No Pain No Gain? Reflections on Decolonisation and Higher Education in South Africa (original) (raw)
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Alternation - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa, 2020
The article discusses the complexities of decolonising curricula and humanising pedagogy in South Africa's Higher education. It is based on the secondary data source and empirical evidence of existing researches that have focused on the decolonisation of higher education. Since knowledge is produced in higher education where teachers are trained to develop the curriculum for the whole education system, decolonisation of the curriculum requires the system to consider the important role played by the teacher. The article examines decolonisation as a theory, concept, and pedagogical practices. The main argument herein is that since decolonisation has proliferated at a theoretical level, its operationalisation at higher education is just beginning. There is no theorist best known to the writers who have adequately provided the theoretical meaning of decolonisation for South Africa's higher education pedagogy and praxis. As such, the article lays the theoretical groundwork that brings decolonial theory into concrete engagement with pedagogic practice. The Freirean humanising pedagogy was used in an attempt to explore the relationship between humanisation and decolonisation of higher education in South Africa. To this effect, the main argument advanced in this section is that decolonial thinking of higher education in South Africa requires the development of pedagogical and intellectual spaces that respect Freirean problem-posing philosophy. The initial part of the article discusses the historical view of decolonial thinking and the theoretical gist of Complexities of Decolonising Curricula and Humanising Pedagogy 419 the article. The penultimate part of the article discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the decolonisation project. It unpacks the complexities of decolonising curricula and pedagogy in South Africa's Higher education as set against the background of COVID-19.
Decolonising The University In South Africa : A Precondition for Liberation
2012
The essay itself means to treat the way in which the general suppression and marginalisation of the African perspective in South African Education is an affirmation of an age-old philosophic racism and a confirmation of the pre-dominance of the white-supremacist power structure in South Africa. Our method will be to briefly treat the general history of racism with specific reference to the contact between Europeans and Africans, more specifically indigenous South Africans some time after the expeditions of conquest and settlement of the European invaders. We will then focus on this racism in the domain of education, focusing particularly on higher education and using the discipline of philosophy as a case study both because it is the area of training of the present author as well as because philosophy pervades all other disciplines and so our focus should have a specific as well as a general appeal. After arguing that very little has changed in the culture and practice of universities in South Africa since 1994, we will finally show how this condition of our universities, presents a serious obstacle to both Historical Justice and true liberation for the indigenous African people of the country.
South African Journal of Education
This article is an attempt to bring theoretical concepts offered by decolonial theories into conversation with 'humanising pedagogy.' The question that drives this analysis is: What are the links between humanisation and the decolonisation of higher education, and what does this imply for pedagogical praxis? This intervention offers valuable insights that reconfigure humanising pedagogy in relation to the decolonial project of social transformation, yet one that does not disavow the challenges-namely, the complexities, tensions and paradoxes-residing therein. The article discusses three approaches to the decolonisation of higher education that have been proposed and suggests that if the desired reform is radical, educators within the sector in South Africa will need to interrogate the pedagogical practices emerging from Eurocentric knowledge approaches by drawing on and twisting these very practices. These efforts can provide spaces to enact decolonial pedagogies that reclaim colonised practices. The article concludes with some reflections on what this idea might imply for South African higher education.
The need to transform higher education in South Africa is indisputable. This article explores how the recent #mustfall protests, as an Event, could inform transformation. An Event follows three phases: reframing (shattering the frame through which we understand reality), the fall (the loss of a primordial unity which is a retroactive illusion) and enlightenment (subjectivity itself as an eventuality). In conclusion, I pose that a shift towards who comes into presence in higher education and not (a pre-determined) what comes into presence, could provide possible footpaths to decolonialisation and transformation. Through processes of subjectification, the subject(s) of higher education could reframe historic ontological othering and actively take part in the process(es) of becoming and being human in higher education in (post)colonial South Africa.
Editorial Decoloniality and Decolonial Education: South Africa and the World
Alternation, 2020
The decision to put together this collection began as an initiative to engage with presenters and participants of the UNISA Decolonial Summer School of 2019 beyond the content that was presented. UNISA, referring to the University of South Africa, was established in 1873 and is South Africa's foremost distance learning university. UNISA is situated in Pretoria in the province of Gauteng, which is one of South Africa's three capital cities where the executive branch of government is located, with over 400,000 registered students, including its international student population that come from 130 countries around the world. UNISA's Decolonial Summer School commenced in 2013 for the first time, under the direction of the School of Humanities, and has thus far run every year except for 2021, due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This collection is composed of an introduction, seventeen articles by eighteen authors, two opinion pieces, two roundtables by eight authors, two of whom have articles in the collection, three interviews and three book reviews, and as such contain the work of twenty-eight contributors. Critiques of racism, definitions of decolonisation and decoloniality, histories of enslavement, colonisercolonised relations, the coloniality of language, the colonial teaching practices of empire colonies, Black and racialised bodies as sites of racism and colonisation in the afterlife of apartheid, the recolonised economy, and the European colonial curricula that continue to support such practices, especially in law schools in South Africa, run between and among the work in this collection. Not only are we confronted with the overwhelming critique of colonial pedagogies, we are also confronted with an ongoing critique of teaching and learning practices within the university system that almost all of the contributors draw attention to. Some authors utilise the terms, Black and White when referring to racialised identity, with capitalisation, and some do notthose who write Afrika in its newly adopted form within the
#Feesmustfall and decolonising the curriculum. South African Journal of Higher Education, 2018
In South African higher education institutions, the student protests of 2015–2016 called for the decolonisation of higher education spaces and equal access to these spaces. We collected data from students and lecturers over the period of one year in order to better understand the reactions of students and lecturers and the effects the protests had on their experiences. Perspectives of affective theory, decolonisation and social justice were used. It was discovered that the protests had a great affective impact on participants. Strong emotions and beliefs affected the relationships between students and lecturers and African centrality was suggested as a framework for curriculum change. Some settler perspectives emerged and polarisation was evident. It is our hope that lecturers could use this research to assist them in decolonising their spaces of teaching and learning.
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2020
This paper reports on a study that focuses on students from rural areas of South Africa and their experiences of higher education. These students have attracted little attention in widening participation research in South Africa, despite being one of the most marginalised groups (Mgqwashu 2016a). The paper, drawing on the experiences of student co-researchers and using the concepts of decoloniality and curricular justice as a theoretical framework, argues for greater acknowledgement of epistemic reciprocity in curriculum development as a way to ensure more socially just curricula. Findings illustrate the importance that students attribute to being able to relate to curricula that reflect their experiences, curricula that they do not experience in higher education. Students report feelings of marginalisation, lack of recognition of the importance of knowledge and skills developed in their communities and their relevance to higher education together with the challenges they face accessing and engaging with the curriculum.
'Free, decolonised education': a lesson from the South African student struggle
This commentary places British geography within transnational currents of student-focused decolonisation movements. In October 2015, the author travelled to South Africa for the first time, visiting Witwatersrand University (Johannesburg), University of Cape Town (UCT) and Rhodes University in Grahamstown. This paper draws on historical accounts of the British colonisation of what is now South Africa, contextualising both the domestic and global inequalities which it's students are currently challenging. British imperial history also provides a basis for understanding the roots of British geography, offering the campaigns to decolonise the South African university as an opportunity to critically reflect on how our own discipline produces knowledge. The commentary asks this timely question: as geographers, particularly those based in the old centre of Empire, how can our work be used to dismantle the colonialism our discipline has been implicated in since its formal inception?