E-ISSN 2039-2117 ISSN 2039-9340 Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy Vol 5 No 1 January 2014 555 Symbolic Xenophobia Mirrored through the Struggle of an African Scholar in the Academic Space Mishack T Gumbo University of South Africa gumbomt@unisa.ac.za Doi:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n1p555 Abstract In this literature study paper I dispel and confront the struggles that an African scholar is faced with in the (western) academia which mirror symbolic xenophobia. This is due to the racial and separatist behaviour that African scholars experience trying to operate in the academia. I draw more from the work of Dei (2012; 2013a; 2013b) and Kuokkanen (2010) to base my deliberations. I adopt an Africentric critical position in doing this work not to portray an attitude of hatred short of take on western systems that act as road blocks against African scholarship and indigenous knowledges. Keywords: African scholarship, xenophobia, racism, separation, relevance, space. 1. Background “African scholarship is a war”. Prof. Gloria Emeagwali made this clear when she was invited by College of Education at Unisa in June 2013 during its African Connection Lecture Series. Prof. Sefa Dei reiterated this claim when he was hosted by Department of Inclusive Education of the College of Education in July 2013. The claim spells out a great task that African scholars face to find their way in the academia so much defined by western standards. I abase the discussions in this paper by importing the concept of xenophobia experienced in the social circles, into the academic sphere. My reason is that I understand the onslaught on African scholarship by colonnial systems as the mirroring of xenophobia. Xenophobia is shown through racism and separatism. It is motivated by acts of hatred and fighting for space and resources. I use the terms racism and separatism as references to xenophobia. I note that the debate over the causes and consequences of racial differences has been at the centre of nations’ social and political life (Harcourt, 2009; Valji, 2003). Non-white foreigners, Harris (2001) writes, suffer a greater risk of hostility than their white counterparts. Harris (2001) notes that in much of the international literature xenophobia is written purely in terms of racism. In subtle ways which I label “academic indecency”, racial polarities are evident in academic institutions, which are aimed at discrediting African scholars the accessing of resources and stalling their academic mobility. Wa Thiong’O (in Ilmi, 2012, p. 149) refers to these racial dispositions as the cultural time bomb and thus explains: The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed against collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s beliefs in their names, in their language, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. This paper was motivated by a need for an extension of the work on African scholarship, thus backing up Dei’s (2013b) assertion, i.e. to contribute to the development of African Studies. As a respondent to Dei’s lecture, I raised issues that triggered this paper – the struggles of an African scholar, colonnial systems of aggrandizement, downplaying of indigenous knowledges, relevance of research, and what Semali and Maretzki (2004, p. 95) refer to as extinction that threatens indigenous knowledges. This paper is thus meant to encourage debates about African scholarship with an aim to motivate the combat of this extinction. Furthermore, the academy in general is very reluctant, in spite of its profession of knowledge, to expand its narrow and exclusionary epistemic foundations (Kuokkanen, 2010) to celebrate and promote indigenous knowledge systems. Subsequent to this background I define the concepts of xenophobia, space and African scholar. Then I proceed by discussing the struggles of an African scholar in terms of doing research in academia, relevant research from an African scholarly perspective, frowning upon indigenous knowledges, tussling with a rat race in the academic work space, and