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“Zimbabwe is the most literate nation in
Africa,” you will often hear it boasted. While we instinctively reject
not-so-flattering measures of our national performance as ‘machinations of the
imperialists,’ this one we eagerly, unquestioningly embrace as obviously true.
To ask how much we have used that high literacy to improve our national
condition is to risk being accused of being unpatriotic and counter-revolutionary.
So prized has become the generalised notion
of ‘being educated,’ or at least being perceived to be so, that it now matters
little whether we seek education as a means to live better lives or to be more
productive and innovative citizens. In Zimbabwe the idea of ‘education’ now is
to a great extent another means to satisfy our national obsession with
‘status;’ or convincing ourselves that we have more intrinsic human worth than
the people next door.
With cellphones and cars now being so widely and easily
available and therefore having lost much of their cachet at showing ‘who is
really who’ between us, titles of any sort are the in thing at the moment,
academic ones being the most prized. Last year the most fashionable Zimbabwean
title was ‘prophet.’ Not only have recent events here and further afield
rendered the term much less chic, so discredited is it becoming that it may
soon be considered a swear word rather than a prestigious social accolade.
For some inexplicable reason, many highly
(authentically) old-schooled Zimbabweans have gravitated towards politics
instead of finding ways of being innovative and productive with their
qualifications. And so many of the ‘doctors’ we know have been government
ministers or held other esteemed positions in the State apparatus. Given the
coincidence of the proliferation of people in high places wearing the title
‘doctor’ and our national decline in so many areas, this has led to many rude
jokes about the usefulness of ‘doctorhood’
to solving real world problems. Still, the title ‘doctor’ has for the most part
kept its hallowed status. Hence its morphing and reduction from a professional
or academic title into a highly-sought social one.
Unfortunately, the more sought-after and
the more ‘gettable’ with money, social or political influence it has become,
the more the title ‘doctor’ has lost its value. Those people who earned it the
traditional way, by burning the academic midnight oil for it for years, now
look quaint and old-fashioned. According to our 2014 Zimbabwean sensibilities,
the attitude is, “Why toil away for something you can buy, intimidate or twist others’
arms into getting?” That is unfortunately how far our national value system has
declined.
You know that even though you wear the
vestment of the title, no one gives you the respect that would normally go with
having studied for it, but you don’t seem to mind. You are so far gone in your
hubris that you are no longer capable of feeling shame. Your life story is
largely an open book so there is no way you can convince people you have
suddenly been re-incarnated as a scholar.
You are oblivious to the real attitudes of the millions who smile to your face
but giggle at you behind your back at your needy self-importance.
“Why is Nhingi not comfortable in his/her
own skin?” they wonder as you seem to almost desperately plead for respect from
the same ‘low’ people whose opinion you say you don’t care about.
It doesn’t make sense to declare that you
“don’t care” what people say. If
anything, your actions suggest that you appear
to care TOO much what people say about you, as if you have a deep sense
of inadequacy as a person; who you are.
If you “didn’t care,” surely you wouldn’t
go to such extreme extents to impress people, even with false credentials that
serve to do the exact opposite of what you are trying to do, but that you are so
sadly, so tragically, so pitifully failing. As a child of God just like any
other, why are you so needy for accolades, even those you haven’t earned? Why
do you seem so ill-at-ease with yourself? You boast; insistently and almost
angrily, of your accomplishments but in the same breath you unwittingly express
deep anxieties about your self-esteem, as if you actually are the biggest
doubter of your own chest-thumping.
Let us leave the needy for a minute and
focus instead on their enablers.
The University of Zimbabwe has not been
spared the national decline we have undergone these last several years due to
(take your pick according to your inclination) cynical, cruel and incompetent
rulership or to ‘illegal sanctions.’ Arguably
the nation’s premier institution of higher learning has done amazingly well in
holding its head high academically during the deprivations of the last several
years.
In one fell swoop, the controversial
circumstances of the awarding of a doctoral degree to Grace Mugabe, the wife of
the president, has suddenly opened up the UZ to questions and ridicule which it
will take a very long time to live down. Perhaps the university has perfectly
solid answers to the many legitimate questions that have been asked about the
whole affair. If so, it has not done itself any favours by acting shy and
refusing to address these and other relevant issues raised in public, and no
doubt within the halls of the institution.
