.
Teboho J. Lebakeng
SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT
UNIVERSITY OF THE NORTH
Tebohol@unin.unorth.ac.za
ABSTRACT
The politics and history of science, engineering and technology education in South Africa have influenced the present decision by the government to elevate or privilege the natural sciences over the social sciences and humanities. The historic neglect of Bantu Education was highly glaring in such areas as the natural sciences and business management. These disciplines were the exclusive purview of whites and historically advantaged institutions. Clearly, the present government has taken a laudable step in trying to address and redress the situation as a matter of urgency.
The legacy of apartheid-colonialism has created a litany of persisting social problems. These vexing social problems are a wealth of practical (not contrived) problems crying out for social research. The fact is that South Africa cannot solve her social problems until she understands how they came about and why they persisted. Herein lies the relevance of the social sciences and humanities. Few doubt that natural scientific knowledge is critical but, then, natural science, engineering and technology alone cannot and will not solve these problems. The government should be careful not elevate the natural sciences at the expense of the social
sciences and humanities.
It is within this context that we need to oppose the danger of reductive binarism that sees the social sciences and humanities as less important than the natural sciences. In an attempt to improve on science and technology education, there is a need to avoid sacrificing the social sciences and humanities. The way forward is to Africanise these fields to make them relevant to
the local practical social problems/issues they are supposed to address.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROBLEM
The provision to white students and rationing to black students of science, engineering and technology (SET) education in apartheid South Africa was an integral part of the racist regime’s grand policy of racial discrimination. In order to perpetuate the systematic exclusion of black people in general and Africans in particular, the government spread the notion that these racial groups were not capable of enduring and understanding scientific studies since they lacked a scientific attitude and aptitude. Their culture was said to be responsible for this lack of understanding and conceptualising scientifically. Hence there was a racially skewed distribution of degree and diploma courses available to students from different racial groups. For instance, science, engineering and technology education was a no go area for black students. The legacy of apartheid is that there was a higher concentration of students in the social sciences, humanities and education fields relative to other fields. The overwhelming majority of these were black students. This situation held back the development of the country as the available pool of skilled labour could not meet the development needs and requirements of the country.
However, the South African labour market has over the years undergone fundamental restructuring with the increase of capital- and knowledge–intensive production and services. Such rapid development imperatives created a demand for skilled professionals in the scientific, technological, technical and business fields. The drive towards commercial and business studies as illustrated by the

rising figures of students who opt for such courses is testimony to the fact that the situation has been turning around. Moreover, the globalisation of education implies key changes in technology, work organisation and skill formation requiring high levels of work. It is within these contexts that one should appreciate the present emphasis on science, engineering and technology by the current government. The steady ascendancy of science, engineering and technology, however, is not so much a result of the public understanding of SET, but of the ways in which decision-makers perceive problems and the possible solutions thereto (Groenewald, 1998, p.10). It is generally accepted that a country can only be internationally competitive and become a major player in the global market through a healthy and sustainable science and technology infrastructure organised on the basis of national systems of innovation.
A technologist and economist tendency seems to be dominating the thinking of the political and economic elites in the country. The general thinking is that SET is crucially important for economic growth and that, in turn, economic growth is essential if South Africa’s developmental problems/needs are to be addressed. In fact, it would be both dishonest and dangerous to overlook the role that SET plays in development. As such, science and technology have become fundamental aspects of the new government’s development strategy. Various studies of international indicators show that SET are absolutely vital components of sustainable socio-economic development and better quality of life. For instance, the provision of clean drinking water, electricity, state of the art transportation,

