Professor Maxi Schoeman, head of the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria, is currently the eleventh incumbent of the Claude Ake Visiting Chair at Uppsala University in Sweden, where she has been offered a calm environment in which to pursue her research on human security issues for a period of three months.

Professor Schoeman has been exploring the challenges facing South Africa in its efforts to address the inequities of the past ever since the end of apartheid. As the Claude Ake Visiting Chair in Uppsala she will look deeper into issues related to human security and will focus specifically on South Africa’s involvement in and contribution to peace missions on the African continent.

Many years ago, Prof Schoeman read a short news report about a desperate couple in drought-ridden Zambia who had left their home in search of food. When they returned, they found that their three hungry children had died after eating mud. This opened her eyes to the problems experienced in African countries.

‘This was right after the end of the cold war when there was much tension internationally regarding stockpiles of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union. This issue would fill our newspapers in South Africa too, even though it had very little direct relevance for us. In our region the main concern at that time was people dying of hunger during one of the worst droughts we had ever experienced. The fact that this article was so tiny compared to the stories on global security was an illustration in itself. There was an urgent need to draw attention to the things that mattered to us, to address the issues of human security,’ she said.

Professor Schoeman is among the proponents of a human security paradigm that challenges the traditional notion of national security and is of the opinion that the proper referent for security should be the individual rather than the state.

After the fall of apartheid in 1994, Professor Schoeman started looking at human security from a woman’s perspective. The complicated process of opening up the national defence force to women combined many of the new challenges faced by a democratic South Africa. ‘The defence force had a history of not only racism, but also of gender discrimination. With the new constitution, the legislation and policy became clearly non-racist and non-discriminatory, but many practical struggles remained,’ she said.

She has also been exploring the implementation of democratic South Africa’s regional agenda and ambition for peace, security and development in Africa. While the country’s transformation into a regional economic and political powerhouse is impressive, there are still deep concerns on the domestic front. South Africa has not been able to address its three core challenges: poverty, inequality and unemployment. In fact, these problems remain deeply entrenched in the socio-economic fabric of post-apartheid South Africa.

The Claude Ake visiting chair was set up in 2003 at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, in collaboration with the Nordic Africa Institute. It honours the memory of Professor Claude Ake, a distinguished scholar, philosopher, teacher and humanist, who died tragically in 1996. The chair is intended for scholars who, like Claude Ake, combine a profound commitment to scholarship with a strong advocacy for social justice.

This article first appeared on the website of the Nordic Africa Institute.