JUNE 2017
I BUY
NU-WAY
TAILORS AND OUTFITTERS
Specialising In:
CARS AND BAKKIES OLD OR NEW PHONE AJAY
• Engine Spares • Suspension Spares • Water Pumps • Fuel Pumps
• Brake & Clutch Kits • Clutch & Pressure Plates • Lubricants • Accessories
082 966 2384
SHOP 2 | 541 CHOTA MOTALA ROAD RAISETHORPE | PIETERMARITZBURG
Academics are trying to rid South Africa’s universities of the procedures, values, norms, practices, thinking, beliefs and choices that mark anything non-European and not white as inferior. University students in very different countries – South Africa, England and the US – argue that it’s time to decolonise higher education. What does this mean?
something is white or European, it’s superior students. As one student at the University of black people, most of whom could have to anything black or African. To put it in plain Cape Town has explained it: enriched the country even further. terms: white South African academics are as But some people who have benefited vital in driving genuine curriculum “For decolonised education to be introdirectly from the ills of colonialism and decolonisation as their black peers. duced, the existing system must be apartheid still struggle to accept this fact. overthrown and the people it’s supposed to serve must define it for themselves.” They have developed a false need to defend This will involve conscious, deliberate, non-hypocritical and diligent interest by both a system that maimed, dehumanised, black and white academics in indigenous These are very dangerous ideas. What’s oppressed and stripped generation after knowledge systems, cultures, peoples and really important is that South African generation of the South African majority. languages. Theories must be generated that teachers, lecturers and professors must These groups, I’d argue, should be the first develop curricula that build on the best to be genuinely repentant about this history. are informed by life as it is lived, experienced and understood by local knowledge skills, values, beliefs and habits They need to openly acknowledge what’s from around the world. These cannot be become a common lie at universities: that if inhabitants. Continued on Page 9... limited to one country nor one continent – be it Africa or Europe. And while it may surprise many calling for “decolonised education”, South Africa’s universities are not ivory towers: they are hotbeds of research solutions for the nation, drawing 25 BUNTINE PLACE, MASON’S MILL, PIETERMARITZBURG 3201 on local and global theories, thinkers and E: bettacinfo@gmail.com science. Much of this work could be Tel: 033 398 6528 / 033 398 6529 | Cell: 079 091 5034 undone if students push their thinking about “decolonised education” into INDOOR CEMENT SPECIALS. practice.
033 387 8155
Free delivery in & around surrounding areas
550 Hoosen Haffejee Street, Pietermaritzburg Tel: 033 342 0415 | Fax: 033 3456 654 | admin@govendersgarage.co.za
CURRICULUM RESHUFFLE?
What would acquiescing to the students’ push mean for research, science and academic collaboration? ANC presidential hopeful, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, expressed support for calls for the “decolonisation” of education. Addressing about 300 delegates who attended the policy council of Youth In Action in Durban on Sunday, she said decolonising education is more than just changing content in the curriculum. It was about a new way of thinking and doing things and must start with the decolonisation of the mind, she said. For this to happen, black people first had to overcome their inferiority complex. The definition of “decolonising the curriculum” remains a grey area to many and some have it ‘all figured out’. There’s also no clarity about whose responsibility it is to undertake this process. It’s crucial to develop shared understandings and ideas of the meaning of both curriculum and decolonisation. The Cambridge dictionary calls decolonisation “the process in which a country that was previously a colony controlled by another country becomes politically independent”. “Education”, meanwhile, is what the Oxford dictionary calls “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university”. Placed together, then, the decolonisation of education means that a nation must become independent with regards to the acquisition of knowledge skills, values, beliefs and habits. This makes a lot of sense. It’s surely what any nation should be doing. But I would argue that the term is being badly misinterpreted among South African
American theorist William Pinar defines curriculum theory as the interdisciplinary study of educational experience. Educational experience implies more than just the topics covered in a course. It encompasses the attitudes, values, dispositions and world views that get learned, un-learned, re-learned, re-formed, deconstructed and reconstructed while studying towards a degree. And what is decolonisation? When it comes to university curricula, this seems to involve replacing works from Europe or the global North with local theorists and African authors. This is meant to prevent African universities from becoming mere extensions of former colonisers. But decolonising the curriculum is far more nuanced than replacing theorists and authors. If “curriculum” encompasses a broader educational experience, universities first need to define how they approach the development and dissemination of curricula. Only then can they move forward with the process of decolonisation. Decolonisation is not a project over which one racial group can claim sole custodianship. One main argument is that South Africans, as a people, must agree that colonialism and apartheid robbed the country of ideas, skills, creativity, originality, talent and knowledge. All of these attributes got lost through legislated discrimination of
blocks
M150. R5 80 EXPRESS DELIVERY Enquire & Save
with our Delivery Service.
M100
R5.50 M200 R8.50
- NPC ORIGINAL - ALPINE
cement pavers continued on page 2...
VISIT US TO SEE OUR FULL RANGE AND CHECK OUT OUR AWESOME INDOOR SPECIALS
columns
bank retainers
(Consist of Pillars + Base + Cap)
small retainer blocks
R15.00
each
big retainer blocks
.
R28.00 R650 00 each