The Politics of Development

​In the twenty-four years since the end of Apartheid, South Africa has struggled to achieve its development goals. Progress in the provision of housing, basic services, and social grants has been offset by the country’s failure to reduce inequality, lower the country’s high unemployment rate, or provide a good quality education for all of its children; despite significant spending on education, South Africa students perform worse on standardized tests than those in many other sub-Saharan countries. Former President Nelson Mandela famously described education as “the great engine of personal development,” and added: “It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation.” This course gives students a first-hand lesson in why it has been so difficult for South Africa to fulfill these lofty dreams.

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PROGRAM  FEATURES​

Education Abroad Program Name	UGA South Africa Study Abroad Program
Level	Undergraduate, Graduate
Number of Credits for Course	3
Number of Credits for Education Abroad Program	6
Does this course carry major/minor credit? Elective credit?	All of the above
Typical Enrollment	20-30
Language of Instruction	English
Duration	Short-term: 3-4 weeks
Time Spent On-Site	Short-term: 3-4 weeks
Last Taught	2018
How many times has this course been taught?	10
Curriculum Strong Points/Innovations	This course and the program as a whole are embedded in the host context. All the students take two classes: The Politics of Development, taught by Dr. Markus Crepaz, and a second course, South African Society, taught by Dr. William Finlay, the program’s co-director and a native of South Africa. The two classes are designed to complement each other and to give students an intense education in South Africa’s history, culture, and politics, a country about which they generally know very little.

 

Faculty Bios​

Markus CrepazAffiliation: University of Georgia | [email protected]
Dr. Markus Crepaz (University of Georgia) is the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science, Co-director of UGA Study Abroad Program in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Professor of International Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in political science in 1992 from the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include the effects of formal political institutions on policy outcomes, the effect of immigration on the European welfare state project and identity of Europeans, the impact of globalization on the viability of the state, the logic of comparative analysis, the politics and economics of advanced industrialized democracies, the process of European Union integration, and the effects of parties and interest groups on a wide range of policy outcomes. He teaches classes in comparative methods, research design, determinants of political development, introduction to comparative analysis, and politics and economics of postindustrial societies. As a comparativist, he travels with a purpose in Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Taiwan, Cuba, Norway, Denmark, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Iceland, Spain, Japan, Fiji, and many other intriguing locations. Selected book publications include Trust Beyond Borders (2008) published by The University of Michigan Press, and European Democracies, (9th Edition, 2017) published by Routledge. His recent articles have appeared in journals such as Social Science Quarterly (2016), and Comparative Politics (2016). Dr. Crepaz is the past Head of the Department of International Affairs and is the co-Director of the Stellenbosch, South Africa, Study Abroad Program at the University of Georgia.

Ground zero for South Africa’s development challenges are its “townships,” urban areas outside cities and towns that were built in the early decades of the 20th Century to house (and contain) black Africans, who were being compelled to migrate from the rural areas to work in mines, factories, and households. The white governments that ruled the country forced Africans to live in these townships, where they were denied political and social rights, provided only the most basic housing, and offered an education designed to limit them to manual labor.
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Township accommodation remains the most affordable housing option for South Africans and an estimated one-third of the population lives there today. The unpaved roads, shacks, and small government-built house that characterize the townships are in striking juxtaposition to the adjacent wealthy suburbs where most of the white population lives. Township living reinforces inequality and segregates black children within inferior township schools.

This course takes students into one of these townships for a month. Although it is a relatively short study-abroad program, it is intense and our students work hard for their six hours of academic credit (three hours in this class and three hours in the second class in the program). After classroom lectures in the morning, the students spend every afternoon working with children in an after-school program in Kayamandi, a township on the outskirts of Stellenbosch, which is an affluent college town about 30 miles from Cape Town. In the ten-minute drive from Stellenbosch to Kayamandi, the students enter a world that is utterly different—economically, socially, culturally, and linguistically—from the one in which they have been living and learning.

The trip from Stellenbosch to Kayamandi symbolizes the bridging of the gap between theory and praxis: it hones the theoretical approaches of development taught in the lecture with the actual, on-the- ground experiences of the students as they engage in service learning. Their work in the township gives them an immediate understanding, more powerful than any lecture, of how poverty, lack of jobs, crime, broken homes, poor sanitation, and school failure are all connected. They instinctively grasp why development—here defined as whatever a person needs for his/her innate abilities to come to full fruition—is so difficult to achieve for many South Africans and this, in turn, gives them a new appreciation of the challenges that many Americans face.