housing all depends to an extent on ongoing scientific research and advances.
Nonetheless, a worrying observation is that research and practice in science, engineering and technology are still alienating and not conducive for wide participation in South Africa. This is a function of the failure to develop an appropriate and relevant national system of innovation to underpin science, engineering and technology.
Without such a system, it is unlikely that the objectives of UNESCO Project
2000+’s Scientific and Technological Literacy For All will be met. This project would like to see increased access and enabled participation, and not participation because technology has been made to be ‘fool proof’, that is, to accommodate even those who lack the most elementary understanding of scientific dynamics.
The White Paper on Science and Technology (WPST) clearly states that ‘For the national system of innovation to become effective and successful all South
Africans should participate. This requires a society that understands and values science, engineering and technology and their critical role in ensuring national prosperity and a sustainable environment. This, in turn, requires that S&T information be disseminated as widely as possible in ways that are understood and appreciated by the general public’ (WPST, 1996, p. 53).
It is noteworthy that the current preference for science, engineering and technology, and therefore the natural sciences, is not uniquely South African but is essentially a world-wide phenomenon. It is part of the global mythologisation

of science. Historically, the primacy of the natural sciences, based on the now outdated mechanistic and dualistic subject/object model of reality associated with
Newton, was well established by the beginning of the nineteenth century. This intellectual hierarchy was sealed with Auguste Comte’s move to establish positivism as the methodological ground of historical and social inquiry. The natural sciences have acquired centre-stage as a consequence of the industrial revolution and, later, the information revolution. Men (and women?) of science assumed, on the one hand, a demi-god status owing to their creativity, and a subhuman status, on the other, for their alienation from the society. It was as though their scientific results were generated in a vacuum; without social pointers, processes and pressures. The social sciences and humanities have been considered less developed than the natural sciences whether in terms of theory, methodology or subject matter. Hence the hierarchy of the disciplines as constituted by the natural sciences/social sciences and humanities antinomy inevitably privileged the former.
Another problem that contributes to the marginalisation of the social sciences and humanities is the role they played in sustaining the logic of the apartheid political economy. The social sciences and humanities, which deal directly with complex social issues and human social conditions, were inevitably susceptible to unbridled abuse and misuse by the apartheid-colonial regime. These disciplines were instrumental in the oppression, exploitation and dehumanisation of black people in that they propagated chauvinistic doctrines of an ethnicist and racist type and provided the ideological underpinning of the system of apartheid-

colonialism. The aim of the apartheid-colonial education was mainly to paralyse the intellectual growth of black people to drastically limit their access to material fortunes and resources. However, partly as a result of the alternative antiapartheid discourse, the social sciences and humanities constituted one of the primary sites of struggle. Each of the contending social forces vied to provide
‘credible’ explanations for the character of apartheid society and what was needed to either sustain, reproduce or transform it (Nzimande, 1998, p.7). Nonetheless, discourse in the mainstream social sciences and humanities remained conservative and supportive of the apartheid system.
More importantly, in their scientific sense the social sciences and humanities are historically and etymologically associated with the Euro-American world. Their core postulates, key concepts, basic methodologies, theories and models are drawn from and essentially represent extrapolates of discrete European and
American socio-historical experiences and cultural specificity (Lebakeng, 2000, p. 95). In other words, they are not relevant to the social conditions of South
Africa because they are still encapsulated in ethnocentric (Western) assumptions that are taken to be universal. During the apartheid era, in the teaching of the social sciences and humanities, debates on critical social issues facing South
Africa were avoided or marginally examined. Conceptualising social relations and social problems from an indigenous perspective had no place in the institutions of higher learning and research sites. A perceptive insider at the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC), in the person of Geoffrey Oldham, once

described the apartheid Science and Technology system as ‘A first class system used to tackle first world problems’. This is because the IDRC had found the S&T in South Africa to be fragmented and characterised by disparity, unfocused and poorly managed. This is another major reason behind the present eagerness on the part of the new government to drastically transform the science and technology system in South Africa.
As such, from a post-colonial point of view, the long history of South African scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, with a handful of exceptions, was a science estranged from its content: the black majority was either spoken of or spoken for (Sitas, 1998, p.13). In their intellectual constitution they were products of apartheid, colonialism and imperialism. Pedagogy was incapacitating intellectually and stifling creativity of the students (and a significant number of lecturers). Premised on the above, it is clear that education as one of the basic social institutions and one of the main agents of socialisation was inevitably implicated in the forms of social formation that characterised the apartheid social formation. The social sciences and humanities perpetuated and reinforced patterns of sharp socio-economic inequalities and ethnico-cultural differences.
Lest one is criticised of being unduly critical of the social sciences and humanities, it should be pointed out that the above critic applies equally to the disciplines in the natural sciences. This could not have been otherwise because the entire apartheid-colonial Science and Technology System sustained the political

