to accuse Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice. If true, consider this foreign policy capture – a variation of state capture – with grave implications for our foreign policy and our country.
In this situation, what should the role of universities be?
In my view, no statement should be issued on any conflict. Universities are not activists nor ideologues. This position goes to the heart of what a university stands for. We engage in critical reflection. We stand for diversity, intellectual engagement and tolerance. We promote peace by teaching our students to respect the proverbial other and divergent opinions. We nurture empathy and shatter stereotypes by approaching our subject matter in an even-handed manner.
Returning to Israel-Palestine, the only breakthrough in the peace process was the Oslo Peace Accords facilitated by Norwegian academics in a Track II peace initiative. They could successfully engage with both sides, since both parties trusted their impartiality. Should South African universities issue a statement at the urging of our cabinet ministers, we will surrender this impartiality and foreclose any opportunity to constructively engage in this conflict, end the carnage and create the conditions for an enduring peace for all.
Perhaps more importantly, no South African university should sacrifice its detached academic stance in favour of the ruling party’s agenda in a short-term attempt to bolster electoral support. No South African university should surrender its autonomy to a state which has so spectacularly failed its citizens.
*This piece was first published in Number 4 of Volume 12 of the journal of the think tank, Research of Islam and Muslims in Africa (RIMA). RIMA describes its mission as promoting “research on Islam in Africa as well as on Muslim countries and communities in Africa and the Diaspora in the past and the present; to achieve a better understanding of current issues affecting Islam and Muslims in Africa; and to provide vital information and material on the culture, economy, social issues, politics, law, environment, etc. within African Muslim countries and communities.”
The founder and director of the think tank is Dr Moshe Terdiman, who is an expert on Islam in Africa, has written a lot about this topic and was the director of the Islam in Africa Project within PRISM. Currently, he is also a research fellow in the Ezri Center for Iran & Persian Gulf Studies, University of Haifa.
[Image: Student rally at the main campus at the University of Sydney. Bookish Worm, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139495725]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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