Professor Peter Vale, the Nelson Mandela Chair of Politics, presented a paper to the Faculty of Humanities titled “Humanities and Social Sciences in South Africa: Orphaning the Orphan”. The paper is based on a chapter he is contributing to the book The State of Science in South Africa published by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).?

ASSAf set up a consensus panel on the state of all disciplines in South Africa which will then give a report to the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS) which meets in Durban later this year. Vale was asked to give a report on the state of humanities and social sciences in the country. All the reports will be published in The State of Science in South Africa which will be available on 19 October.

There are somewhat gloomy circumstances that have confronted the humanities in South Africa for the best part of the past 15 years. The discipline was once at the centre of the university and the country, and at the forefront of the struggle to end apartheid. Now it faces shrinking budgets, economic determinism and managerialism.

Vale said that “One of the main problems we are now facing is that in the mind of the public, social sciences and humanities are regarded as unimportant. Things that are viewed as important are access to business and the creation of jobs through commerce, maths and science.” Vale adds that university funding for the humanities is being reduced while funding for faculties that promise to produce more employable graduates is increased. He said that as a result humanities and social sciences are funded through a formula that is sympathetic to studies in science.

“Funding to the humanities is inadequate, for example, there is not enough funding for the creative and the performing arts,” he said. “There is also no serious recognition for the publication of books.” Even deans from universities around the country have realised that so far the programmes offered in their faculties are less demanded by employers and have a lower exchange rate in the market place, which puts students at a disadvantage.

Vale said that the biggest challenge facing the future is that there are not enough young people coming into the humanities and social sciences. “We have an aging group of humanities and social sciences cohorts,” he said and more needs to be done to reintroduce students to these disciplines.

In his contribution to The State of Science in South Africa, Vale states that some individual disciplines within the humanities and social sciences have effectively had to reinvent themselves. For example, in most institutions that offer African Launguages, there has been a need to develop new courses for both mother tongue and non-mother tongue students.

At Rhodes University this process has involved, ironically, access to foreign funding through the South Africa–Norway Tertiary Education programme (SANTED). This programme has involved the development of non-mother tongue vocational language courses in isiXhosa and the design of mother tongue courses in isiXhosa which are linked to market-related requirements. These offer courses in translation studies, language and technology, language and society, language planning, orthography and writing skills, communication and media studies, as well as the teaching of literature as a discipline which is related to society.

Driven by some of the concerns that have been raised in Vale's paper, the ASSAf panel hopes to deliver a report on ways to revive the humanities within academia, and to explore ideas to reassert the centrality of the humanities in South Africa’s national life.

Story by By Nompumezo Makinana