economy. Following the United Nations arms embargo introduced in 1978, the emphasis in military technology development shifted to local production.
Consequently, tremendous amounts were spent on military research to buttress state security, defence and nuclear capacity in order to defend apartheidcapitalism and white minority-settler interests. In the 1980s the country’s defence industry was one of the key sectors of the economy, employing an estimated one hundred and thirty thousands (130 000) people (about 10% of the total manufacturing employment) (WPST, 1996, p.44). The social sciences and humanities, as ‘soft-ware’, and the natural sciences, as ‘hard-ware’ were fundamentally complementary as they were both serviceable to the state. It would be a grave misconception to think that only the social sciences and humanities were in the service of apartheid-colonialism. The shifts in thinking, doing and orientation that will be suggested at a later stage in this paper applies equally to the natural sciences.
The WPST acknowledges, though in a passing and casual manner, the potential role of research in the humanities and social sciences and recognises the importance of the human and social sciences in contributing to knowledge production and to the understanding of society and human development. For instance, four of the important roles of these disciplines are highlighted in the context of innovation. First, they are important in the understanding of social processes and problems and as a source of social innovation. Second, in facilitating appropriate technological change within society and within the

economy. Third, in providing the basis of policy analysis. Fourth, as a source of new knowledge and informed critique of the transformation of South African society and its economy (WPST, 1996, p.11). However, there is the danger of being seduced by its technological and economist commitments to marginalise the social sciences and humanities. As pointed out by Jansen, the WPST recognises the social sciences and humanities by default as it ‘retains an emphasis which is unashamedly economistic in orientation, placing high premium on globalisation, competitiveness, knowledge technologies and investment’ (Jansen, 1997, p.2).
The inevitable result could be academic extremism in the form of marketisation and commodification with little attention to the social and educational value of these fields. Once more, the current crisis in the social sciences and humanities should be understood as a global phenomenon that has been spawned by demands from governments for ‘value for money’ and accountability from higher educational institutions. It is noteworthy that the World Bank has published a number of studies that have become the basis for the transformation of universities. In essence, the studies call for the restructuring of universities so that these institutions exist by virtue of being viable and efficient. By viability is meant that these institutions should produce for the market and pay for themselves. By efficiency is meant that they must revise their syllabi to suit the products for the market. Essentially this constitutes an attack on higher forms of knowledge and research – specifically, theoretical knowledge as it represented a call for the market to dictate biases in universities. As a modern-day African

intellectual wit always suspiciously says ‘the tying of education to the apron strings of the ‘market’ is essentially an imposition of restrictions on those forms of knowledge that aim at raising larger social and political issues’ (Chachage,
1999, p.12).
Consequently, there would be a bias towards professional and against liberal faculties. In other words, there would be a bias for the imparting of technical skills rather than critical analytical ones. In essence, the core function of universities may be reduced to the task of supplying the labour force according to the dictates of the market. A potential danger in the current education reform/restructuring in South Africa is the underlying assumption that it only requires participation in the global economy. In this respect, the social sciences and humanities are seen as marginal, if not irrelevant, to these global challenges.
Fundamentals dictate that any society that needs to respond to the demands of global change embrace social research to help it identify and explain global trends and their implications in the socio-political, cultural and economic spheres.
Precisely because their contribution is not self-evident, there is a general scepticism around the value, relevance, worth and contribution of these disciplines. The social sciences and humanities also face critical and unsympathetic questions regarding their affordability. These questions are based on the assumption that, as disciplines, the social sciences and humanities are wealth-consuming, whereas the natural sciences are wealth-creating and,