What are the learning goals for this course?
After taking this course, students will be able to:

1. A. Understand the fundamental concepts of “positive” and “normative” forms of development as they apply to South Africa;

1. B. Explain how systematic racial discrimination, from the colonial era to Apartheid, led to structural underdevelopment, making South Africa one of the most unequal societies in the world;

1. C. Analyze the liberation struggle, led by Nelson Mandela, that ultimately ended Apartheid;

1. D. Discuss the challenges, choices, and compromises by the post-Apartheid governments;

1. E. Understand the concept of “state capacity” and how predatory rule, rent seeking and corruption hamper development;

1. F. Compare traditional approaches to development and contrast them with “Ubuntu,” an indigenous form of development and an Africanist humanist philosophy

How do you measure student learning and development outcomes?
Student learning outcomes:
Student learning outcomes are assessed in the traditional fashion with an in-class mid-term exam, participation, and journals, as well as a final paper due one month after the program is over and students have returned to the U.S. Here I will focus only on the journal and the final paper.

We ask students to keep a daily journal in which they reflect on their experiences and how they relate to what they are learning in class. We encourage students to go beyond just a simple accounting of what they did on a given day but to write honestly about what they are observing, the emotions that these observations generate, and how their perceptions evolve as the program unfolds. We have found that the journals offer unvarnished and authentic accounts of service learning as it is actually occurring; the students’ reflections are enlightening, insightful, and useful—many of which we have used to improve the program.
The final paper is due roughly one month after students return from Stellenbosch in order to allow for some time to pass before they submit their assignment. This is done deliberately, as we know that the assessment of their study abroad experience changes after they have experienced life in the US again and have had the opportunity to reflect on their time abroad. When they think about the contrast between South Africa and the US, their study abroad experience comes into sharper relief, particularly for those who have experienced reverse culture shock. The purpose of the final paper is to connect their personal experiences with materials taught in the class. Here is the topic they are assigned:
In our Politics of Development (INTL 4320S) class we distinguished between a “normative” and “positive” approach to development. In order to answer this question, I would like you to make full use of your experiences in Kayamandi. Ensure that you answer each question in your paper. The best way to do that would be to address each question/statement separately with a corresponding sub-heading, i.e. your answer should speak to each of the 8 points separated by the 8 sub-headings.
1. What does “normative” and “positive” development mean?
2. Given your practical experience in Kayamandi, which of the two approaches would you apply to South Africa?
3. Why have you chosen this strategy?
4. Provide at least four examples from your work in Kayamandi to support your choice of development strategy.
5. Why do you think is one development strategy superior/inferior to the other?
6. If you could project the results of your chosen strategy into the future how would it differ from the other strategy?
7. At what cost (democracy, inequality, freedom, etc) would your chosen development strategy come?
8. When and how would you know that you have achieved “development”?
As you write this paper, make it as empirical as possible. In other words, you should combine what you learned in class with your observations in Kayamandi, but you should also do some empirical research to support your statements and conclusions. For data sources, use the Human Development Report; World Bank, IMF, the various United Nations organizations such as WHO, and there is a host of NGO sources available that provide excellent data that will help you support your argument.

Student development outcomes:
Our study abroad pre-test (administered on the first full day of the program) and post-test surveys (same survey administered on the last day before departure) are a broader assessment of the impact of our program on the students in it. The 35 questions
measure how students’ attitudes have changed over the month.

We are particularly interested in two outcomes. First, does this program help students to become more empathetic of peoples in other cultures as they learn about the impact of colonialism, institutionalized racism, political oppression, the liberation struggle, and attempts at reconciliation in South Africa? Second, does this course enable students to become more analytic and discriminating consumers of information? Do they learn how to make informed judgments about the quality of data, of how, and who, gathered it. In other words, we are exploring to what extent participation in this course assists in the development of critical thinking. Given the length of the questionnaire, we are only able to highlight a few results.

All the following queries show statistically significant improvements between the pre- and post-test survey, measured by pairwise comparison t-tests. The significant levels are at the .01 level or even higher.
* I am able to empathize with people from other countries
* Being actively involved in global issues is my responsibility
* Synthesized and organized ideas, information into new, more complex interpretations and relationships
* Applied theories or concepts to practical problems or in new situations
* Analyzed the basic elements of an idea, experience, or theory, such as examining a particular case or situation in depth and considering its components
* Made judgments about the value or information, arguments, or methods, such as examining how others gathered and interpreted data and assessing the soundness of their conclusions
* Applied what I learned in the course to my personal life or work
* Discussed ideas from the readings/classes with faculty outside of class
* Discussed ideas from you readings or classes with others outside of class (students, family members, co-workers, etc)

The changes in the student scores on these items demonstrate that even a short-term study-abroad class can influence student learning and development and attest to the importance of immersing students in the local culture.

In what ways does the curriculum leverage the unique learning opportunities of your host context?
This course and the program as a whole are embedded in the host context. All the students take two classes: the Politics of Development (the course being nominated for the FEA Award), taught by Dr. Markus Crepaz, and a second course, South African Society, taught by Dr. William Finlay, the program’s co-director and a native of South Africa. The two classes are designed to complement each other and to give students an intense education in South Africa’s history, culture, and politics, a country about which they generally know very little.
William Finlay and Markus Crepaz began the program in 2008 with the explicit goal of integrating the students into the local community. One way in which they sought to achieve this was by being hosted by Stellenbosch University, one of the leading universities on the African continent; students are admitted to this university for the month in which they are in South Africa and they have full use of university facilities. Further, Stellenbosch staff and faculty play a vital part in the daily running of the program, particularly in the service-learning component—Finlay and Crepaz rely on a Stellenbosch faculty member who is a specialist in community engagement and development to provide training in best practices in service learning.

