Africanizing the School Curriculum

Promoting an Inclusive, Decolonial Education in African Contexts

Anthony Afful-Broni, Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, Kolawole Raheem, George J. Sefa Dei, Anthony Afful-Broni, Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, Kolawole Raheem, George J. Sefa Dei

• Publisher: Myers Education Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781975504618
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Formazione dei docenti

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include:

• operationalizing the key terms of "inclusion" and "curriculum"
• strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and
• the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform

This book also raises a variety of key questions:

• how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future?
• what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives?
• how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human?
• how do we challenge colonizing and imperializingrelations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education?
• how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing?

The book identifies specific areas of an "inclusive/decolonized curriculum agenda" through educational programming and reform. It is essential reading to any student or teacher concerned about understanding the many facets of an African school curriculum. Perfect for courses such as: Principles of Anti-Racism Education | Anti-Colonial Thought: Pedagogical Implications | Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization: Pedagogical Implications | Modernization, Development and Education in African Contexts | African Systems of Thought | Introduction to African Studies

CHAPTER 1

Decolonizing Knowledge in the Bosom of the “Marketplace”: Makerere University Scholars in the Age of the National Resistance Movement’s Neoliberal Policies (1989–2007)

Nakanyike Musisi

THE NATIONAL RESISTANCE Movement (NRM) government’s strategies to influence the commodification of knowledge production and its growing encroachment on academic freedom have become legendary. Seen as “carved in the belly” of neoliberal policies, commentators have accused Makerere University in Uganda of relinquishing its mission and the work of decolonization in particular. In this chapter, the NRM government’s neoliberal policies are seen as representing a complex web of neocolonial relations that, like the political colonialism of the past century, are as destructive as they are generative, and they have tended to provoke comparable responses. Nonetheless, a neocolonial state such as Uganda, driven by neoliberal principles, is more than a set of power/commercial/economic relations; it is a system of exploitation and oppression that, since the 1980s, has turned universities across the globe into what Achille Mbembe (2016) calls “a springboard for global markets in an economy that is knowledge based, innovation based” (p. 38). Mbembe asks: “Can we fight against this?” Limiting myself to the period from 1989 to 2007—a time frame discussed in Scholars in the Marketplace (Mamdani, 2007, 2016)—and to a case study approach, I employ the cultural anthropologists’ concept of “refusal,” particularly as advanced by Audra Simpson (2014) in Mohawk Interruptus, to answer Mbembe’s question in the affirmative.

To cultural anthropologists, “refusal” is not merely a “no”; it is a stance that connotes an end to something and beginning of something new—a way in which to produce and reproduce communities. It rejects hierarchical relationships in order to create different relationships. Within this understanding, refusal permits an alternative vision of not only “doom” but also a more optimistic future as it exemplifies both limits and possibilities. At the same time, refusal is strategic. It is not an accidental, random act but rather a premeditated, conscious, unhurried action/step toward one thing, belief, or practice. Although cultural anthropologists caution us not to see refusal as simply a response to authority or a revised/modernized version of resistance, it is as much about recognition and about the social as it is about the political. Above all, in Simpson’s (2014) lexicon, it is about not authorizing others to define and determine the conditions of engagement. Ultimately, refusal is instead about individuals refusing identities, restrictive structures, and systems, as well as a gauge that indicates that a “limit” has been reached for things to continue in a certain way (Mcgranahan, 2016; Ortner, 1995; Redfield, 2013; Simpson, 2014).

For the task at hand, I find the concept of refusal attractive for it allows us to conceptually map a vast swath of decolonizing efforts at Makerere. Specifically, I use it in this chapter to do two things: first, to search for productive subversive elements that refused to submit to the ostensible “consultancy culture” that Scholars in the Marketplace (Mamdani, 2007) posits as having produced knowledge for capital and, second, to map out how these subversive elements navigated between different sites of knowledge production (communities, activists, or social movements) to advance knowledge and curricula that spoke/speaks to the histories of the subjugated and marginal. The intent is not to deny that the conditions described in Scholars in the Marketplace were real nor that the analysis of the book was faulty. Scholars in the Marketplace reflects major anxieties about the future of Makerere University and, by extension, African universities, in general, and the work they must continue to perform. I contend, however, that the use of the economistic analysis as a mono lens through which to view Makerere masks appreciation of the important work, however slim, many are doing to decolonize the institution, curricula, pedagogy, and the production of knowledge, challenging the system at its core.

Argument

There is no doubt that the Makerere of the time described in the Scholars in the Marketplace (1989–2005; Mamdani, 2007) was filled with tensions along many axes (political alignments, social groups, ethnicities, or issue-based coalitions) that were not always as stable as one would expect or assume. Nevertheless, Makerere and pockets in it were able to reignite the spirit of decolonization and emancipation that had almost been smothered out by 20 years of decay during and following the atrocious Idi Amin and Obote II regimes in the 1960s and 1970s (see Sicherman, 2005). I submit that, although conditions and the NRM’s neoliberal policies produced unpalatable calamities so eloquently and in places melodramatically described in Scholars in the Marketplace, they also provided Makerere with a productive space for a process of ongoing decolonization. Elements of this decolonization not only survived that era but have also been replicated in the region. They cannot be simply written off patronizingly as some scholars have done.

