When will the Times of Swaziland stop insulting the intelligence of its readers over al-Qaeda terrorist threats in the kingdom?
The Times and its companion newspapers have been running articles designed to raise the level of fear among Swazis that they are in immediate threat from ‘Asians’ or ‘Muslims’ who are secretly in Swaziland plotting destruction.
The latest episode in this fantasy comes in the Times today (26 January 2010). The newspaper reports that the Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal has been in Swaziland ‘recruiting young men who would act as suicide bombers during the FIFA Football World Cup to be hosted by South Africa in June’.
These so-called ‘suicide bombers’ are, the Times tells us, ‘Muslim extremists who would cause terror at the upcoming world showpiece’.
And what’s the Times’ evidence for this? It copied the story down from the City Press newspaper in South Africa.
Do the remember the Standard? Obviously the journalists at the Times don’t. The Standard is the newspaper that in early 2009 told us that al Qaeda terrorists may be in Swaziland disguised as secondhand car salesmen.
They weren’t and they aren’t.
The Standard went further and reported that al Qaeda terrorists were infiltrating Botswana and 10 nations across the world, ‘Brazil, Namibia, South Africa, Malaysia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Lesotho, Mauritius, Swaziland, and Trinidad and Tobago’.
Still the Swazi journalists don’t stop and think. They are going great damage to ‘Asians’ and ‘Muslims’ by spreading a fear that they may be terrorists.
They are also playing into the hands of the repressive regime led by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. Every time the media raise fear it gives the anti-democratic supporters of the king the excuse to clamp down on legitimate dissent in the kingdom.
There’s quite a heated exchange going on in the pages of the Times of Swaziland(and online)about the quality of education at the kingdom’s only university.
Swaziland only has one university, the state-run University of Swaziland (UNISWA), and according to those engaged in the exchanges it produces graduates of international quality – or people who are ill educated who carry worthless diplomas.
The truth is of course somewhere between the two.
As someone who worked at UNISWA for nearly four years, who headed the Journalism and Mass Communication Department, was acting head of the English Language and Literature Department and who sat on the university Senate for two years; let me add my two-pennyworth.
UNISWA has to overcome many difficulties ranging from the quality of the students who arrive to study there, to the experience (or lack of experience) of the people who teach there and the lack of resources.
I only have space here to write about the students. About half of the university’s near 5,000 students are studying on diploma curses that are below the level of bachelor degree. There are only about 50 students in total studying for masters degrees and no one is working on doctorate Ph.D studies.
That information alone should tell us that UNISWA isn’t really a university. In many countries an institution with that kind of student profile would be called a ‘college of higher education’ – it offers courses higher than those at school, but below degree level.
Then there is the experience of the students who arrive at UNISWA. In Swaziland the highest qualification a student can get at school is the old GCE O-level or the IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education). These qualifications originate in England where they are usually taken by school students at the age of 16 after five years of secondary school study. If their grades are good enough students can take an extra two years of schooling and take the GCE A-Level at aged 18. Those who get high grades at A-level may be admitted to university.
So you can see that in Swaziland students arriving at UNISWA to study are a long way behind their fellows in England. Indeed they are so far behind that they can never catch up.
My own experience of teaching students at UNISWA is that through no fault of their own they are not prepared for university study.
Children in Swaziland learn informally and formally. Informal education centres on the home and community where children are taught to respect and defer to their elders. This respect and deference does not encourage a questioning attitude in people.
Formal learning takes place at school, but analytical learning is discouraged because success for both individual teachers and schools is measured in terms of the numbers of examination passes. This encourages rote learning in the classroom and the cramming of students to pass examinations.
There is also a problem of the English language. University students have poor fluency in both written and oral English and the students’ lack of competency in the English language is the biggest challenge at UNISWA.
At UNISWA, as well as a lack of language skills I found there are there were a number of characteristics of journalism students that make educating them as journalists difficult.
Generally, they have poor reporting and interviewing skills, a low commitment to their studies, next to no knowledge of Swaziland outside of their immediate environment and slight knowledge of the world beyond the kingdom’s borders.
They do not read for enjoyment (and only reluctantly for their studies) and will only undertake class work if it leads to academic credit. This last point makes it especially difficult to motivate students to practice to improve their journalistic skills.
Especially problematic for journalism students is that they have next to no exposure to a range and variety of magazines, newspapers, television and radio. This is in part due to the small size of the Swazi media industry, but it also reflects their reluctance even to engage with media that is available within Swaziland.
So on the strength of the student population alone I think UNISWA fails the test. It is not a university at all, let alone a university of international quality.
Limkokwing is a private university based in Malaysia that is expanding rapidly across the world.
The university has an on-off, on-off relationship with Swaziland and has been promising to set up in the kingdom for a couple of years now. But every time it sets a deadline the date comes and goes, but no university appears.
The latest deadline (missed again) was next month (February 2010).
But now the Swaziland Minister of Education and Training Wilson Ntshangase has confirmedLimkokwing will not be opening in Swaziland any time soon
‘There are a lot of issues that we still have to iron out before they can open. Furthermore, these guys are now making ridiculous demands which they did not make when they first came here. For instance, they now want us to pay scholarships for 1000 students for ten years! They also want to be exempted from paying tax and not be required to pay rentals for the premises they want to occupy,’ he told the Weekend Observer,a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III.
Limkokwing has a controversial history of global expansion. When it went into Botswana in 2007it was beset with complaints about the poor quality of teaching and concerns over whether it was good enough to be called a ‘university’.
It originally promised to set up in Swaziland if the Swazi Government put forward E3million (about 430,000 US dollars) to pay the scholarship of students.
That money has not been paid, so – unsurprisingly since Limkokwing is a business and not a charity (as many private universities are) – no campus has yet opened. When the Weekend Observer visited the site of the proposed campus in Mbabane, Swaziland’s capital, it found, ‘The entire premises are so terribly bushy and resemble an abandoned zoo’.
Swaziland has only one university, the state-run University of Swaziland which has King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, as Chancellor. One of his (many) half-brothers Prince Phinda is chair of the governing council.
For many years there have been doubts about whether the kingdom which has a population of one million people, 70 percent of whom live in abject poverty, earning less than one US dollar a day, can afford a university.
Personally, I don’t think it can so there’s no chance that the Swazi Government can come up with scholarships for Limkokwing. Only this month the Swazi Government forced budget cuts of 14 percent on all departments in an effort to stave off a financial meltdown in the kingdom.
Even if the money was available, I don’t think Limkokwing is the answer to Swaziland’s need for highly educated people as its credentials as an institution of high learning are in doubt.
Recently the university advertised for lecturing staff to teach at the 30 universities it says it will set up across the world ‘over the next few years’. Potential staff were required to have at least a bachelor degree and some teaching experience. Hardly the qualifications usually expected of a university lecturer.
