Summary of my thinking on internationalisation and social justice in South African higher education
Jonathan Jansen
All South African universities make bold public claims about the importance of internationalization to institutional mission. I take those claims with a healthy dose of scepticism. On the one hand, most of the 26 public universities implement with vigour the policy and political signals from government that make the lives of international students quite difficult, especially those from poorer countries in the SADC region. Everything from advance tuition payments to assurances of health cover to visa approval delays can together be quite devastating to the on- and off-campus lives of other African students. On the other hand, universities can act in sometimes vicious ways when it comes to appointing other African academics on merit alone; the “South African first” logic in appointments committees runs counter to our supposed academic values as universities (quite apart from its xenophobic Trumpian echoes) especially in relation to internationalization. Then, even when we “do” internationalization, it projects the image of enclaved projects (like the African Doctoral Academy) which stands out precisely because that idea of a broadly African university is not reflected in everyday practice across the administration, in every academic department and in the social and cultural aspects of campus life. In short, if internationalization is to serve as an instrument of social justice, and not simply a handy marketing device for positioning a university in its global aspirations (let alone rankings), then it must deal with our internal demons including that polite form of xenophobia that excludes, this time on the basis of national origins.
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