
Welcomed to the margins: African scholars in South Africa
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In this article, originally published with University World News, Dr Simba reflects on the uncomfortable topic of 'academic xenophobia' – 'the subtle yet systematic exclusion of African scholars from the intellectual and institutional life of the South African university'.
The image of the modern university in South Africa is one of openness: open to local contexts, open to Africa, open to the world. It is a comforting picture, one that allows us to believe we are becoming more inclusive, more transformed, and more globally engaged. Decolonisation, transformation and internationalisation are a current holy trinity in the South African academy.
The University of Cape Town boldly states it is a ‘global university in Africa …’ Fort Hare defines itself as a ‘university with the richest heritage on the African continent’. Stellenbosch University (SU) ends its restitution statement as follows: “SU commits itself unconditionally to the ideal of an inclusive world-class university in and for Africa.”
However, beneath this progressive narrative lies a quieter, more insidious truth – one that our recent two-year study sought to confront head-on.
In our book, Academic Xenophobia: African Scholars in South African Universities, we document the lived experiences of foreign African academics working within South Africa’s 26 public universities. What we uncovered is not surprising if one listens closely in the corridors of higher education. What is surprising is how persistently these stories are ignored or hushed out.
Let me be clear: xenophobia in universities does not come with machetes and angry mobs. It is rarely loud or overt. It wears a suit, chairs a committee, drafts a policy. It is polite, procedural, yet devastating.
A turning tide
Our study showed that the feelings of marginalisation and precarious existence have not always been there. For African academics who came to South Africa at the dawn of the democratic era, the space was welcoming and hopeful.
The high note was the African Renaissance era championed by the Thabo Mbeki presidency. One academic shared, “I became deeply tied to South Africa … My children are from here. I have spent most of my adult life here … I hope I have given back the best I could.”
However, things changed. The past five to seven years have seen the tide progressively turn against academics from beyond the Limpopo River.
Currently, the African academic is seen as a problem to be managed – a taker, rather than a talented contributor to the academic project. Yet, many of the respondents in our study viewed their work as a meaningful contribution to Africa.
However, numerous African scholars reported being treated as contingent guests – welcome, but only to a limited extent.
Exclusionary sentiments were expressed at times in the corridors of learning, at appointment quorums, at the South African government’s Department of Home Affairs – a place many approach with trepidation – and in everyday life beyond the university. The prevailing trend sees African scholars frequently denied promotion, confined to endless temporary contracts, and shuffled between institutions with no clear path to stability.
We termed this phenomenon academic xenophobia – the subtle yet systematic exclusion of African scholars from the intellectual and institutional life of the South African university. It is an uncomfortable term, I know. But it captures what many would prefer to remain invisible.
Hierarchical racial logistics
Our study showed that the experience is also intertwined with hierarchical racial logics. One academic remarked: “None of my two European non-South African colleagues ever suffered the same fate as I … Despite being advertised as permanent, my post was again a fixed-term contract.”
Another said of their time at South African universities, “It was obvious to everyone that promotion was not on the horizon for me.” This academic is now permanently tenured at a leading university in California.
These are not isolated anecdotes. HEMIS (Higher Education Management Information System) data reveals that African academics hold just 8% of permanent positions across the system, and 13% of temporary ones. Rural universities – like Fort Hare or Sol Plaatje – are more welcoming than their urban counterparts, who often cite vague claims about “fit”, “merit” or “institutional culture” to justify exclusion.
So, what is happening here?
The answer lies in the convergence of institutional policy, national immigration frameworks, and societal attitudes. Visa policies are cumbersome and unpredictable. Promotion committees are opaque. Collegiality – that unspoken currency of academic life – is weaponised against those seen as ‘outsiders’. And, all the while, talented scholars are lost to other countries or forced into intellectual isolation.
One scholar put it poignantly: “If I could, I would choose a path that steers clear of institutions altogether, considering how inherently damaging they can be, making you feel disposable and undervalued.”
Resist despair
Yet we must resist despair. In the study, we saw glimmers of an ethic of hospitality even though it was mostly localised to departments and not an institutional culture. There are, indeed, pockets of excellence – universities that are getting this right, even if unevenly.
There are leaders who champion real transformation, and policies that could be scaled. The task is not to damn the entire system, but to call it into account – and to ask, what kind of university do we want to be?
As one respondent wisely noted: “South Africa cannot make it alone. Either the continent makes it together, or it will not make it at all.”
Radical hospitality
This year, as we prepare once more to mark Africa Day on 25 May, I recall the weighty declaration by the African Union: that 2025 is the year for ‘Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations’.
A call, no doubt, for historical reckoning – for reparations, for dignity restored after centuries of theft and displacement. But justice cannot only be a project of the past. It must be a demand of the present. And it must begin at home.
For what of the injustices we continue to enact upon one another – not at the edges of empire, but on African soil and within the sanctums of knowledge?
In response to our inquiry into the lives of African academics in South African universities, one of the thinkers who offered their reflection, Cameroonian-born scholar and an academic at the University of the Witwatersrand Professor Achille Mbembe, spoke of what justice demands in two words: radical hospitality.
In our study we took his call, this phrase, not as a metaphor but as a principle, an ethic. An ethic of radical hospitality, one that interrupts the logic of borders and bureaucracies, and insists that Africa must be hospitable to itself. To move toward such an ethic, the university must reimagine itself. And that reimagination requires action:
• Audit and amend employment and promotion policies that disadvantage international African scholars.
• Ensure formal, well-supported pathways from temporary to permanent positions.
• Establish or strengthen dedicated offices for international staff support, including legal and immigration services.
• Train leadership in intercultural competences and establish clear mechanisms to report and address discrimination.
Radical hospitality is not charity. It is a condition for continental survival. As the book concludes, “For South African universities to be worthy of the name, they must uphold without fear the principles of openness and radical hospitality that current policies are fast eroding”.
It’s time we moved beyond the fiction of the decolonised, transformative and-or internationalised university. It is not enough to welcome the continent through the front gate, only to relegate its scholars to the back corridors of precarity and silence. A truly decolonial university does not tolerate African presence – it centres it.
Let us begin there.
Dr Precious Simba is based at the department of education policy studies at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa. This article is based, in part, on the 2025 book Academic Xenophobia: African scholars in South African universities (Springer Nature) which she co-authored with Professor Jonathan Jansen, a distinguished professor in the faculty of education, SU, and the late Dr Cyrill Walters, who was a senior lecturer at the Stellenbosch Business School and a research fellow in higher education, SU.