This section discusses the themes that arose from the study. Consistent with the literature, the study participants cited an intersection of socio-cultural and interpersonal factors, the complexities of xenophobia within African people in the STEM departments, and how ‘transformation’ has been amended to represent something different. The narratives revealed how socio-cultural and interpersonal factors like the participants’ race, gender, and socio-economic status situated them in complex and marginal positions (Mkhize & Idahosa, 2014).

Socio-cultural and interpersonal obstacles

A finding of this study is that the socio-cultural and interpersonal obstacles African women encounter such as racialised and gendered discrimination highlight how the STEM disciplines remain untransformed. These findings reveal that what has occurred is demographic reform but that racist, sexist, and classist ideologies persist within the STEM disciplines, as narrated by the participants who shared their experiences, as Zamantshali explained,

Men need to be part of the transformation agenda. Men, particularly Black men discriminate against Black women. Black men fear white women because they do not ask them questions such as ‘why are you getting your PhD?’, ‘Who will marry you with a PhD?’, ‘When will you leave and have children?’ As a Black woman you are suffocating, you face discrimination from white men and women and then you are harassed by Black men, it is a lot to deal with.

Zamantshali’s narrative focused on the intersection between socio-cultural norms and gendered stereotypes. In African cultures, African women still face societal gendered expectations, of getting married and bearing children first before striving for a professional career. As another participant, Lindiwe stated African women continue to receive discouraging messages from African men even within academic spaces. Lindiwe further reiterates,

There is a pattern I have noticed in meetings where the Black men are extremely harsh in their critique of Black women’s work and their projects, unnecessarily so. They are unsupportive and only offer negative comments. They are harsher towards us than their white counterparts.

Lindiwe’s narrative highlights the racialised patriarchy African women within STEM experience from African men. As McGee (2021) argues, this public humiliation of African women by African men perhaps stems from the need for African men to assert themselves publicly in front of their white counterparts, since they are unable to do so to the white men and white women because of their racial privilege. Therefore, the African woman is the only remaining target they can assert their gendered privilege. The participants having achieved academic success by pursing their doctoral degrees in difficult STEM disciplines are constantly reminded they are rebelling against the expected norm of the socio-cultural designated identity of being wives and mothers. This shows the insidious way patriarchy works; these messages from African men could at best be viewed as a reminder to women to remember their constructed and expected roles or face being ostracized from their societies. At worst, these messages are deliberately designed by African men to embarrass African women in front of their white peers and to distance themselves from being associated with them and their ‘negative perception of intellectual inferiority’. Or it could be to actively discourage African women from being too ambitious because African men will also have to compete against them and they are already competing against all white people. This oppressive type of behaviour from white, Coloured, and Indian women, as well as African men, emphasizes the intersectional oppression experienced by African women which is different from how oppression is experienced by African men and white women.

Fezile’s narration mentioned the oppression African women consistently face perpetuated by other women within the science disciplines. Fezile said,

White Afrikaner women are horrible they are so racist and treat us as if we are intellectually inferior because we are Black women. Yet these same women believe they are as oppressed as us because they are women, but they themselves oppress Black women worse than their white men do.

Other African women in the study mentioned the problematic white women in STEM, who believe that African women have a common experience in that they too are discriminated against by white men, yet as Fezile (and others) explained there is a sisterarchy at play. Sisterarchy, a term coined by Nzegwu (1990), explains that all women are united by their being oppressed, due to their gender. However, there is also a racial hierarchal system of oppression within that unity, with white women perpetuating oppression onto African women. Thandeka’s and Zamantshali’s narratives illustrate the untransformed institutional culture that permeates STEM disciplines.

Another participant, Thembani, said,

Black students are viewed as labourers, domestic workers and are intellectually undermined. White students are privileged and have more power and get away with a lot of stuff in the lab. The white males are aggressive to Black women, they are physically aggressive, and they shout at Black women in their faces.