A second way in which the course being nominated has taken advantage of the learning opportunities in Stellenbosch is by developing a relationship with Vision Afrika, an NGO in Kayamandi. Vision Afrika operates the after-school program in which UGA students have been working since 2013. Dr. Crepaz (and Dr. Finlay) made it clear from the outset that students were there as learners rather than as teachers; their job was to assist the staff at Vision Afrika. Students are overtly discouraged from thinking of this facet of the course as the equivalent of a mission trip or of approaching it with a “white savior” attitude.
There are numerous other learning opportunities that the host context provides, ranging from socializing and going to rugby games with Stellenbosch students to visiting monuments, museums, and memorials. Students go to two of the prisons where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, Robben Island and Victor Verster, and visit the extraordinary Apartheid Museum when the group travels to Johannesburg. They tour the country’s two largest townships, Soweto (made famous by the 1976 uprising there) and Khayelitsha.
Finally, this course provides the opportunity for the students to meet with some remarkable South Africans, such as Wilhelm Verwoerd and Willie Esterhuyse. Verwoerd is the grandson of the infamous, H.F. Verwoerd, the white South African prime minister often described as the architect of Apartheid. Wilhelm Verwoerd broke with his family and went into exile; he returned after 1990 and now runs a community-development center on the outskirts of Stellenbosch; UGA students are always inspired when they talk to him because of his personal journey from rejection to reconciliation. Esterhuyse is a Stellenbosch academic who had a key role in the 1980s in the talks between the Apartheid government and the African National Congress that culminated in Mandela’s release from prison and the unbanning of the ANC. He was featured in the movie, “End Game,” where he was played by William Hurt; Dr. Crepaz has arranged special showings of the film with him, after which he has agreed to stay to answer questions about being one of the first Afrikaners to negotiate directly with the ANC.

To what extent is your course curriculum integrated with curricula of the students' home institutions?
This service-learning course (INTL 4320S) is part of the course offerings of the Department of International Affairs (DIA) in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). The undergraduate teaching mission statement of the DIA reads as follows:
• Providing Comprehensive Education: We aspire to be the most comprehensive educational program on international affairs in the Southeast, with an emphasis on offering a curriculum that provides the necessary skills and knowledge for careers in public affairs and the local, state, national, and international levels. This objective serves to extend the University’s legacy of distinguished teaching, research, and public service in public affairs education;
• Combining Theory and Practice: Providing learning opportunities for students that combine theory and practice by offering access to internships, study abroad experiences, workshops, policy practicums, and interaction with visiting professors and practicing public officials;
• Professional Preparation: Ensuring that undergraduates are well-prepared to enter professional schools for advanced degrees, compete nation-wide for positions in the work force, and obtain the skill and knowledge necessary for careers in public affairs at the local, state, national, and international levels; and,
• Promoting Global Citizenship and International Understanding: Continuing and expanding international awareness and understanding. This is one of the central themes that underpinned the founding of SPIA, and includes educating students in the duties and responsibilities of global citizenship for a democratic society nested in an increasingly globalized world.

The great majority of students in this course (and program) are International Affairs majors, followed by a much smaller group of Sociology majors, and the remainder from other fields. This means that most study abroad students are already focused on International Affairs.

All four points mentioned above in the DIA’s undergraduate teaching mission are reflected in the course:
* The pre-and post-test survey results suggest that students learn to be critical thinkers and informed consumers of data and methods, which in turn prepare them for careers in public affairs.
* The essence of the course is the combination of theory and practice, one of the cornerstones of the department’s undergraduate mission.
* The service learning aspect of the course gives students a first-hand understanding of the complexities of working in educational institutions in a developmental context.
*Finally, the pre-and post-test survey results suggest that students develop a sense of global citizenship and international understanding.
In short, the course complements the DIA’s curriculum of the students’ home institution very effectively.

Did you consult any resources on education abroad that were particularly helpful in designing this course?
The course developed through conversations with staff in the Office of International Education at the University of Georgia and from feedback from a wide of range of faculty on this and other study-abroad programs. A book that has been useful is Student Learning Abroad (2012), edited by Vande Berg, Paige, and Lou, and published by Stylus.


If you feel that you have valuable information to contribute to this project that is not addressed in the body of this survey, please elaborate here.
In many respects, this course is the culmination of Dr. Crepaz’s 25-year participation in study-abroad programs in four different continents. Many of these programs were undertaken alongside his long-time colleague and collaborator, William Finlay. The two have spent hundreds of hours discussing what does and doesn’t work in study-abroad teaching. This class shows what can be achieved on a short-term program, if the course is designed to take full advantage of the local context.

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