I argue that the neoliberal quandary created a window for the ivory tower/development university to reimagine its role in the present and the future, positing a complex revaluation between theory and praxis. Far from being complacent with the NRM’s neoliberal policies, progressive inquiry did not lose the spirit of decolonization and emancipation. Key to my argument is that this reignition often interrupted the colonial episteme by tampering with the very processes and mediums through which knowledge was/is produced while suggesting alternative solutions/critiques to old colonial problematics. Playing and engaging with the politics of refusal were key in these processes: refusal to be constrained by the neoliberal limits’ to be defined by certain and often unattainable standards; to engage in “intellectual Olympics”; to teach in certain ways, the colonially inherited definitions of instructional time of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; to reject traditional forms of knowledge and ways of knowing; to continue entertaining historical discriminations on the basis of gender, class, ableism or sexual orientation; to be silenced—the list goes on and on.

In all these instances, Makerere was a pioneer in the region, and inexplicably, these instances took place between 1989 and 2007, the years covered in the Scholars in the Marketplace (Mamdani, 2007), which was the most difficult period but also the most productive in Makerere’s history—a turning point. What was at stake was for Makerere to find itself beyond the colonial perimeters and privileges on which it had been founded (including doing away with giving “boom,” a stipendiary allowance given to all university students by the government) and under whose tutelage it had long operated as well as often favorably been evaluated/imagined or even defended. Work done in various departments alongside feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) scholarship testifies to Makerere scholars’ commitment to the spirit of decolonization, emancipation, and freedom. Among several exemplary scholars, I note here the late professor Moses Musazi, who, combining Indigenous knowledge and modern technology, invented papyrus sanitary towels (MakaPads). Musazi did not generate a fortune from his invention, nor could we say that his willingness, as a member of the faculty of engineering, to participate in multidisciplinary research with Women and Gender Studies and Education, was part of any agenda other than to address the issue of “how best to improve the retention of girls in school/curtail their dropout.” I would have liked to bring to your attention the work of several units and scholars at Makerere, such as Associate Professor Jjuko from the Faculty of Law and partner of the dean of the School of Women and Gender Studies, Professor Consolanta Kabonessa; Abasi Kiyimba; Joe Oloka-Onyango (Sylvia Tamale’s partner); Ruth Mukama; Joy Kwesiga; Deborah Kasente; and several others, but, in the interest of time, the discussion is limited to one department (psychiatry) and one individual (Sylvia Tamale) and leads into an exposé of one episode (Stella Nyanzi).

Psychiatry

The Department of Psychiatry at Makerere University was started in 1966 in spite of mental health care’s long existence in Uganda since 1894. Although Ugandan and expatriate psychiatrists had acknowledged the importance of “Africanization”—cultural and traditional healers—in the profession’s golden age (1962–1972), psychiatry continued to be taught in a manner in which Indigenous knowledge and practitioners were obscured and not given a central place in instruction and research. As Yolana Pringle (2013) narrates, the focus was more on the creation of modern psychiatry, given that many Ugandan psychiatric professors, such as Stephen Bbosa, feared the public would perceive them as “unscientific.”

The atypical appointment of anthropologists and psychologists into the Department of Psychiatry signaled a change in the way the discipline would be taught, maladies approached (acknowledgment), and the nature of the research to be conducted. On one hand, this change unsettled deeply entrenched colonial presuppositions about the supposed superiority of Western ideas about mental health that denigrated African concepts, healing methods, and practices (Ovuga, Boardman, & Wasserman, 2006). On the other, it advanced and implemented the apprehensive aspirations of earlier years, particularly the early 1970s. The goal was to decolonize African concepts that deal with mental well-being, medicine, and traditional practitioners—concepts such as witchcraft, mizimu, ddalu, ddogo, lubaale, kisamira, misambwa, ebyekikia, and kazoole—and to bring them into the realm of the students’ learning and ultimate praxis.

If the positioning of traditionalists’ healing knowledge alongside Western psychiatric knowledge in the curriculum marked a departure from the previous teaching regimes in the department, it also called into question colonial normative assumptions about mental health—particularly its being linked to “modernity” and “detribalization” among Africans. Nonetheless, inasmuch as it embarked on a critique of earlier approaches, it did not completely toss them out. The current approach acknowledges the historical existence and treatment of mental illness that predate colonialism and draws from both systems to bring wellness to sufferers. As a result, Makerere’s Department of Psychiatry is among the most rigorous and integrative on the continent. Its hallmark is sensitivity to Uganda’s different cultural concepts/idioms and languages within which mental well-being is expressed and communities and the ragged history of war, violence, and HIV/AIDS acknowledged (Abbo, Ekblad, et al., 2008; Abbo, Okello, et al., 2008; Abbo et al., 2009; Nakimuli-Mpungu et al., 2015; Okello & Musisi, 2006).