therefore, healthy for the emerging South African society. Hence it is now fashionable to decry and disparage these disciplines based on the widespread notion that knowledge must be useful (Duminy, 1992, p.67). But an in-depth analysis of the real nature of these disciplines and of the problems confronting
South Africa show how important a role the social sciences and humanities can play. A sound society cannot be built on natural science and technology alone, essential though they obviously are. Because for many people benefits likely to be accrued from the social sciences and humanities are not obvious, scholars from these disciplines should ‘refrain from dismissing peremptorily as philistine and anti-intellectual public inquiries about [such] benefits …’ (Thosago, 2000, p.80)
NEW CHALLENGES AND THE TRANSFORMATION IMPERATIVE
There is a need to conceptualise the problems facing the education sector in terms of those problems emanating from and facing South Africa, including their history and becoming. Because education was deeply implicated in buttressing the apartheid political economy, we need to interrogate the forms of knowledge that were predominant at the time and the actual role that education and higher learning played. For instance, what kind of sociology, psychology, anthropology, social work, economics and history was taught? There is a frightening silence on this question. Therefore, the core question should be: - To what extent is higher education playing a role in addressing societal problems? We should, therefore, not be preoccupied by the question: To what extent is higher education helping to

incorporate society to the global world? Although the latter question is important, it should not determine the direction of national educational policies; or any other policies for that matter. This does not imply that South Africa should be oblivious to the tensions spawned by the logic of globalisation and the market, on the one hand, and the rationality of localisation, in particular Africanisation, on the other.
The legacy of apartheid-colonialism has created a litany of vexing social problems. These problems are a wealth of practical (not contrived) issues crying out for research and to be understood. Thus, this social environment, characterised by vexing and complex social problems, constitute a fertile ground for research and intervention. Among these wide-ranging problems may be included endemic violence, high levels of crime and unemployment, racial prejudice and discrimination, child and women abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, government corruption and incompetence, environmental degradation, youth and adult immorality, and the scourges of poverty and HIV/Aids. The devastation caused by
HIV/Aids in particular is increasingly becoming a major obstacle to development in South Africa as the disease has become such a human and economic disaster of great proportion (Lebakeng & Phalane, 2000, p.5). South Africa cannot solve most of these problems without an understanding of how they came about and why they persist. Herein lies the relevance of the social sciences and humanities.
South Africa needs new knowledge to assist not only in addressing the abovementioned problems, but also in deepening its nascent democracy, consolidating

the protection of human rights, nurturing tolerance and fostering accountability of public authorities. South African society, more than many other societies, needs the social sciences and humanities to help ensure the peaceful coexistence of its diverse cultures in which differences will be respected and understood within a broad African context. As Leatt captures the present scenario ‘If ever there were a time when the disciplines which concern themselves with the human condition, human values, and human flourishing were needed in South Africa it is now’
(Leatt, 1992, p.4). The social sciences and humanities can contribute to the enhancement of the development of humanising goals in various ways. They can foster open and critical intellectual debates, create a vibrant and engaged civil society and increase the possibilities of active participation in decision-making.
Education in general (and the social sciences and humanities in particular) is seen as carrying the burden of providing the intellectual and cultural leadership to accomplish the transformation of South Africa (Kgaphola, 1999, vii).
The need to focus on the natural sciences merely captures the painful reality of the shortage of technically trained and skilled human resources. However, sacrificing the social sciences and humanities is a myopic policy decision whose consequences will come to haunt future generations. There is no doubt that science, engineering and technology are critical but they cannot solve the problems of an emerging democracy on their own. In fact, many of the problems faced by many countries today are a result of increasing technological innovations, advances and capabilities. Moreover, various technological solutions

