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24 January 2022 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe | Photo Supplied
Dr Bekithemba Dube at Appalachian State University.
A visit to the Appalachian State University in North Carolina has led to significant contribution towards international intellectual diversity, including broadening understanding of the world, and new conversations around global scholarship. Following the visit of Dr Bekithemba Dube, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education on the Qwaqwa Campus, to the university as part of the staff exchange programme, the UFS will strengthen its partnership with the Appalachian State University through the production of globally relevant graduates and knowledge. This move, according to Dr Dube, is aimed at advancing the agenda of decoloniality studies on a global scale.

This will include doctoral students from the Appalachian State University spending a semester on the Qwaqwa Campus from 2023. Furthermore, an exciting book project titled ‘Curriculum beyond Borders’ is also in the pipeline, and Dr Dube will himself be a regular visitor to the Reich College of Education, teaching on African education and decoloniality studies.
Dr Dube, who left for North Carolina in August 2021, said his time at the Appalachian State University was very fruitful. He was also the keynote speaker at the university’s doctoral symposium, where he talked about ‘Decoloniality: A Quest for Identity in Knowledge Production’ – from a Global South perspective.

“It was my first time travelling for this type of engagement; it’s been a once in a lifetime experience for me, and I would not be able to substitute it with anything. Students raised the need to learn more about African education, which is something that was not there before.”

He will be teaching undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students in North Carolina from 2022 onwards.

“Being at the university gave me the opportunity to interact with international scholars and showcase African scholarship as an ideal to reinvent a better world beyond Eurocentric modernity. As Africans, we need to announce our presence in scholarship with boldness and courage to reformulate an Africa capable of solving world problems. African scholarship is just as good and can compete in the global space,” Dr Dube said.

Prof Jesse Lutabingwa, Associate Vice-Chancellor for International Education and Development at the Appalachian State University, said Dr Dube’s presence at AppState helped to deepen the institutional relationship between the two universities.  “I am so pleased with the work that Beki did while at AppState, and how he has engaged his colleagues at the UFS. He was a model for the kind of engagement I would like to see in our international visiting scholars from our global partners when they are at AppState. He was not greedy but worked hard to spread the wealth and share opportunities. I can confidently say that both the UFS and AppState are seeing the return on the investment we made in Beki.”

News Archive

Eusibius McKaiser gives first talk on new book at Kovsies
2012-05-09

 

Eusibius McKaiser
Photo: Johan Roux
9 May 2012

Students and staff from our university got the first glimpse of political and social commentator Eusibius McKaiser’s new book, There is a Bantu in my bathroom, during a public lecture of the same title held by the author on the Bloemfontein Campus.

McKaiser told the audience that they were amongst the first people to get a preview of his book, a collection of essays on race, sexuality and politics.

His talk centred on domestic race relationships, posing the question whether it was acceptable to have racial preferences with regard to whom you live with. Recounting an incident he encountered while looking for a flat in Sandton, McKaiser said the country was still many kilometres away from the end-goal of non-racialism.

McKaiser, who hosted a weekly politics and morality show on Talk Radio 702, and is a weekly contributor to The New York Times, said the litmus test for non-racialism in South Africa was not what people utter in a public space, but rather what was said in private.

“We need to talk more about the domestic space. In public, we are very insincere and quick to preach non-racialism.”

Recounting conversations he had with Talk Radio 702 listeners on the incident, McKaiser said that preference about whom you live with was not specific to white people’s attitude. He said many of his black listeners also felt uncomfortable living with a white person. “The question is, ‘What do these preferences say about you? What does it say about where we are as a country and people’s commitment to non-racialism?’”

McKaiser was the guest of the International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice.
 

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