Cape Town – The South African Journal of Science (SAJS) has compiled a special issue of rebuttals to a controversial paper by UCT Professor Nicoli Nattrass which elicited public outrage.
Many academics last month called for the two-page paper titled “Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences?” - featured by SAJS on May 19 - to be retracted, charging it was biased and racist. Others said this would threaten academic freedom.
Instead of withdrawing the paper, SAJS’s editor-in-chief, Jane Carruthers, and Editorial Advisory Board chairperson Johann Mouton, last Friday published Volume 116 Special issue titled “The Intellectual and social critique: The role of the South African Journal of Science”.
“In the interest of fair scholarly discourse and the importance of the matter, we have facilitated wide participation by publishing this unprecedented special issue.
"Every formal social and intellectual comment on the Commentary received by the SAJS has been included, together with a reply by Professor Nattrass.
"The SAJS believes that the collection of articles in this special issue, the original article, the readers’ responses and the author’s rejoinder will perform an important educational function in universities and in the broader society,” they said.
Nattrass’s exploratory research was based on a survey among 211 UCT students. The survey results suggest black South African students were less likely to consider studying biological sciences than other students and this was “linked primarily with career aspiration associated with materialist values and attitudes to local wildlife”.
Lindelani Mnguni, the Associate
Professor in Science Education and chair of Science and Technology Education
at Unisa, said there was a need to
decolonise research.
“In the South African context,
racism and decolonisation are
emotive subjects, given the colonial
and apartheid history of the
country. Despite this, recent research
publications have raised concerns
regarding the extent to which
researchers are sensitive to issues of
racism.
“I believe that institutions
of higher education, including
researchers, should ‘take a knee’ and
reflect on their perceptions of racism
and social justice.
"Researchers cannot
afford to sugar-coat the concept
of decolonisation, by continuing
to produce research that is seen to
imply that one race is better than
another,” said Mnguni.
Academics at the Stellenbosch
University Hassan Essop and Wahbie
Long said they were black and not
offended by the paper.
“Universities… are places of
discomfort, testing boundaries,
posing uncomfortable questions,
challenging received truths.”
Nattrass, deputy director at
UCT’s Institute for Communities
and Wildlife in Africa (iCWild) said
her research was misrepresented and
misunderstood.
“I dispute that my research was
in any way racist or entailed racial
essentialism. Rather, it emphasised
that attitudes and beliefs were
better predictors of study and career
choices than self-identified racial
identities per se.
"I defend the analysis
of the ‘red-green divide’, materialism,
attitudes to wildlife and experience
of pets and attitudes on other issues.
“I acknowledge some useful
suggestions for further and fuller
research to enhance an evidencebased understanding of the
challenges of transformation facing
the UCT and the conservation sector
more broadly,” she said.