Academic Links with South Africa: Is Ignorance a Greater Sin?Author(s): David M. SmithSource: Area, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 357-359Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002650 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 19:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Area.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 19:22:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Observations 357

References AUT/WUS (1986) Dtvided campus: universities in South Africa, Association of University Teachers and

World University Service Briefing Paper Cobbett, William (undated) ' Academics and the boycott ' mimeographed.

Gawith, Philip (1986) ' The new McCarthyism ', Isis (University of Oxford) no 1772, Michaelmas Term, 13

Moulder, James (1985) Black into white and white into black: the quiet revolution in South African universities, University of Cape Town

SAIRR (1988), Race Relations Survey 1986 Part 2, South African Institute of Race Relations, Johannesburg

SANSCO (1987), SANSCO Newsletter no 1 Sutherland, Carla (1987) 'The academic boycott-what value freedom of speech amid oppression? ' South

Africa Foundation News 13, 2-3

Academic links with South Africa: is ignorance a greater sin? David M Smith, Department of Geography and Earth Science, Queen Mary College, Mile End Road, London E14 NS

Shortly after I arrived on my first visit to South Africa in 1972, I attended the quad rennial meeting of the South African Geographical Society. Their distinguished overseas speaker was Brian Berry. When asked whether he had any qualms about coming to South Africa (at a time when apartheid was being added to the targets of ' radical geography '), Berry's response was simply that ignorance is a greater sin.

His moral dilemma, like mine, had been whether to decline an invitation to do something which could contribute to the support and legitimacy of an odious politi cal regime, or to take advantage of an opportunity to enhance understanding of an unusual society.

To advance understanding or reduce ignorance are not absolute virtues. Many people are uneasy about killing animals in pursuit of medical science and blatent experiments on human beings are not part of civilised conduct. Survey or field research raises ethical issues concerning how respondents are treated; most practitioners dis approve of the covert use of a tape recorder, for example. Thus there are circumstances in which it is held that ignorance is preferable to the adoption of certain means of acquiring knowledge. Whether this applies to visiting or otherwise maintaining academic links with a particular country like South Africa is no easier to resolve than the more familiar moral dilemmas. While apartheid can kill (shoot or starve) substantial numbers of (usually black) people in pursuit of the well-being of others (usually white), it is far from obvious that visiting academics encourage this; indeed, the presence of foreign observers could act as a constraint on state brutality. Similarly, it is not self evident that greater knowledge of apartheid in South Africa serves to promote' positive change ' or some such laudible objective: it may even suggest that prescribing a prefer ably alternative form of society is harder than might appear from superficial under standing, thus muting opposition to apartheid. Herein lies the dilemma. And it cannot be side-stepped by appeal to such false absolutes as freedom of enquiry, personal

movement or plying one's profession. Lecturing in Johannesburg some years ago, the South African novelist Andre Brink

made a perceptive distinction between a gesture and an act. Much of what is advocated in response to apartheid, whether academic boycott, trade embargo or diplomatic snub, can fairly be described as gesture, in the sense that it signals disapproval and gives those concerned the satisfaction of having taken a stand, but has no practical affect

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 19:22:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

358 Observations

in securing positive change defined in terms of dismantling apartheid. An act is more

purposeful: it can contribute to change, though this is not to assume that such con

duct necessarily achieves its objective. Acts, and gestures, can have unintended out comes: the more so if their context is poorly understood. Thus disinvestment on the part of a multi-national corporation may strengthen rather than weaken the South African regime, by substituting domestic capital ownerships for foreign control. An academic boycott may push South African scholars into a more defensive, insular or conservative stance.

To act rather than gesture depends on understanding. And this involves morality as well as (social) science. To advocate a particular change, and to act in its promotion, involves conviction that the change is right that it is towards a better life (society,

world), or a welfare improvement as well as that the chosen means is an effective way of achieving that end. One man or woman one vote is easy to advocate, as is the transfer of political power to the (black) majority, but this does not guarantee a future society unambiguously better than apartheid: the so-called independent ' homelands ' are hardly model democracies and it would take a brave black to prefer a repeat of Amin's Uganda to Botha's stalled reforms, Treurnicht's Conservatives, or even TerreBlanche's neo-nazis. As to the cause-and-effect links of a particular act, it is extraordinarily difficult to trace the impact of an academic boycott, for example, step by step to the creation of a superior society however that may be defined.

