Africanizing South African Psychology

Abstract

Despite psychology being one of the most popular areas of study at South African universities (Academy of Science of South Africa [ASSAF], 2011), it faces an identity crisis. This crisis resides in its constant cry for greater public recognition, it eschewing the affirmation that medicine enjoys, the battle between the scientific and academic fields on the one hand and the practice and professional domains on the other, its emergence from a fairly White racist ethos to a nascent and fast-changing democratic milieu, and its often uncritical emulation of western precepts to the denial of its patent African context. "South Africa and its psychology are anomalies" (Cooper & Nicholas, 2012). 1 South Africa (SA), located on the southern tip of the African continent, is simultaneously-perhaps erroneously-regarded as the gateway to Sub-Saharan Africa and yet quite unlike most African countries, where indigenous traditions are quite apparent. The colonial nexus is noticeable everywhere in SA and permeates sociocultural expression. One of only three countries in the world to call itself by a geographic name (the others, Central African Republic and the world's newest country, Southern Sudan, are also African), SA represents an amalgam of its various cultures, with Western traditions prevalent in all spheres of society and even in the remotest rural village. This is particularly true of psychology in SA (Cooper & Nicholas, 2012), which has been affected by European-and more recently by American-traditions. The centuries (since 1652) of Dutch and English hegemony and dominance in all spheres of the polity have deracinated SA from its essential African historicity and, in many respects, have rendered it a pathetic European clone. Visitors would be forgiven for being beguiled by Article Cooper 213 most of SA's major cities into feeling that they were not really in a part of Africa but in a part of Europe or America; the search for authentic African food and clothing would be quite an adventure. Perhaps the major give away would be the proximity of the African bush or other endemic natural representations of the unique African landscape. South African Demographics Bruited as one of the most multicultural societies on earth and the "Cradle of Humanity," SA comprises 51.8 million inhabitants (Statistics South Africa [StatsSA], 2012), of which 41.0 million (79.2%) are Black African, 4.6 million (9.0%) are "Coloured," 2 4.5 million (8.9%) are White, and 1.2 million (2.5%) are of Indian origin. Only 4.4% of the population were born outside SA. Some 5.3% of the population is 65 years of age or older and 38.9% is younger than 20 years of age, with 29.2% being below the age of 15 years, and 51.3% are female. The overwhelming majority of South Africans are Christian (79.8%), followed by Muslims (1.5%), Hindus (1.2%), people with African traditional beliefs (0.3%), and Jews (0.2%); 15.1% of the population indicate no religion and 1.4% refuse to state their religion (StatsSA, 2005). Of South Africa's 11 official languages, isiZulu is the ...

South African psychology 20 years into democracy

“…South African psychology is playing a critical role with other members of PAPU to re-vision psychology to truly represent all of humanity, thus significantly altering "the perceived and received psychology agenda that begs its essential African identity location" (Cooper, 2013). South Africa, with the constant evaluation of its psychology as both a science and profession, can play an important role in this global quest that must come out of Africa, psychology's last frontier.…”

First Journey by a Descriptive Review of Empirical Research on African Marital Relationships—Scientific Dissemination, Thematic Focus, and Methodology

“…As previously stated, 90 scientific articles meeting the defined inclusion criteria were identified. This limited number of studies, considering the broad and increasing range of general literature on marital relationships (Fincham & Beach, 2010), confirms the scarcity of research on non-Western societies and the dominance of knowledge on the part of Western countries (Adams, 2004;Berry, 2013;Cooper, 2013).…”

A synopsis of South African psychology from apartheid to democracy.

“…The NIPR, which closed in 1996 as it was an oddity during a democratic era, accounted for some 26.1 % of the output of the seven SA psychology journals that Seedat (1998) contentanalyzed for the four decades since apartheid, spanning 1948 to 1988. As argued by Cooper (2013), Great pains were taken by most apartheid-sponsored scientists to differentiate between the various racial groups, with white being accepted at the apex of intelligence and black African being con signed to the base, underscoring apartheid's conviction in the inherent superiority of whites, (p. 218) Steve Biko pointed out that "white people on the whole have come to believe in the inferiority" of Blacks and that they "despise black people, not because they need to rein force their attitude and so justify their position of privilege but simply because they actually believe that black is inferior and bad" (Biko, 2009, p. 97). This acceptance of White superiority on the one hand and Black inferiority on the other underlines the complexity of the challenges confronting not only the scientific, education, and professional training envi ronment but most of South African society as a whole, requiring clarity of vision, the willingness to be part of the transformation of an embedded racist sociocultural history, and the ability to transcend narrow antediluvian thinking and belief and offer a more African face to SA (pace Biko).…”

“…After the Whites-only general election of 1948, apartheid1 began to be implemented and was the prevailing political and social sys tem until the first nonracial general election on April 27, 1994, when Nelson Mandela became president. While the country is an indelible part of the African continent, the resonant culture appears to be more Western, impacting nearly all areas of human endeavor, especially its psychol ogy, which has traditionally been European and more re cently, American (Cooper, 2013).…”

“…It is noteworthy that since apartheid began to be entrenched, South African psycholo gists who emigrated to Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries have done well in their adopted countries as academics, practitioners, or consultants. It is also worth men tioning that renowned international psychologists such as Fritz Peris, Otto Klineberg, Gordon Allport, Viktor Frankl, Reuven Feuerstein, and Carl Rogers engaged with psychol ogy in SA despite the academic boycott during the apartheid era (Cooper, 2013).…”