As Thembani’s narrative explained, the students who insult, demean, and harass the African women students felt safe in doing so because the STEM departments and institutions did nothing to stop or prevent it. Their attitudes and inaction had implicit departmental and institutional support. Thus, it is not surprising that the neutrality, colour-blind, meritocratic, and toxic levels of prejudice remain unchallenged in STEM disciplines, because other races have the implicit protection of the institution and STEM departments that allows them to badger African women unchecked as Thembani’s experience highlighted. That once again highlights how reform only is happening in these STEM spaces, because if the STEM disciplines were truly transformed, none of those students would feel emboldened enough to continue repressing African women. As Thandeka mentions,

Black female students face many hardships which are deliberately caused by the Indian women in the departments. Black women must be strong and preserve facing many obstacles.

Thandeka’s narrative emphasizes the experiences of African women who face oppression from other women classified as Black too (Indian and ColouredFootnote 3). Intersectionality theorizes around this issue of within-group discrimination and of colourism and hierarchies that persist within the black community (of Black, Indian, and Coloured) which historically was perpetuated and manipulated by the apartheid government for their own agenda of sowing division amongst the races. Thandeka and the other participants spoke about the racism they experienced from other women but did not engage with the sexism. Since the oppression they experience is perpetrated by other Black women, race cannot be the only factor, but they do not engage further with this type of oppression being sexist in nature. Sexism, however, is usually theorised as something that men do to women and that is simplistic. What we need to interrogate is that oppression inflicted on women by other women is more nuanced than just being about race or ethnicity. Perhaps what is needed is a discussion around the patriarchy and misogyny that exist in the STEM disciplines and not the one perpetuated by only men; but that is beyond the scope of this paper.

The issues raised in this theme accentuate how untransformed the STEM disciplines remain. A truly transformed environment would actively encourage still disadvantagedFootnote 4 people to remain, succeed, and attain their doctorate degrees. Many participants in this study mentioned that the first reason they chose to pursue their doctorate in STEM disciplines was because they wanted to be researchers and professors and to contribute to their societies, as well as to be the role models and mentors they did not have as students. Entering the industry, although more fiscally lucrative than academia, was a secondary option. However, if STEM environments continue to perpetuate their historical racial and gender hierarchal discrimination, transformation will not occur because African women will opt to go into industry instead of academia for those reasons and what will continue to happen is reform by demographical numbers in these fields but not transformation.

Complexities of xenophobia

During colonialisation and later apartheid, Africans were segregated according to their ethnicities. African migrants had been coming to South Africa during the colonial and, later, in the apartheid times. On the other hand, after 1994, they began to enter South Africa in large numbers driven by the political and economic hardships in their own countries. The media portrayed African foreigners negatively and they were blamed for the ills of the country. Matsinhe (2011) argued that South Africa positions itself as the superior power on the continent and Africans from other African countries are portrayed as inferior and an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality persists. In South African universities, there is a push for transformation and that entails hiring and retaining indigenous Africans. This agenda has caused tensions and competition amongst indigenous Africans and non-indigenous Africans, due to the limited resources and academic positions available. Xenophobic attacks in the media have been presented as something perpetrated by indigenous Africans on non-indigenous Africans. However, my data suggests that in STEM disciplines in South Africa, the opposite is often occurring as Nompumelelo narrates,

There is overt xenophobia in my university and in my discipline and it is the African foreigners against the Black South African students. There is this consistent narrative that Black South African students are slackers and do not deserve all the good things their government gives them, such as scholarships and funding for their research. African foreigners work harder and faster and are more intelligent. There is this one African foreigner professor who is known for deliberately sabotaging Black South African students by not helping them to progress, so they get frustrated and do not complete their PhDs. Yet the African foreigner students he supervises always graduate in record time and it feeds into the narrative that this professor perpetuates that Black South African students are unintelligent and do not graduate. The same professors treat Indian and white women PhD students very well, unlike the way they treat Black women students.

Xolisile also mentioned the xenophobia that exists in her institution as well. Xolisile said,

Xenophobia in science exists. Black South African students suffer under the supervision of African foreign supervisors who intentionally frustrate them to the point that they leave and do not graduate. The African foreign students are praised by all races, and they graduate quickly. This is devious discrimination because Black students are afraid to complain or report this behaviour to the HoDs or Deans because they will be labelled as xenophobic and that is not true.

