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The article examines challenges faced by academics in Zimbabwe's universities. With a particular focus on university teaching and research, the article draws upon empirical evidence from a survey s...

While a lot of literature has debated the effectiveness of international economic sanctions on sanctioned countries, little is known about the state of research on the impact of economic sanctions ...

Purpose: This article examines the adverse impact of international economic sanctions on pedagogy. The article considers the contemporary times as a period of misinformation, false news, and untruths. Utilizing anti-hegemonic literature, international economic sanctions are viewed as neoliberalism’s instrument of coercion, a Western weapon used to enforce Western values on those with different perceptions toward the free market system. Design/Approach/Methods: This article utilizes critical scholarship to unmask authoritarian neoliberalism and a scoping review of sanctioned societies. Critical analytics are deployed to interpret and make sense of the dominant educational policy framework that appears to be against diversity. Findings: Neoliberalism has caused a crisis in pedagogy. Education is under siege as academics and scientific evidence are being disregarded. The call is for pedagogues from all over the world to continue to avail evidence to power by practicing critical education. Literature is utilized to propose critical pedagogy when scientific evidence is disputed, and non-Western epistemologies are considered anachronous. Originality/Value: Linking sanctions and neoliberalism is relatively novel, as is the contribution of the same lenses to authoritarian neoliberalism. The assault on divergent epistemologies is critical, and the defense of critical scholarship is every academic’s duty. The article joins conversations on the neoliberal assault on education and society.

This article is a critical interpretive study of residential group homes as school preparatory environments for children and youth in their care. Utilizing social pedagogic analytics, the paper ana...

The failure to achieve meaningful development by African countries, especially those that inherited relatively advanced infrastructure at independence, has remained a conundrum. Utilizing Frantz Fanon’s major writings and ideas, and other commentaries on Fanon’s work, this paper aims to expose the problem of achieving genuine development outside the dominant neoliberal paradigm. According to the government of Zimbabwe, the aim of their indigenization program is to achieve authentic national development and decolonization from British and European imperial control. By unmasking the contradictory nature of elite nationalism and the decolonization process in Zimbabwe, the paper unmasks the complexity of development outside the dominant Euro-America (corporate capitalist) paradigm. I consider the Zimbabwe case as an example of elite nationalists domesticating the neoliberal market system to achieve selfish economic aggrandizement while the rest of the population experience immizerating poverty. The em...

Zimbabwe's exodus: crisis, migration and survival, edited by Jonathan Crush and Daniel Tevera, Cape Town, Southern African Migration Programme, 2010, xiv + 416 pp., ISBN 978-1-920409-22-7 (paperbac...

The third target of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) was/is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education not later than 2015 (Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, 2013; Stromquist, 2005; Subrahmanian, 2005).

What is observed in Zimbabwe is the establishment of internal colonialism by President Robert Mugabe’s government that is in alliance with a partisan military. University administrators have been brought in to publicly provide political and ideological anchor for government policies. This chapter utilizes Ranajit Guha’s (Dominance without hegemony: history and power in colonial India. Harvard University Press, New York, 1997) analytics and critics that culminated in his thesis of dominance without hegemony, a situation where an authoritarian administration governs by use of coercion and without the mandate of the people of that country. Basing on conversations with the university community, the chapter argues that university leaders have been turned into Zimbabwe’s ruling party activists and state security agents and, in the process, turning their backs on the fundamental basics that guide education leadership. They have become architects and constructors of social injustice practices. Although the analysis is grounded in dominant strands of social justice theory or policy, this chapter is also strongly informed by my engagement in education and research in struggles against the deteriorating conditions of higher education in Zimbabwe, which evolved from my work in the country with student movements and faculty associations. The chapter concludes that institutional social injustices are a creation of those who seek power and domination without the concern of the people. Consequently, the challenge is that educational leaders in Zimbabwe should increase their courage, intelligence, and vision (Jean-Marie, Normore and Brooks. J Res Leadersh Educ 4(1):1–31, 2009) and help end the commission of social injustices in their institutions by extension throughout society.

The problems facing the formerly colonized countries today generically referred to as the “South”, have come to be associated with Western or developed nations’ agendas and projects. Colonialism, development, and currently neoliberal globalization, it can be argued, have been Western/Northern hegemonic manoeuvres to extract the much required natural resources to satisfy hyperconsumerist aspirations and ways of living (Black, 2007; Willis, 2005). Harvey (2003) describes neoliberal globalization as the new imperialism where accumulation by dispossession is the main characteristic, and Tikly (2004) also refers to neoliberal globalization as imperialism, a form of Western global hegemony. Similarly, other scholars such as Moyo and Yeros (2007), Bond (2001) and Mamdani (2008) explain Zimbabwe’s current problems, specifically in higher education, on the West and its project of domination of the countries of the South. This is manifested in the radical economic policies forced upon the South, on countries like Zimbabwe, by the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) inspired structural adjustment policies (SAPs) and more recently, the Poverty Reductions Strategy Papers (PRSPs).

National socio-economic development cannot succeed in a country with a malfunctioning education system. The adoption of nativist policies and practices in Zimbabwe since the year 2000 was met with peaceful resistance from the public university community. The purpose of the paper is to expose the impact of nativist policies on university education. A critical interpretive case study of two public universities was carried out. Thirty participants were interviewed and these included students, faculty, administrators and a government official. Document analysis and observations were also undertaken. Findings indicate that universities have been functioning amidst immense political and economic pressure from the government. While nativism has been put across as an indigenous empowering ideology, the intolerance and neoliberal (privatization) principles accompanying it have led to growing displeasure and opposition from the university community. One observes the imposition of the culture of capitalism and the accompanying reactions that equally fits into this culture. The article recommends a critical rethink of development paradigms that are responsive to the local communities in place of copying and pasting ideas developed in the global North.