Teaching Politics in Exile: A Memoir from Swaziland 1973–1985

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on the half of my 22-year exile from South Africa teaching Political Science in Swaziland, initially on a campus which formed one leg of an unusual experiment in tertiary education, the tri-national University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS). The paper makes two main points. First is that the three national campuses which made up UBLS were in academic terms in the 1970s and 1980s equal if not superior to the better known and better resourced campuses over the border in South Africa. Thus it is suggested was a product of the rich international and high-quality mix of the faculty, the diverse and politicized make-up of the student bodies and the innovative and progressive nature of the curriculum. Second is that the three campuses became in the course of the intensifying regional struggle against the apartheid regime significant sites of struggle involving both faculty and students, many of whom paid a heavy price for their involvement. It cost me my job in terms of a deportation; others paid a heavier price.