SHEPHERD MPOFU'S FACEBOOK RANTS: A CASE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A THREAT FOR KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

Year 2023, Volume: 7 Issue: 2, 150 - 157, 01.05.2023

Kgothatso Shai

Abstract

As a relatively new media, social media has been fairly researched by scholars emanating from Media and Communication Studies, Political Science, Public Administration and Sociology, just to mention a few. A considerable effort has been invested by these scholars to explore the dynamics and implications of social media. But the understanding of this phenomenon remains uncommon; yet most of the contributors to this discourse operate from Euro-American consciousness - which does not accurately capture the essence of African reality. Based on qualitative materials and Afrocentricity, this paper concedes that generally social media births casual social relations. But it argues that its unguarded nature as reflected in Mpofu's rants constitute an imminent threat to knowledge development in South Africa.

Keywords

Facebook, social media, knowledge, development, South Africa

Project Number

N/A

References

• Achankeng, F. (2023). The Wars of Our Time: Origins and Way Forward for Peace, A keynote paper delivered during a virtual Public Lecture at the University of Limpopo, 28 February 2023.
• Asante, M.K. (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge. Trenton: Africa World Press.
• Asante, M.K. (2003). Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Chicago, IL: African American Images.
• Asante, M.K. (2007). An Afrocentric Manifesto. Toward an African Renaissance. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
• Author. (2016). An Afrocentric Critique of the United States of America’s foreign policy towards Africa: The case studies of Ghana and Tanzania, 1990-2014. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Sovenga: University of Limpopo.
• Author. (2021). Scholarship and Politics in South Africa’s Higher Education System. London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers.
• Cambridge Dictionary. (2023). Meaning of affinity in English. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/affinity (04 March 2023).
• Dube, T. (2021) ‘Gukurahundi Remembered: The Police, Opacity and the Gukurahundi Genocide in Bulilimamangwe District, 1982–1988.’ Journal of Asian and African Studies 00.0: 1-13. Higgins, J. (2013). Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
• Jain, M. (2022). Appointment as an External Examiner: ACA 83/122/01/PART III 9801), University of the Gambia, October 27.
• Jansen, J. (2005). When does a university cease to exist? Weekly Mail & Guardian, 03 February 2005, pp. 1-4.
• Jansen, J. (2022). Xenophobia is threatening the future of the SA university. University World News, Africa Edition. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20221004102540205 (5 October 2022).
• Khan, KB. (2022). Call for Papers: The Rhetoric of Decolonial Theories in Africa. Journal of African Rhetoric.
• Khunou, G. (2019). Writing to stay: Running shoes replaced with high heels. In Khunou, G; Phaswana, ED; Khoza-Shangase, K. & Canham, H. (Eds) Black Academic Voices: The South African Experience. Pretoria: HSRC Press.
• Kirchherr, J. (2022) Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a provocation. Circular Economy and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-022-00175-9: 1-6.
• Makoka, M. (2023). An Afrocentric examination of the benefits and misfortunes of post-Apartheid South Africa’s foreign policy. Unpublished PhD thesis in International Politics. Sovenga: University of Limpopo.
• Maserumule, M.H. (2011). Good Governance in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD: A Public Administration Perspective. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Pretoria: University of South Africa.
• Maserumule, M.H. (2012). The new and the old in the complex of power relations in the politics of knowledge - a polemic editorial. Journal of Public Administration, 47 (1).
• Milam, J.H., Jr. (1992). “The Emerging Paradigm of Afrocentric Research Methods”., Paper presented at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 30 October 1992.
• Mazama, A. (Ed). (2003). The Afrocentric Paradigm. Trenton: Africa World Press.
• Mpofu, S. (2019) For a nation to progress victims must ‘move on’: a case of Zimbabwe’s social media discourses of Gukurahundi genocide silencing and resistance. African Identities Vol 17.2: 108–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2019.1660618.
• Mpofu, S. (2023). Google Scholar: Shepherd Mpofu (PhD). https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?hl=en&user=sk6dYg0AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate (03 March 2023).
• Mpofu W.J. (2021). Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: An Epistemicide and Genocide. Journal of Literary Studies, 37 (2): 40-55.
• Mudau, J., Mokgokong, M.J., & Khanya, M.P. (2021). Gerontocracy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the Public Sector Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Perennial Problem. European Journal of Economics, Law and Social Sciences. Special Issue: 27-43.
• Ndlovu, N. (2019) The Gukurahundi ‘Genocide’: Memory and Justice in Independent Zimbabwe. Published doctoral thesis in Historical Studies. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.
• Olivier, J. (2020). Outcome of Evaluation and Rating Process. Pretoria: NRF.
• Ramose, M.B. (2022a). The meaning and function of philosophy in the widening “fragmentation in science and society”. Paper delivered during a UNESCO World Philosophy Day Celebration, University of Limpopo, 17 November 2022.
• Ramose MB. (2022b). Better see than look at Ramose: A reply to Cees Maris. South African Journal of Philosophy 41 (1): 1–27
• Sebola M.P. (2018). Peer review, scholarship and editors of scientific publications: The death of scientific knowledge in Africa. KOERS-Bulletin for Christian Scholarship, 83(1):1-13.
• Sebola MP. (2022). Critiquing scientific writing for knowledge development in South African public administration scholarship: Selected reviews in South African articles and books. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science 11(10): 410-415.
• Shai KB, Molapo RR, Maake MP & Vunza M (2020) Genocide in the Human Security Discourse and Rhetoric of Sudan’s Darfur: An Asantean View. Journal of Nation-building & Policy Studies, 4 (2): 187-200.
• Shai, K.B. & Mothibi, K.A. (2015). Describing pre-2009 Xenophobic Violence in South Africa: A Human right Perspective. In Sebola, M.P., Tsheola, J.P. & Mafunisa, M.J. (Eds). African Governance: Society, Human Migration, State, Xenophobia and Business Contestations. Conference Proceedings. 4rd SAAPAM Limpopo Chapter Annual Conference, 28-30 October 2015.
• Shai KB & Vunza M. (2021). Contradicting Rhetorical (Re)presentations of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: An Afrocentric Analysis. African Journal of Rhetoric, 13: 226-236.
• Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London/ Dunedin: Zed Books/ University of Otago Press.
• South African Lawyer. (2022). Academics head to court over faculty meeting spat. https://www.southafricanlawyer.co.za/article/2022/07/academics-head-to-court-over-faculty-meeting-spat/, 03 March 2023.
• Tourish, D. (2020) The triumph of nonsense in management studies. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 19 (1): 99-109.
• United Nations (1948). Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. New York: United Nations.