When did its latest, most high-profile
doctoral graduate register for the degree she was awarded last week? Even if the candidate’s high profile was seen
as a reason for secrecy during the progression of the academic work, why can
that progression not be related now, after the fact? Would this not salvage the
academic and social reputations of the doctoral graduate in question, but of
that of the university as well?
If we inflated the Zimbabwean dollar out of
existence as a national symbol, must we subject the worth of a degree from the
University of Zimbabwe to the same fate?
Why has her thesis not been published like
most doctoral scholars would not only be expected to do, but would be eager and
proud to do? Why does the university act like the mere asking of these basic
questions and others is subversive? If the spouse of the sitting Head of State
sweated for and succeeded in passing the rigours of earning a doctorate through
its hands, most institutions would be rightfully proud of that and want to
trumpet the achievement to all the world. Instead, in this case the University
of Zimbabwe has had its head hung down since graduation day, as if in shame.
How can this be after what the Vice Chancellor referred to as an ‘historic’
graduation ceremony ‘perhaps never to be repeated?’
What about the reputations of the current
crop of UZ students of all disciplines and at all stages of study towards their
degrees, not to mention the thousands of UZ alumni scattered all over the
world? Are they not deserving of responses to the swirling questions, answers
to which all essentially distil down into what now remains of the value of a
qualification from the University of Zimbabwe?
In the style of all kinds of Zimbabwean
officialdom that we have become accustomed to, the UZ authorities may choose to
simply hunker down and ignore the crescendo of immediate public ridicule. They
may be able to ride out the storm until the next inevitable national scandal to
grab the public’s attention, but the self-inflicted stain of not being able to
defend what remains of its academic standards and public reputation will not
nearly be as easy to wash off. To paraphrase a currently in vogue Zimbabwean
expression, ‘You can fake a degree qualification but you can’t fake an
academic reputation.’
If a
person of humble, threadbare scholarly origins earns a doctorate in their field
of choice, that is surely an achievement of which they should be proud to be
willing to share how they did so. The publishing of a thesis is the crowning
culmination of this long process. Increasing the body of knowledge in a particular
narrow field of inquiry is after all one of the very reasons for going to the
trouble of studying for a doctorate.
The UZ seems to have dispensed with all the
academic traditions associated with the earning of a doctorate, including its
own standards and conventions. If it has adopted new conventions, it could
simply say so. Explain what they are and explain the reasons for casting off
the old known and accepted ones and adopting new ones. By failing to do all
this, the University of Zimbabwe seems like it has bastardised and reduced its
own product to nothing more than the parcelling out of Zimbabwe’s latest social
fashion accessory, being called ‘doctor,’ even without paying any of the dues
that make having such a title so sought after in the first place!
If we are seeking more ‘status’ and
prestige than our neighbours, do we win those social qualities by divorcing the getting of ‘prizes’ from the
effort that should accompany the winning of those prizes? Does the ‘prestige’
come from the prize, or is the prize merely a representation, a symbol of the
effort expended? If a ‘doctorate’ is
divorced from scholarly effort and achievement, how much is it really worth,
even in merely social one-up(wo)manship terms, not to mention academic
ones?
It is tempting to look at this tale from
merely the comic angles. But the University of Zimbabwe is the country’s oldest
institution of what used to be called ‘higher’ learning. Too, as long as it
shares the name of the country, whether we like it or not all of us, even those
with no direct relationship with it in the past or the present, share in the
shame and ridicule when it becomes a laughing stock.
Beyond the jokes and sudden mocking to
which the University of Zimbabwe has allowed itself to be subjected is a
frightening, sad tale: the extent to which we have all participated in the loss
of many of the bedrock values of a nation.
We set up rules and standards in various
areas of national endeavour and then show our lack of respect for them, and
arguably for ourselves, by throwing them out of the window at the flimsiest
excuse. In doing so we are cheating no one but ourselves. This is the real
Zimbabwean national ‘crisis,’ with the economic, political, social, cultural
and other contradictions and problems we face merely being symptoms of this
central malady.
Until we are able to decide who we are and
what we stand for, and furthermore, to then respect and abide by the accompanying
rules we set for ourselves, we will continue to be a nation in decline, no matter
how many would-be investors come ostensibly bearing gifts...or what
‘prestigious’ titles we insist that we be referred to by in vain efforts to
satisfy our egos at the expense at tackling the real issues that dog us.
It may be raining doctorates in Zimbabwe,
but in a way that makes us look very simple, crude and unschooled.
Chido Makunike
23 September 2014
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