tend to create new and different problems, many of which are a result of maladaptation of science and technology within the forms, values, beliefs and customs that make up a people’s organised social life.
In other words, the way people organise and run their social affairs can impact either negatively or positively on the acceptance or social outcomes of science and technology. This is why the relationship between the natural sciences on the artificial side, and social sciences and humanities on the other artificial side is a critically indispensable one. In the specific situation of South Africa, an exclusive focus on science and technology – narrowly defined - may contradict and undermine other national objectives and imperatives such as democratic awareness, cultural sensitivity and political tolerance. The social sciences and humanities can make South Africans complexly aware of the moral and ethical issues of the time. They are also vital in establishing the conceptual and structural basis wherein advances in technology can be mediated within a specific context.
From the point of view of the sociology of science and technology, it is important that we look at the social implications of the natural scientific discoveries and infusion of technological aspects to a particular culture. In other words, what is important is not just inserting a social agenda into the natural sciences. More importantly, there is a need to bridge the gap between the natural sciences and social sciences so as to deepen their articulation. Working hand in glove with social scientists can increase the sensitivity of natural scientists, engineers and

technologists to the broader social implications of what they are doing. Given the history of South Africa, the country cannot afford to have natural scientists, engineers and technologists who have no grounding in or appreciation of the social sciences and humanities, disciplines which provide orientation, direction and social awareness.
It is clear that a one-dimensional approach to the problems facing South Africa cannot be a viable solution; in fact, it cannot be a solution at all. Given the social and technological dimensions of the problems, it is clear that such problems cannot be addressed in scientific and technical terms only. The decision by the government to place a premium on the natural sciences should not translate into the demise of the social sciences and humanities. There is a great need to transcend an ‘either/or’ approach. The question should not be whether the new democracy needs the social sciences and humanities or not, but what should be the orientation of such disciplines so as to ensure their relevance in a quest for sustainable development. The current ideological orientation has left these fields with serious weaknesses and shortcomings. After all, the intellectual life in South
Africa has for years been characterised by gross racial inequalities wherein the production and dissemination of social knowledge was the domain of the white intelligentsia.
What South Africa desperately needs are liberatory social sciences and humanities that would promote the creative potential of individuals and communities,

especially for those who suffered systematic exclusion and marginalisation. These fields have the strengths and immense potential to contribute towards that the promotion of the creative potential of previously excluded/marginalised individuals and communities. But more importantly, with an appropriate orientation, they could contribute to the economic and social development of the country. There is a sense in which one can argue, in defence of the social sciences and humanities, that the overall wellbeing of South Africans is virtually dependent on the contributions of these fields in the social, political, economic and cultural spheres. Since the social sciences and humanities in any society and epoch profoundly reflect the ideological and political balance of forces, to be relevant these disciplines will have to reflect and critique, with the aim to consolidate, processes of fundamental change towards a democratic order. To achieve this goal, there is a need to embark on a systematic, sustained and rigorous methodological, theoretical and conceptual critique of these disciplines.
The new dispensation provides a great opportunity and a rare challenge to revisit and problematise the realm of scholarship in South Africa.
AFRICANISATION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
The social sciences and humanities are supposed to be torchbearers of African values, systems of power, production, mediation and distribution. However, this has not been the case because as they are currently constituted they recycle the

values, systems of production, mediation and distribution of the mainly former colonies. Even in this period of the quest for an African renaissance they still diffuse and disseminate Western culture, and literally scorn and denigrate African culture as un-progressive at best and anti-progressive at worse. Given the history of the development, growth and nature of universities in South Africa, they need to enter into an open and dynamic debate on the dialectical relationship between education, training and development appropriate for the changing technoscientific, socio-political and cultural environment (Lebakeng, 1997, p.4; 1998, p.6). The social sciences and humanities could benefit a great deal from this repositioning of universities. They would be inspired by and be rooted in the sensibilities, consciousness, aspirations and core values of the indigenous African people. It is noteworthy that whilst the social sciences and humanities have failed to be the cultural and social torchbearers in the interest of the Africanness of
South Africa, the social sciences and humanities qua social sciences and humanities have not. Only apartheid-colonial social sciences and humanities failed hence the need to transform and trans-substantiate them.
Any viable transformation of the social sciences and humanities should take the
African experience in its totality as an inescapable point of departure for the critique and construction of new knowledge and praxis. Africanisation should be treated as the cornerstone of transformation of the social sciences and humanities.
The production and reproduction of social knowledge will have to be consistent with the core requirements of a democratising African society. In other words,

