The author argues that for on-going debates about “decolonising the university” in South Africa to have any meaning, what has to be decolonised first is the mental border that remains inscribed in South African notions of decolonisation.

At this stage of the revolution, the student movement must sharpen its tools of analysis and wage a fight against the hijacking of decolonisation by university managers and its commodification by the market. 

Radical educators and revolutionaries worldwide are bewildered by the question—which education is of most value? –as universities, colleges and schools turn into centres of oppression, perpetuating the dominant authoritarian discourse. 

Controversies. There have been all sorts of controversies at MISR at the behest of Mamdani. It all goes back to the beginning. The precedent was set at the onset – that Mamdani was too important to play by the rules.

I am a young African man with four university qualifications under his belt, yet, as is the case with many of my peers, adequate employment has been a challenge to obtain on offer.

The following is a statement by an independent committee, which has sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the US federal government’s Department of Education to disclose records of the financial monitoring of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This is one step toward a public dialogue and taking back our HBCUs. The viewpoint expressed about self-reliance, commons for all, and Black pride and empowerment overcoming betrayal; and elitism at our educational institutions may be of significance to the African world.

Almost three years ago, I wrote an article titled, “Dear Academia, Take Us Black”. The article came after my first encounter with the Fees Must Fall protest action. The observation I made was that University of KwaZulu-Natal’s academic staff had shut the blinds, got into their cars and drove off to God knows where “intellectuals” run to when their safe spaces are breached. This is the anti-black nature of academia.

These are short reflections on the “Pedagogies in Historical Studies: Theory and Practice” that was held at the University of Zimbabwe this year. 

In this paper, the author argues that Professor Mahmood Mamdani’s essay, “The African University”, though timely, has significant flaws along several fronts including being a simplistic version of history, having major errors of fact and omissions, making unwarranted generalisation, and using unreal and extreme dichotomies among other flaws. 

Great Lakes Journal of Strategic African Studies (GLJSAS) is an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary journal that addresses crosscutting issues of strategic significance for Africa, with special focus on (but not limited to) the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa.  These two regions are of great geopolitical significance, much as they are also home to some of the most complex political and ethnic conflicts the world has experienced.  

Frequent closure of universities in Kenya reflects poor management of the institutions. The culture of democracy is non-existent. Careerist managers treat students and staff shabbily. There are no mechanisms for addressing grievances, except through threats and violence. This must change.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o holds two teaching positions at the University of California, Irvine, as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature and Distinguished Professor of English. He does not have an earned masters or PhD degree, only a bachelor’s degree. And he is not the only one.

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, PhD, wants to see Africans unleash their suppressed creative and innovative energies by acknowledging the significance of their indigenous, authentic knowledge. In this powerful talk, she shares examples of untapped, traditional African knowledge in agriculture and policy-making, calling on Africans to make progress by validating and dignifying their reality.

Western bodies have long reduced African academics to native informants whose job is simply to collect data for those in New York or London who have the conceptual competence to study it. It is this native informant mentality that Prof. Mamdani is uprooting in his effort to transform Makerere Institute of Social Research from a consultancy unit into a full-fledged research institute. Such a person needs support, not slander.

I was able to read six human “books” in one night! The titles taught me more in a couple of hours than I could ever learn in a year! Here’s my ‘reading list’: Witchcraft and Paranormal; Arab, Muslim Woman; Jewish and Latino; Obsessive Complusive; Double Rejection; and Rejected by my Family.

What I find ironical is that you should visit the University of Cape Town as a reform evangelist when the spirit of the #RhodesMustFall which you are celebrating has been quietly and steadily stirring in Makerere Institute of Social Research since last year (and even long before that), largely due to your capricious  and dishonest leadership.

To replace pedagogies of the oppressed with education for the practice of freedom and to implement education for self-reliance, we must alter radically the political organization of the modern state of capitalist modernity.
 That is Mwalimu Nyerere's legacy in education, which remains relevant today.

Tanzania’s famous founding president Julius Nyerere was a teacher. But despite the government’s commitment to education in its development agenda, many young people shun the teaching profession. Salaries are low, classes big and teaching has little prestige among the professions.

Mahmood Mamdani, the executive director of Makerere Institute of Social Research, is not an angel. And certainly the programme is not his fiefdom. MISR’s current mission  takes seriously Frantz Fanon’s resolute plea to the African revolutionary intellectual to not simply revert to our world of yore - the pre-colonial, pre-modern, primordial, etc. - but to rethink it anew.

Prof. Mahmood Mamdani imperils the survival of the programme he heads at Makerere University by his capriciousness and reliance on political connections. This raises serious questions about his integrity as a person, scholar and administrator. Mamdani has for a long time abused the goodwill of many well-meaning but unsuspecting people who looked up to him.