Nompumelelo’s and Xolisile’s experiences raise many issues. The first is that there is an insidious element occurring within certain science departments, where some African students are victimised because they are indigenous Africans. Nompumelelo narrates that the non-indigenous African foreigner is behaving in the same way some white people still behave but since it is another African person the only accusations they can levy are sexism, classism, and ethnicity, but it cannot be race. What is occurring here is overt ethnic discrimination and it perpetuates what the white, male, hegemonic science environment continues to claim, that African students, especially African women, are intellectually inferior. The second issue is that this situation is complicated because the African students are held hostage by how they complain about their mistreatment. They are afraid to complain about this non-indigenous African professor, because they will be labelled as xenophobic.

This further emphasises what was mentioned earlier in the paper that what is occurring in STEM disciplines is reform because the neoliberal and neo-colonialism that exist in the academy are so prevalent that when African students or staff challenge these ideologies they are labelled as ‘racist’ by the white people for wanting to dismantle the system. I ask the question: How do we resist temptation where those who are against decolonizing or those who support it only in rhetoric (mainly white academics) use non-indigenous African academics to block access to academia for the sole purpose of preserving the residual effects of colonialisation in South Africa? One could argue these non-indigenous African academics are also being used against the decolonisation project and other participants’ narrated experiences noted that some non-indigenous African academics in STEM were themselves perpetuating this blockage, now with a new purpose of reducing their vulnerability and securing themselves. This demonstrates how intersectionality operates in terms of competing for power and positions amongst marginalised and oppressed groups in higher education. The narratives by Xolisile and Nompumelelo expose the prevalent neoliberal and colour-blind ideology in STEM disciplines, which labels all individuals as either racist or xenophobic in order to silence and dismiss their experiences. This indicates that even if you remove white people in STEM and replace them with only African people (African foreigners included), the system of discrimination, sexism, ethnicity, and classism will continue in different ways and that once again emphasises that reform is occurring but not real transformation.

‘Transformation’ mutations

As previously mentioned, the STEM ontology values the Eurocentric characteristics of competition, individualism, survival of the fittest, and meritocracy (Herzig, 2004; Mayes-Tang, 2019). Institutional and departmental racism and sexism manifests and expresses itself in norms and values such as having a disproportionate number of white males in positions of authority. What happens then when certain individuals are deemed to be transformative, based on their race or gender, but their individual ideologies are not aligned with the transformation agenda. As Mbal’enhle mentions,

We have a research unit and there was a Black man who was elected as director and ever since he became director only white people have been hired for positions and he does not like Black people, yet he is Black. He is supposed to be the face of transformation, but he is setting the transformation agenda back by his actions.

Mbal’enhle, who is in Xx university, described how in her unit an African man was elected as a director and under his tenure only white men were hired for positions, and yet although he is in an authoritative position to enact sincere transformation, he consistently chooses not to do so. What does that mean in terms of furthering the transformation agenda. Literature has mentioned how STEM faculty members play an important role in co-constructing norms that mitigate racialised and gendered construction of stereotypes and making the STEM environment more inclusive (Featherstone et al., 2011). The oppression and overt exclusion of Africans especially African women within STEM confirm what Mboti (2021) has reiterated that apartheid continues to modify and is never the same thing. It continues to adapt and to hide more efficiently under certain ideologies such as colour-blindness and anti-blackness and it uses reform so it can be disguised as transformation when it is not. McGee and Bentley (2017) argue that Black within-group tensions exist in the west and their analyses of such tensions were based solely on race, leaving open questions about the interplay of racism with patriarchy. However, the examples of African women’s tensions with other African peers highlighted in this section were of instances of internalized racial-gendered oppression captured in the broader study, but because discovering this phenomenon was not the central focus of this current work.

The Department of Higher Education (DHET) in South Africa focuses on universities and institutions of higher education; the department of basic education solely focuses on education from pre-school to grade 12; the school boards and school leaders all have explicitly stated their mandate and goal, which is to increase the number of African students in science and mathematics disciplines. These entities of the DHET and the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) have agendas and campaigns, such as the 2030 campaign which are strategic plans to recruit, train, and retain African women so that they will make up 50% of the teaching and research staff in the scarce skills of STEM (National Planning Commission, NPC 2012). What does that mean for achieving the 2030 agenda when participants are being actively prevented from pursing STEM degrees in universities in South Africa? Zandile mentioned her experience in mathematics and how she was intentionally prevented from beginning her mathematics degree by a Black administration. Zandile stated,

The reason why I started my Mathematics degree a year later than planned is because the department of education withheld my marks and would not release my Matric certificate. They said they had to investigate that my teacher did not give me the answers because no one has ever in [*] high school ever passed Matric higher-grade mathematics with an A. I think it is because they could not believe me, a poor township girl, from a township high school could get a distinction in Higher GradeFootnote 5 Mathematics so they investigated and wasted a year of my life. I was discouraged because I have loved mathematics from a child and always done well and when I do something good it is unbelievable, yet now I am in my final year of PhD in mathematics.

Zandile’s narration highlighted how her experience of oppression and exclusion from mathematics begun in her secondary schooling, in MatricFootnote 6 where she was able to achieve a distinction in mathematics from a Black township school which is severely under-resourced and understaffed and where African students historically have not succeeded or passed their high school sufficiently to enter universities. Zandile having overcome all the obstacles of being African and female and coming from a poorer socio-economic background was further victimized by a Black administration. This administration oppressed her by withholding her Matric results to validate her mathematics results forcing her to defer an entire year of university and to relinquish her scholarship for that year. These Black administrations are working against the transformation goals of the departments of higher education and basic education, by preventing an African child from achieving a university qualification in the scarce skills of STEM and therefore achieving social upward mobility and consequently breaking the cycle of poverty. There have been reports of strategic exclusion of African students choosing science and mathematics subjects in school, by reducing student numbers taking these subjects in township and rural schools in order to increase the pass rate. Consequently, these schools have an agenda to pass as many students as possible by discouraging students not to take mathematics or to take it on a lower level such as standard grade to increase their chances of passing mathematics. The implications of encouragement, gender, and school number of passes are all a result of pressure from the leadership of the school and department of education to meet certain targets and agendas at the expense of African students specifically African girls wanting to pursuing mathematics. This highlighted the Herculean efforts African women in STEM face and must overcome the enormous battles of racism, sexism, and classism that begins in high school and continues to university where they face the same persecutions from every race and gender as their advance and progress in South African universities. There appears to be a conflict in the STEM goal, because the government and leaders of education in South Africa want transformation in the STEM fields and have specific agendas and campaigns to increase the number of African girls and women in these disciplines, yet in the lower levels of high school, there appears to be a divergent agenda of actively excluding and discouraging African scholars from pursuing these subjects. Unless this conflict is resolved the number of African girls and women pursing STEM disciplines in South African universities will remain low.

The institutionalising of laws and behaviours in colonial and apartheid South Africa segregated the nation and discrimination and race was used as a structure to create division and as a marker of exclusion. The call for transformation was intended to redress this historical exclusion by including previously disadvantaged people in institutions of higher education. However, there needs to be a conversation around transformation that goes beyond demographic change only. There exists a belief that transformation has occurred in these fields due to the presence of white women who enjoy racial privilege and remain perpetrators of oppression themselves, as narratives by Fezile and other participants highlighted. There are some critics who demand that transformation can only occur when we replace white academics with African academics; that is not enough because what we will be doing is replacing one power (white men) with another (African men), as Nompumelelo, Thandeka, Fezile, and Mbal’enhle reiterated. The fact that African people are overrepresented in the lower ranks in the university structures and that the upper echelons are still dominated by white people is an example of the flaws in the transformation agenda. Due to the neoliberal structures of universities, white people still have the structural and institutional power and capabilities to prevent true transformation from occurring. Therefore, they cannot be excluded from the transformation agenda. White people as the internal hegemonic forces still have decision-making power to constantly ‘push back’ at transformational efforts; which begs the question, why do they remain at the top end of the hierarchy and African people remain in the lower ranks? This has and will continue to create new social hierarchies, which is what is occurring where issues such as ethnicity and citizenship are used as tools of exclusion in university structures (Idahosa, 2020). There will be no sustainability in the transformation agenda if the exclusion of white people and African foreigners continues to be reinforced. There needs to be a substantial reformed transformation agenda that moves beyond demographic transformation and closer to structural, institutional, and systematic transformation.