there is a need for a radical and critical questioning of the dominant Western epistemological paradigm from an African perspective. Such a radical and critical questioning should ignite an epistemological break that would result in an epistemological break-through that is inspired by an African ontology. On whatever grounds, it is no longer acceptable, as it is no longer justifiable, for the
Western epistemological paradigm, characterised as it is, by ethnocentric proclivities, to retain primacy and dominance in the new South Africa. Western epistemological paradigms, derived as they are from their unique ontology, cannot be transplanted in South Africa.
The failure of the university in South Africa is, to a great extent, a function of the alien nature of institutions of higher learning in what is taught and how it is taught and the purpose for which teaching occurs. Because institutions of higher learning in South Africa, as in the rest of Africa, have not been allowed to develop their own identity, the social sciences and humanities are still characterised by their insensitivity to the local environment, their content is highly colonial, dulling and demotivating. This is because those who produced knowledge in South Africa used Europe and America as their intellectual reference and inspiration. As such,
Africanisation would mean moving towards laying emphasis on African traditions, civilisation, culture and world-view as critical aspects for theorising, researching, writing and acting. Moreover, it would mean that the ways in which knowledge was produced, validated, organised and disseminated would have to be change profoundly.

In South Africa, which was extremely brutalised by apartheid-colonialism,
Africanised social sciences and humanities would be an instrument for the refinement, interpretation, promotion and redefinition of African thought, philosophy, identity and culture and a vehicle for their transmission from one generation to the other. It will constitute an important means of socialisation, contribute in the creation of a mind-set that seeks to fundamentally affirm the
Africanness of indigenous peoples, and give meaning to the concept of Africa and it realisation. More importantly, they could contribute in reversing the impoverished, brutalised and violently distorted self-definition and self-concept of
Africans. Africans in South Africa are not even aware that socio-culturally and politically the country shares much in common with the rest of Africa. South
Africa is not exceptional in any way. That is why the challenge facing the social sciences and humanities is taking place within a broad context of societal transformation.
Africanisation should not be equated with a call for a cocoon land wherein
African intellectuals and academics fear to pit their intellectual pronouncements against their counter-parts elsewhere in the global village. Nor should it be equated with intellectual fads, that is, modish ideas that rise for a time to boast intellectual egos but are destined to disappear. Africanising the social sciences and humanities is trying to establish intellectual traditions, scholarship and research culture that are rooted in, and, are strongly nourished by, and, in turn

nurture, contemporary South African democratic imperatives. It is also about intellectual liberation from enforced dependence and nimesis. Only then can these disciplines produce truly South African responses to the daunting challenge of democratic transformation and to the social problems crippling the country. This is possible as long as the social sciences and humanities are not extra-societal or supra-societal but are objective affirmations of the social reality within which they are embedded. They should, therefore, not be discordant, but adapted to and integrated within African communities or the nation at large.
From the point of view of the sociology of knowledge (and one might add sociology of education) the specific and unique national objectives necessitate a need for the social sciences and humanities to be sensitive and responsive to the legitimate needs of the great masses of African people. Africanisation of these disciplines is an unavoidable process of decolonising them so that they shed their cultural alienation and social insensitivity. The social sciences and humanities have to be contextualised so that knowledge constituting such disciplines is not irrelevant to society. It is on this basis that South Africa can develop originality and uniqueness within an African context and its own standards on which to judge the general contributions of these disciplines. Currently the social sciences and humanities, like the entire education system, try to maintain international (read
British) standards and recognition that are acceptable at British institutions. The social sciences and humanities have to be contextualised so that knowledge