All this may read somewhat like an apology, but it should at least serve as an indication of the kind of issues that have to be resolved if ignorance is not to be considered a greater sin. The fact that some serious understanding of South Africa is required to seek such resolutions is, of course, a strong if not compelling argument for going to ' see for ones self'. Even stronger is the argument that visiting and

working in South Africa may help other people achieve a better understanding, rather than being merely the self-indulgence of resolving a personal moral dilemma.

To hold, further, that the understanding which one is able to convey to others may contribute to ' positive change' is to some extent an act of faith, but to work for any better world involves belief and not a little optimism, as well as science-based conviction.

I originally went to South Africa with an interest in issues of race and class height ened by living in the American South (where a form of apartheid had only recently begun to yield to Federal legislation). I was motivated by the view that locality-based research is to some extent experiential. Everyday lived experience can be more eloquent than any conventional source or text. The first encounters with traffic police and the

manager of our block of flats reflected a society expecting deference to authority, as did the reactions of some geographers to Brian Berry's ex cathedra statements. Other encounters helped to fill in the story: the hostility on the black face dissolving into an obsequious, 'OK, bass,' following an unexpected apology for some injury; the digni fied decline by someone classified as ' coloured ' to a thoughtless invitation to a drink in

my (whites-only) hotel; complaints about servants over cocktails, by women for whom housework would be unthinkable, whose children don't know how to tidy their rooms; the ' girl ' washing up, her own growing family miles away in the ' homeland ', and fluently trilingual in Afrikaans, English and Xhosa. Such experiences, vignettes of South African life, merge with many others to embroider and give depth to a broader structural understanding.

Of course, it is possible to study a country without visiting it. South Africa has its readily available statistical compendia, there are other valuable sources of information on current events and trends (notably the South African Institute of Race Relations),

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 19:22:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Observations 359

there are libraries, and there is research of regional specialists. There is also the work of South African scholars, including geographers, who are taking an increasingly percep tive line and critical stance on apartheid society from first-hand experiences. (To deny South African geographers access to British periodicals, as has apparently been suggested, takes the dubious merits of an academic boycott to the absurd length of self-denial by depriving us of the insights they can offer). But such remote regional geography lacks a crucial ingredient which it is hardly necessary to explain to prac titioners of a discipline in which the traditional significance of field experience is now reasserting itself.

Having committed myself to a publication on South Africa requiring regular revision (Smith 1987) I am acutely conscious of the difficulty of working at a distance, imposed by financial constraints as well as reticence about visiting South Africa. A timely reminder came recently from a colleague and friend, over whose dinner table and brandy I have learnt so much about his country: 'any update particularly on the reform of apartheid does call for a personal acquaintance with events-to catch the detail and the nuances of what is happening and particularly, too, how people are reacting to it'. Watching television, reading newspapers, talking to people, observing social interaction, participating (selectively) in a society-as well as time in the map room, library and archive or in front of the computer terminal: this is surely how regional geography is studied, and lived.

South Africa is part of our world. We cannot deny its existence, or regard it as some terrestrial black hole. And to study it properly requires first-hand experience. It is all too easy to purvey and accept the superficial understanding that South Africa's dis tinctive social formation and geography simply reflects racism, which is itself an easy target for moral indignation. South Africa has certainly legalised race discrimination to an extent which is (arguably) unique in the contemporary world, and from this comes deprivation of widely accepted human rights on a massive scale. But any informed analysis must recognise racism as integral to a wider structure of political domination and economic exploitation in which the social relations of capitalism play an important part. Thus if we find South African society repugnant, capitalism as well as racism must be held responsible. The easy target becomes a little blurred, the more so if we recognise in it elements of our own society.

The geographer has a special responsibility to understand and enlighten, shared by other social scientists. Even if a case for an academic boycott can be sustained, it could be argued that selectivity is justified in the interests of continued monitoring and analysis by social scientists. This is not to suggest that there are no circumstances in which all academic links might be cut: severe constraints on freedom of inquiry might render social science impotent. But at present an academic boycott would be merely gesture, at the cost of understanding. As individuals we have our own personal moral position to resolve, and if this leads some to decline to visit South Africa or to take other such measures, then this is understandable and to be respected. But for an institution like the IBG to constrain its members in the pursuit of what may be their particular regional speciality, or to prevent South African members from publishing in its journals, does seem intolerable, at least in present circumstances and possibly under any conceivable conditions. There is too much ignorance abroad already; for academics themselves to compound it really does seem a sin.

Reference David M Smith (1987) Apartheid in South Africa revised edition, Update series, (Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge)

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 19:22:28 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions