Author: Ophelia Benson

ZADHR is deeply concerned about the continuing violent trauma being inflicted on the Zimbabwean population. The escalation in numbers and severity of cases of systematic violent assault and torture during May was of a scale which threatened to, and for brief periods did, overwhelm the capacity of health workers to respond. Both first line casualty officers and specialists, especially surgeons and anaesthetists, to whom patients were referred had great difficulty in adequately managing the burden of serious physical trauma.

ZADHR commends the efforts of health professionals in Zimbabwe who continue to provide the highest possible quality of health care to victims of violence under extremely difficult circumstances.

In addition to individuals with significant physical injuries, members of ZADHR saw over 300 displaced patients with medical conditions such as pneumonia or asthma, or psychiatric diagnoses, in particular anxiety and depression, and many with chronic conditions such as diabetes whose medication had been lost or destroyed when the patients were violently forced, by arson or the immediate probability of injury or death, from their homes.

It is certain that a far greater number of patients will have been attended to by other members of the health professions, especially nurses, but will never have been near a doctor. Psychiatric and social problems may result in an even greater burden on health care workers than the frequently complicated but relatively clearcut diagnoses such as fractures.

One thousand and seven patients were seen during the month of May. 119 patients sustained fractures, more than 50 of which were recorded as confirmed on x ray. The remainder were clinical diagnoses, either with clinically evident physical distortion or with the broken ends of bone protruding through an external wound (compound fracture). 36 patients had fractures of the ulna (the inner or medial bone of the forearm), 27 of the radius (the outer or lateral bone of the forearm). Of these 13 had fractures of both radius and ulna, 4 had fractures of the ulna bones of both arms, and one patient had both radius bones broken. Seventeen further cases of fractured wrist, forearm or elbow were recorded.

Most of these fractures will have been sustained in attempts to defend the face and upper body from violent blows with a weapon such as a heavy stick or iron bar. As evidence for the sustained severity of the violence of many of the assaults there were several cases of multiple fractures to different areas of the body, for example one patient with fractures of the left ulna, right radius and a metatarsal (small bone of the foot), and another with a patella (knee cap) and bilateral ulna fractures. Three patients had skull fractures and 9 had broken ribs. Two of these cases had multiple rib fractures associated with haemothorax (bleeding into the space between the lungs and the chest wall, probably caused by penetration of the broken end of a rib, which can be rapidly fatal).

Forty five cases of fractures of the small bones of the hands (31) or feet (12), both hands (1), or both hands and feet (1) were recorded. Many patients sustained fractures to several bones, again witness to the sustained brutality of the assaults, and consistent with reports of hands and feet being pounded by a pestle (mutswi) in a mortar (duri).

At least two pregnant women, one 24 and the other 32 weeks gestation, were systematically beaten on the back and buttocks, resulting in extensive lacerations, bruising and haematoma formation. They were among the 312 cases classified as having severe soft tissue injury. This category includes widespread severe bruising, haematoma (collection of blood) formation, necrosis (tissue death), sepsis (infection, usually where there is extensive skin loss or abscess formation in a haematoma), or deep and extensive lacerations (cuts or wounds).

One patient, beaten extensively on the shoulders, back, buttocks and thighs, was also struck in the face and suffered a leak of vitreous humour (the transparent gel-like substance behind the lens of the eye) resulting in blindness.

There have been reports of over 53 violent deaths up to the end of May 2008. However although post-mortem examinations are legally mandatory in such cases, few are being undertaken and therefore cases are only rarely confirmed by doctors. However 7 of these deaths occurred in hospital following admission for injuries sustained during violent assault or torture and a further three did have post-mortem examinations. One confirmed a broken neck as the cause of death. A second died as a result of intracranial haemorrhage (bleeding inside the head) with extensive facial injury indicative of having been beaten on the head. The second died as a result of probable acute renal failure secondary to extensive myolysis (destruction of muscle) and soft tissue necrosis with evidence of falanga and widespread whipping type injuries. In the third case, the body was found several days after abduction, and although it was partially decomposed, the detailed post-mortem which was carried out did not reveal evidence of beating or torture. The estimated time of death (nearer to the time of abduction rather than when the body was found) and the witnessed method of abduction in which the head was forcibly extended, the face covered and, with the victim prone, several attackers putting their weight on his back, are consistent with death due to asphyxia.

There has been a gross surge in both the quantity and severity of injury. Fracture cases alone increased three-fold in number from April to May. These documented cases speak for themselves in terms of the urgency of the need to stop the violence which is sweeping large areas of the country. ZADHR reiterates its call on all parties to cease the use of assault and torture intimidation, victimisation or retribution. In addition to cessation of violence there are other urgent needs for affected individuals including shelter, food and water for internally displaced persons and mental and physical rehabilitation for victims of violent trauma.

Taken with permission from Normblog.

Ever since the process of economic reforms began in the 1990s, we have been hearing pious noises about the urgent need to reform education also. Obviously, the linkage is pragmatically motivated: economic growth cannot be sustained over a long period without a suitably reformed education system. This is good as far as it goes. If a concern for sustaining economic growth can trigger reforms in education, we should embrace the opportunity.

But it would be disastrous to hang education from the peg of economics, as seems to be happening, without considering the other larger reasons for restructuring it. The need to see the larger picture is urgent also because the dominant vision of economics in the country today is itself very narrow. This is a vision shaped predominantly by corporate interests and not inspired by a socially responsible economic philosophy.