constituting these disciplines is not tantamount to the pursuit of knowledge or truth for its own sake.
The general call for Africanisation has caused much anguish and anger as it has enthusiasm, with those opposed to it seeing it as an insolent provocation (Seepe,
1998, p.63). Many anti-Africanisation groupings and individuals see the process of Africanisation as leading to the lowering of academic standards and the sacrificing of excellence and meritocracy to mediocrity. However, despite the parading of such a dangerous myth, no one has ever defined what is meant by academic standards (or excellence, for that matter). Jansen has taken issue with the idea of decontextualising the notion of academic standards (Jansen, 1995, p.2). According to him, standards are tentative, (socially) constructed, historical and contextual but certainly not universal, permanent, objective or neutral. He further argues that standards are myths constructed by human beings, not because they are true, but because they serve a useful social purpose (Jansen, Ibid., p.3).
As such, there is no single, fixed, absolute or universal definition of standards that may be applied and upheld regardless of context because the notion of standards is not timeless and invariant. Clearly, the notion of standards must be subjected to a careful, specific and historically sensitive analysis. Ramose advises that rather than maintaining and applying academic standards, we need to continually create and redefine them (Ramose, 1997, p.4). Clearly those who are ossified under the guise of responsibly maintaining academic standards cannot comprehend this elementary requirement. It is in this respect that the Africanisation of the social

sciences and humanities, in terms of the research agenda, teaching and publication content will require appropriately different standards that relate to specific objectives and purposes.
If South Africa understands Africanisation of the social sciences and humanities, as well as the natural sciences, as an overriding and central challenge, then, they can appreciate the accompanying implications that are essential for the success of such a major project. Undoubtedly, to Africanise these disciplines would require enormous amounts of resources, but they will be resources well invested and spent. As alluded to earlier, by Africanising these disciplines the focus and orientation will be on tackling problems facing South Africa. What better way to invest national resources? This is not elitist and unnecessary luxury that the country can do without. In fact the fallacy of separation that looks at the social sciences and humanities as wealth-consuming and the natural sciences as wealthcreating is dangerous for a society trying to humanise its tragically buttered people.
CONCLUDING REMARKS .
The obvious need to encourage more people to take science, engineering and technology as subjects of study can not be disputed. What is vehemently argued, however, is that in the process of doing this, there is no need to sacrifice the social sciences and humanities. The social sciences and humanities have a crucial

developmental role to play in moving the country from an inhuman and vile system to a democratic one. The proposed way forward is to make these disciplines relevant to the concrete socio-cultural and politico-economic conditions prevailing in South Africa. By being diametrically opposed to the affirmation and promotion of the cultures, traditions and civilisation of indigenous
African people, their colonial history has made them a liability rather than an asset to the country. Hence the clarion call for the Africanisation of the social sciences and humanities to decolonise the social sciences and humanities methodologically, theoretically, paradigmatically, epistemologically and ontologically. This would allow for the development of assertive scholarship and tenable intellectual traditions that would constitute an alternative framework through which to research, inform and guide development issues.
The call for the Africanisation of the social sciences and humanities is a clear reflection of the long-held dissatisfaction with the state of the art in these disciplines. More importantly, it is an attempt to privilege African scholarship in terms of research, teaching and publication in order to assume a respectable position in world scholarship. This could only be possible if these disciplines were grounded on African experiences and aspirations and reflect/articulate
African hopes, wishes, dilemmas and predicaments. The Africanisation of the social sciences and humanities should be part of the development of a philosophy of education to underpin a democratising country in the context of Africa. To the degree that South Africa in general and the educational system in particular have

to transform, there is a need for a liberatory philosophy of education (Seepe,
1996, p.6). Noting that the relation between society and education is dialectic, education, especially the social sciences and humanities, should play a major role and be positively implicated in transforming South Africa into a democratic society. It is on this basis that those in the social sciences and humanities should seriously urge educational policy-makers not to sacrifice these disciplines. As
South Africa tries to make the promotion of technological change a central tenet of national policy, the social sciences and humanities should not be sacrificed, but
Africanised.

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