In the period following independence, as well as during the early 1970s, the medical school syllabus tended to mimic British medical schools. Although it was new for psychiatry to link with other departments (e.g., pediatrics and sociology), in a more definitive but quiet move to decolonize psychiatry, new courses were added to the curriculum that went beyond just forming links. These courses included Medical Anthropology, Cultural Psychiatry, Medical Sociology, HIV Psychiatry, Psycho-Trauma, and Old Age Psychiatry, which emphasized, for example, local Indigenous symptom expression and interpretations of mental well-being and illness, traditional healing practices in mental illness, the roles of traditional healers, culturally relevant and sensitive tools or test instruments, appreciating family structure and functions, sensitivity to the effects of war and conflict on mental health in communities, understanding the special psychological disorders of elderly people, and integrating culture in the treatment of the elderly (Ovuga, Boardman, & Oluka, 1999). A multidisciplinary approach was embraced.

The challenge the psychiatry faculty faced was how best to fuse the universality of disease with the particularity of context (between society, culture, politics, and mental illness) and the relationship among psychiatrists, their patients, and alternative Indigenous systems and healing practices (practitioners as expert knowledge custodians). Nonetheless, in an interview, the then head of the department noted that they also continued to teach “old” core subjects of psychiatry, for example, psychoses (such as schizophrenia) or the classic affective disorders (such as bipolar affective disorder, depression, or anxiety disorders). He also emphasized that they overhauled the curricula “to reduce stigma, to de-mystify stereotypes surrounding mental illness and to see that psychiatry made sense to the population and related it to their everyday lived experiences in their communities” (Seggane Musisi Interview, July 15, 2018). It was made clear that their project was not to reject Western traditions (a position shared by Sylvia Tamale—see the next section) but more so about rejecting the notion that there is only one source of psychiatric knowledge. African knowledge systems were brought into the center (wa Thiong’o, 1986) not as appendices to knowledge (content and curriculum reform) but in an open dialogue among equal but different epistemic traditions.

The intent of the decolonizing spark is to accommodate local ways of knowing and to ensure that teaching material has local relevance in the context of Uganda. This was a deliberate refusal of the earlier approaches, a moving away from a Eurocentric to an Africentric curriculum. As the head of the department stated, “using locally relevant material and examples other than ‘normative’ textbooks, makes the material relevant to students and to the instructors” (Seggane Musisi Interview, July 15, 2018). It “brings a different engagement as it increases students’ agency. Students could see themselves at the center of and could directly relate to the knowledge being taught; [they] sometimes bring new and personal perspectives on cases being studied” (Seggane Musisi Interview, July 15, 2018). Such courses have contributed significantly to the Africanization/Ugandanization of psychiatry in Uganda and have provided students with an accurate understanding of locally expressed symptoms, leading to correct diagnoses (Boardman & Ovuga, 1997). The courses have centered traditional healing practices, spirituality, and disease perception in the curricula; grounded psychotherapy HIV-related mental illnesses and counseling techniques work in local settings; and tailored family therapy training on local conditions (with an appreciation of family structures and local interventions, population displacements, child soldiers, rape, abductions, and the condition of being an orphan). This innovation was supported by a rigorous research agenda that prioritized cultural explanatory models of disease and health-seeking behaviors and pathways to care. It also examined why some patients preferred traditional forms of care to Western medicine, advocated group support psychotherapy (GSP) for a massively HIV-affected and war-traumatized population, and supported commitment to the development of locally suitable test or screening instruments for illiterate patients. Between 2002 and 2012 and beyond, in an activity that further contributed to the decolonization of the curriculum, the Department of Psychiatry carried out an unprecedented number of research studies on local issues that generated publications that were used in the classrooms.

Decolonizing the curricula increased students’ agency; they could see themselves at the center of and directly relate to the knowledge being taught. These publications have changed students’ viewpoints, particularly regarding the place of Indigenous knowledge in their profession. As one of the most prolific departments in the medical school in terms of research and publications, the psychiatry department’s research began to influence health policy in the area of service delivery, for example, to integrate mental health care into HIV care and to institute mental health departments and wards in general hospitals. The team behind this work of decolonizing the curricula includes Drs. E. S. Okello, C. Abbo, E. Nakimuli, D. Akena, J. Nakigudde, W.W. Muhwezi, N. Nakasujja, D. Akena, and S. Musisi. Unlike the earlier generation of African/Ugandan psychiatrists, these practitioners do not denigrate or ridicule African/indigenous psychiatrists for their so-called lack of “scientific” training. In an interview, the then head of the department emphasized that

we approached mental health work as “of the people, by the people and for the people.” We detested and discouraged “hands off ivory tower” research. We worked within communities and gave back to the community through community involvement/participation including workshops, seminars and national conferences. The annual Psycho-trauma conferences were one example. We held these in various regions of the country and the capital cities of the Eastern Africa Region. We attracted [a] local and international audience. (Seggane Musisi Interview, July 15, 2018)

Much of the labor was nonetheless a continuation of the decolonizing initiatives undertaken in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as group psychotherapy among selected patients (started in 1968) ...