A worthwhile exercise in educational reforms, on the contrary, must take into account the larger role that education plays in contemporary societies. Particularly, it must grapple with the changes that have swept the world during recent decades and anticipate the issues that are likely to seize the world in the coming times. Otherwise education will no more than subserviently reflect temporary business trends.

During a recent interaction with several educationists, I found very few responding to a simple question: Given complete freedom and every resource, how will you reorganize the classroom space? The silence of those who were otherwise even impressively aware and sharp was clearly not a sign of incompetence. It was the symptom of a deeper, systemic problem that we may understand if we consider the organizing rationality of our education system.

It is usually said that the education system is collapsing. It would make sense to speak of a collapse if the system were only burdened with more than it could bear. The real problem, instead, is even more serious: the system is faced with what it cannot handle. The reason is that its organizing rationality is that of industrial society, whereas we have been already pushed into the post-industrial society.

The real challenge, then, is how to free education from the constraints of the obsolescent industrial paradigm and reconfigure it in accord with the emerging post-industrial paradigm. And this will have to be done in such a way that the interests of all people are served and not just those of any privileged social group. So instead of lamenting the so-called collapse of education, we need to address ourselves to the crisis that the historic shift of the paradigm has induced on a global scale. Some societies have grasped the implications of the shift and are transforming their education systems. Others either have not grasped it, or do not possess the will to confront its challenges and use its opportunities. What these societies lack is a global sense of history, a lack reflected in the inability to take the measure of the changing times and imagine something radically different from the given and the inherited.

A global sense of history is needed if we want to be able to see the larger picture in terms of both space and time. We need to see not only continuities but also discontinuities. We need to know what sets the present, with all its legacy of traces, radically apart from the past. Successful societies of the future will be those which have a global sense of history and which moreover have the knack for translating that sense into useful practices in the present.

The spatial organization of the typical Indian classroom might have worked for the unilateral and instructive mode of knowledge transmission that the industrial society required. That, however, does not mean it will work in the post-industrial situation. The good old method of lecturing might be personally gratifying and even inspiring, yet it cannot be allowed to retain its monopoly in an age that demands participatory knowledge production. The old method still has its uses no doubt, but it must rediscover its place in a reconfigured academy. The new mode of knowledge production has to focus on open-ended innovation through shared use of the resources of creativity. The old mode was focused more on reproduction and on derivative applications of innovation. Fortunately, technologies are today available to facilitate the shift to the new mode, yet in our country these are put to little use other than as mere “aids” to lectures. This has to change.

Change is frightening, and more so when it is a “switch-over” change. But we can at least begin by opening up small spaces for experimentation and innovation within our great Education Machine. The good lessons can be gradually assimilated and the reconfigured spaces expanded. We have opportunities today to reaffirm the forgotten tradition of participatory production of knowledge. And for the first time in history the scale of the participation can be actually boundless and the proportion of production significantly greater than that of reproduction. The chances to reinvent the world have never looked so good.

But are we mentally prepared to suffer the agonies of change? Are we willing to move our Education Machine into cyberspace?

The world is doing it. The issues of quality control in scholarly electronic publication, of academic exchange and collaboration in cyberspace, of plagiarism and authenticity and the like are being discussed and resolved with utmost urgency. In most of our universities however, we continue to regard the “printed” word with a special reverence that we hesitate to accord to the electronic text. Unless we go full steam ahead for digital archiving and for unhindered electronic access and dissemination, we shall not be able to make for ourselves a place in the emerging networks of knowledge production.

Indeed the time has also come to upgrade democracy in the academy to the next level. For a long time we have lived with a higher education that is built around the myth of the non-existent “average” learner. The myth feeds off real, living students. Those who cannot keep pace with the system fall behind and suffer, while those who are capable of greater challenges find themselves under-tested. We need to make the system more democratic by making it both more inclusive and more adequate. For this purpose we would have to make the undergraduate and postgraduate courses multi-level. The students could then walk out of the university system with a basic degree or with an advanced degree of varied levels, depending on their inclinations, strengths and limitations.

Those students who are good and want to pursue research in the humanities and social sciences often find themselves helpless to follow their dream. With hardly any funding available, they have no choice but to abandon their dream and join the workforce. If they could be retained in the academy, they would be able to give much more to society. With their premature exit from education, the society is faced with a looming scarcity of good researchers and teachers in these crucial areas. The interdisciplinary courses in the universities, proposed by the UGC, can be an opportunity to give teaching assignments to research scholars in these areas. The assignments will financially sustain them and there will be no strain on the fund-starved universities also. In fact, even in the prevailing dispensation it is possible to provide teaching assignments to young research scholars. They can be given two or three hours of teaching every day in the departments of engineering, law, etc. The regular teachers in the departments of humanities and social sciences will be spared the trouble of additional, though paid, work; the needy research scholars will get their bread and butter.

At the same time, even as incentives are devised, we need to make research in the humanities and social sciences more rigorous. Universities should establish interdisciplinary centres for contemporary studies that would work at the forefront of research in all conceivable areas of contemporary society and culture. The students enrolled for Ph.D. programmes could be required to undergo a one-year course in these centres to enable them to plan their research projects in terms of emerging global trends and competencies. We often complain about the quality of research. Let us at least put together some infrastructure and give our young scholars a fair chance.

April 20, 2008

The writer teaches in the Department of English, Punjabi University, Patiala (Punjab). He may be reached at sharajesh@gmail.com.